Force Blocked Software to Install onto Unsupported Operating System Versions

Sometimes programs are blocked from being installed onto certain versions of operating systems even though those programs may actually run fine without any issues once installed.  Perhaps it is newer software and the vendor doesn’t support (either intentionally or unintentionally) an older version of the operating system with a new release of software i.e. ST5 Solid Edge License Manager on Windows Server 2003:

Or maybe the software is older software created before a newer version of the operating system existed i.e. ST2 SEEC Administrator on Windows 2008 R2:

Blocked installs because of operating system version can be quite easily overcome by using Orca, a free Microsoft tool that allows you to quickly and easily modify and edit the .msi installer files.

Microsoft provides a KB article on using Orca but it specifically doesn’t specifically address how to override and remove operating system version restrictions.

First you must download and install Orca.  Unfortunately Microsoft does not provide a direct download of Orca.  In order to get Orca you must download and install the Microsoft Windows SDK which includes Orca.

Or to save yourself some time you can search the interweb for a standalone copy of Orca someone has already extracted from the Microsoft SDK for you.

However you end up getting Orca, once installed, you are then ready to begin modifying the software .msi installer file.

Back up the software .msi installer file:

Launch Orca:

Select File -> Open ->Browse to the software .msi installer file ->Open:

In the Tables column on the left-hand side locate the “LaunchCondition” table:

In the Condition column on the right-hand side select the condition that is blocking the software from installing.  Typically this will be a condition containing the string “Version” in it somewhere:

You can then either double-click on the condition and manually edit the condition or right-click and select “Drop Row” to delete the condition all together.  I typically drop the row to bypass *all* OS version checking:

File -> Save the modified .msi file and exit out of Orca:

You should now be able to launch the software .msi installer and successfully install the software to the previously blocked operating system:

As an added bonus, once you’ve downloaded Orca, it runs standalone so you can add it to your portable software toolbox.  (As an administrator you do have a set of portable tools, don’t you?  If not check out two of my fav portable application toolsets, PortableApps and LiberKey).

Just remember that when you install software onto unsupported platforms you cannot typically expect support or help from product support (GTAC?) with resolving problems with software on unsupported platforms ;-)