Registering an Executable File (exe) as a Control Panel Applet on Windows Vista using Windows Installer XML (WIX)

posted by  kevyn (54)  8 months ago (blogs.msdn.com)

In Windows Vista, we have expanded the way that we implement Control Panel applets. In the past, you would package these as *.cpl files (and you still can). With Windows Vista, you can also create a control panel applet as an executable file (or by invoking your main executable with command line arguments), and then register that applet.

This can come in handy, as there are well published guidelines for specifying elevation level for an executable file with a manifest, but no such guidance for .cpl files. This makes sense, because .cpl files are really just .dll files that have