windows 7 - Setting environment variables requires reboot on 64-bit

Question

I am working on an installer using Wix 3.5 that needs to set the system PATH environment variable.

This is how I am setting the environment variable:

<Directory Id="DirectoryName">
    <Component Id="ComponentID" Guid="{BE20AF67-5943-4AF4-BE66-226E2D4B844F}">
        <Environment Id="EnvironmentID" Name="PATH" Action="set" Value="the path" Part="last" Separator=";" System="yes" />
    </Component>
</Directory>

This seems to be working on 32-bit systems without requiring a reboot for the changes to be recognized. However, when I try it on 64-bit Windows 7 a reboot is required.

Is this a known issue on 64-bit systems?

Maybe the best approach would be to schedule a reboot to cover all bases.

Thanks, Alan

Answer 1

Check this question on ServerFault: How do you add a Windows environment variable without rebooting?

So to propagate the change to the list of environment variables, you can write a small program which broadcasts WM_SETTINGCHANGE message as described in KB article How to propagate environment variables to the system.