What are the specific differences between msi and setup exe file

Question

I searched a lot  but all are guessed answers   Help me to find the exact answer

User · Answer

msi files are windows installer files without the windows installer runtime  setup exe can be any executable programm  probably one that installs stuff on your computer

User · Answer

MSI is basically an installer from Microsoft that is built into windows  It associates components with features and contains installation control information  It is not necessary that this file contains actual user required files i e the application programs which user expects  MSI can contain another setup exe inside it which the MSI wraps  which actually contains the user required files    Hope this clears you doubt

User · Answer

MSI is an installer file which installs your program on the executing system   Setup exe is an application  executable file  which has msi file s  as its one of the resources  Executing Setup exe will in turn execute msi  the installer  which writes your application to the system   Edit  as suggested in comment   Setup executable files don t necessarily have an MSI resource internally

User · Answer

An MSI is a Windows Installer database  Windows Installer  a service installed with Windows  uses this to install software on your system  i e  copy files  set registry values  etc        A setup exe may either be a bootstrapper or a non-msi installer  A non-msi installer will extract the installation resources from itself and manage their installation directly  A bootstrapper will contain an MSI instead of individual files  In this case  the setup exe will call Windows Installer to install the MSI   Some reasons you might want to use a setup exe    Windows Installer only allows one MSI to be installing at a time  This means that it is difficult to have an MSI install other MSIs  e g  dependencies like the  NET framework or C   runtime   Since a setup exe is not an MSI  it can be used to install several MSIs in sequence  You might want more precise control over how the installation is managed  An MSI has very specific rules about how it manages the installations  including installing  upgrading  and uninstalling  A setup exe gives complete control over the software configuration process  This should only be done if you really need the extra control since it is a lot of work  and it can be tricky to get it right

[windows-services] What are the specific differences between .msi and setup.exe file?

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