Windows Installer System Inventory Viewer

Deployment Tools Foundation

Deployment Tools Foundation Windows Installer System Inventory Viewer
Development Guide > Samples > Inventory

This application shows a hierarchical, relational, searchable view of all of the product, feature, component, file, and patch data managed by MSI, for all products installed on the system.


Navigation

  1. The tree on the left is self-explanatory.

  2. Click on a row-header (grey box on the left side of the grid) to jump to a table with more details about the item referred to by that row. For example, clicking on a row-header of a table that lists components will take you to a table that lists the files in that component. Not every table has this ability, but the cursor will turn to a hand shape to indicate when this is possible.

  3. Also you can navigate back and forward through your history using the buttons in the application or mouse buttons 4 and 5.


Searching

The search feature is not hard to find. By default, searches are limited to the current table. However, if you choose to find "In Subtree" by checking the box, the search will include the current table as well as all tables under the current location in the tree. While this can take a long time if there is a lot of data under the current node, you can stop the search at any time with the stop button. The search pauses when a match is found, but clicking "Find" again will continue the same search from that point (unless you uncheck the "Continue" checkbox or change the search string).