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After way too many experiments, I've come to the conclusion that Windows Installer is simply bad technology. But the customers want MSI files. So, how can I create an MSI file that extracts an EXE file to a temporary directory and runs it with options same or similar as were passed to the EXE file? Options to an MSI are explained in Msiexec (command-line options) (low level "run" of an MSI is msiexec option package.msi). EDIT: mjmarsh's WiX solution looks like it works. I just haven't had a chance to try it yet (crunch time). If it works, I'll be accepting it. EDIT: it does not work. Missing piece: attended/unattended does not seem to be available. Anyway, the only to make this work at all would be for the custom action to kill its parent process! EDIT: So somebody posted as a further answer wrapping the whole thing as a post-install custom action. Theoretically possible but since a reboot may be required (thanks MS for .NET 4 requiring a reboot sometimes) we have to do further hackery. So from the matrix of advantages: Transparency: No. One big custom action. Customizability: No. Standardization: No. Management and reporting: No. Appears to work but will not. Security: No benefit. Validation: No. The hackery required to survive reboot makes this sure to not work. Resiliency: Completely defeated. Rollback: No. Rollback didn't work when we were using MSI anyway. Patching & Updates: No. We have a local solution anyway. Logging: No. Appears to work but will not. No point.

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