Forum Discussion
bvenhaus
Dec 14, 2021Copper Contributor
The ms-appinstaller protocol has been disabled.
I just found out that users can no longer install my MSIX from my website. This is a WPF application packaged with "Windows Application Packaging Project" (wapproj). When users click the "Get the app...
- Dec 15, 2021
bvenhaus Thank you for your question. We removed the ms-appinstaller custom scheme due to a security vulnerability. We do intend to bring this back, and are working on it. For now, you can update the link on your website by removing 'ms-appinstaller:?source='
<html> <body> <h1> MyApp Web Page </h1> <a href="http://mywebservice.azureedge.net/HubApp.msix"> Install app package </a> <a href="http://mywebservice.azureedge.net/HubAppBundle.msixbundle"> Install app bundle </a> <a href="http://mywebservice.azureedge.net/HubAppSet.appinstaller"> Install related set </a> </body> </html>
XanderTheMander
Jan 28, 2022Copper Contributor
For anybody that is still having issues with this here is how I temporarily solved this problem.
When my application starts up it checks the version number (manually maintained in my App.xaml) against the version hosted on our webserver. If there is an updated version it downloads a zip file with msix and the generated shell scripts. It then upzips the files and runs the shell script through PowerShell to install the new version.
Note that this requires the device be in developer mode because executing the shell script is considered installing from an unknown publisher. I'm sure somebody smarter than me could find a work around that doesn't require developer mode (if so reply so I can make the changes).
- jmiddourJan 28, 2022Copper ContributorYou might want to try signing the powershell scripts. We looked into doing that (for other reasons) a while back and it made windows significantly happier when it came to uac issues.
- JayBeaversMar 08, 2022Brass ContributorFYI, there is now a blog post about this:
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-it-pro-blog/disabling-the-msix-ms-appinstaller-protocol-handler/ba-p/3119479
- hrb-2Jan 28, 2022Brass ContributorThanks for sharing this information. Are you willing to share your scripts (genericized for security concerns of course) and/or provide further details? Unfortunately, it won't help us much as we were in the early stages of an initial rollout so 90% of our users community would not be able to use this workaround but it may help others with an established user base. This Microsoft created debacle also impacts new installs from the internet which use the same protocol, so we are unable to move forward.
- DuncanStoneJan 28, 2022Copper Contributor
hrb-2You can see my solution here https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/msix-docs/issues/59#issuecomment-832260691
It does not use shell scripts (which also means it does not require developer mode) but you should be able to work out how to change that.
This is a workaround for a much older
bugfeature but it works here too.While we are on the subject, if you are manually editing your appinstaller file and/or your users are doing a lot of patching or installing at the moment, it is worth paying attention to this one as well: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/64381453/appinstaller-xml-issue/67390614#67390614