Why does TX16Wx installer need to modify files that MS Outlook, Excel, VMWare and Firefox use?

[AlQuzMar]

Hi,
I find it quite strange that TX16Wx installer tells me that it needs to modify files that Microsoft not Word, but Outlook and Excel and Mozilla Firefox and VMWare USB Arbitration Service use, and I need to close them. They should work in totally different domains of my system. Why does this happen and is my installer legit?

edited to correct the app

Well I ran it through Hybrid Analysis anyway, so here's the report if anyone's interested: https://www.hybrid-analysis.com/sample/ ... 5fa430aa30

[elcallio]

If you downloaded the installer from tx16wx.com, yes. The installer does not modify those apps, but it does install a MSVC runtime on the system, which in turn _might_ need to restart services that lock files related to this SxS tree. Not that it has ever happened to me, but then you did not really tell anything about which version of Windows you are running...

[AlQuzMar]

but then you did not really tell anything about which version of Windows you are running...

Oh, sorry. I'm running W10 Pro 10.0.18363. I did download through the official site as far as I can tell. It's just very weird that I need to kill a virtual machine's usb bridge to be able to install software sampler on my machine.

If there would be hashes or PGP signatures or so available for installers it would be quite trivial task to check their authenticity. However that was probably least of my concern, but I was quite baffled about the fact that an installer wants to modify plethora of unrelated apps. So it's about shared VC library then.

Then again if I already have those files on my system and they're functioning as intended apparently since other programs are using them, why does it want to modify them?

[mcbpete]

It might be checking if they're the latest version of the runtime libraries or are a specific version that TX16Wx needs. I doubt it's modifying the apps themselves, just that the apps all use those same shared libraries when running.

[elcallio]

The TX installers are all signed. You can verify that they originate from CWITEC.