Friday, December 7, 2007

How to check programmatically if WSS or MOSS are installed

I came into a situation when I needed to check if a SharePoint installation exists on a system, and specifically, WSS (Windows SherePoint Servises) or MOSS (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server).

The two properties can be useful in this case, the idea depends on checking the registry.
Note that I extracted this code from the open source project SharePoint Solution Installer and made minor modifications.

To check for WSS we check the key:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0]
and the value "SharePoint" must be "Installed"

To check for MOSS we check the key:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0]
"BuildVersion"="12.0.4518.1016"
and check that the version is 12

Here is the code:

public static bool IsWSSInstalled
{
get
{
string name = @"SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0";

try
{
RegistryKey key = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(name);
if (key != null)
{
object val = key.GetValue("SharePoint");
if (val != null && val.Equals("Installed"))
{
return true;
}
}
return false;
}

catch (SecurityException ex)
{
throw new Exception("Access deined. Could not read the Windows Registry key '" + name + "'", ex);
}
}
}

public static bool IsMOSSInstalled
{
get
{
string name = @"SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0";

try
{
RegistryKey key = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(name);
if (key != null)
{
string versionStr = key.GetValue("BuildVersion") as string;
if (versionStr != null)
{
Version buildVersion = new Version(versionStr);
if (buildVersion.Major == 12)
{
return true;
}
}
}
return false;
}

catch (SecurityException ex)
{
throw new Exception("Access deined. Could not read the Windows Registry key '" + name + "'", ex);
}
}
}

and at the top of your class:
using Microsoft.Win32;
using System.Security;

3 comments:

  1. Thanks Heshim. This is very useful.

    One quick caveat to the IsMOSSInstalled code is that "Microsoft Project Server" also adds the same "SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0" key. So you may get a "false positive" for MOSS if you have "Microsoft Project Server" installed on a WSS machine.

    -Chris

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  2. Thanks Chris for this valuable information, this needs a workaround for sure!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I mean this solution for only WSS and MOSS 32 bit on windows 32 bit.

    Is this still true for WSS/MOSS 64 bit on windows server 2008 ?

    Thanks

    ReplyDelete