I have a software business and currently send a zip file with a setup.exe file to the customer. The problem is many don't even know how to unzip the file. If I try to sent the setup.exe file directly they get all kinds of warnings that it could be harmful.
What is the best way to handle this?
Get a code signing certificate and have them download the setup.exe directly from my server.
Make an msi file.
Another method?
I feel like this should be really simple but I can't find much online about an easy way to do this.
I think it is best to use Installshield or NSIS as an alternative solution.
Otherwise, it would be better to create either exe file or msi file and inform your customers that it is okay to launch trusted software whose extension is exe or msi.
Related
I am not familiar with Windows installer builder tools, other than having a conceptual understanding of them. I have a hopefully simple installer-file-wrapping-problem to solve where i would need some advice from people who know this field better than myself:
I have a vendor provided vanilla Setup.exe installer along with a custom config.dat file.
I can run the installer with "Setup.exe /S" which picks up the config.dat file in the same directory for a silent install just as I need it.
I now want to wrap both files into a single file self executable installer "CustomSetup.exe" that if launched with "Run as Administrator" silently unpacks the two files into the same directory, runs the silent install command line "Setup.exe /S" and deletes the previously unpacked files and directory afterwards. Effectively giving me a single-file one-click silent installer with custom settings from the vendor provided vanilla installer.
What is the simplest, most straight forward and elegant way of getting this done?
Most InstallShield/WIX/Windows Installer Tools tutorial- and documentation-pages i could find want to take me to an elaborate installer-project-building-academy first, something that is certainly useful for developers needing to learn how to build complex installer projects, but feels like overkill for just getting this seemingly simple thing done. Is there a lean way to do this? Many thanks in advance for your help.
For the record, I have found the answer to my own question.
Running the Windows on-board IExpress (as Administrator) easily produced exactly what I was after. Just type "Iexpress" into the command search box, run as Administraor and fidlle with it. Alternatively, this is someones Video explaining it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXZyq0cMuKI
What methods exist to include parameters (such as userid) into the setup.exe that users download from a server?
I'm looking for a way to give a customized installer to users that I already know (because they are logged in).
Is your question tied with some technology/installation system? Or you are researching which installation system to use to achieve this functionality?
In NSIS there is option to append custom data to installer, see this article: http://nsis.sourceforge.net/ReadCustomerData.
Maybe the easiest would be to send a setup_whateverparameter.exe filename instead of setup.exe...
A smarter approach would probably be to store parameter into a ressource file which would be edited from command line with some tool like http://www.reseditor.com/
Another one would be to generate a sort of INI file which would be packed with the original setup file using some installer software like Inno Setup (http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php) and the original installer would be configured to check if some ini file exists in a temporary location, to just use its content to do specific tasks.
Other possibilities might exists, thoses are just the one which might be the most easy to implement.
#elfrancesco hinted at Ninite and Patrick from Ninite got back to me with:
We put the installer id in a segment of the .exe that doesn't get
included in the hash for the signature. So we just sign our loader
.exe once whenever we update it and then our web server drops in the
key for each download.
I'm currently trying to make a download/install file for a CD, and I've never done this or written any type of coding before so I'm somewhat at a loss. When we last created an installer package (I wasn't employed yet) we used InstalShield, but that was decades ago, and we can't afford the 500$+ price to get it again.
Currently I'm trying to work off the old download package we have. There is the Windows Installer Package (made by InstalShield) called CD Cat v6.msi, and then another file called CDcatv6.exe (which launches a window for the customer to browse options) and then a file called Data.cab which has all the files for the entire catalog in it.
I was thinking perhaps I can just replace a lot of those files with the current information. Replace the CDcatv6.exe file with my v7.exe file (but change the name so its CDcatv6.exe) and then replace all the files in the Data.cab file with the current ones. But that's turning out to be a huge issue.
I did a bit of searching to learn what a .cab file was, and downloaded the Cab File Maker 2.0 (after quite a bit of searching!). I'm having a difficult time using it though, as it wants all the files that I put in it to make the .cab to be in .ddf format. I have no idea what that is, much less how to make it. I tried using 'save as' to do it, but since all the files I need are PDF's there's no option for it and I cant export the files to it either.
I tried looking at other ways that people made Cab files, but I don't know many of the file types or programs their talking about. I'm not a programmer by any means, but I have to learn quick I guess, so any information on how to do this will help greatly. Is it even possible to replace all the files seamlessly and have it work properly? Or is there an easier way to create a fill that the customer can click on and have it download to their desktop?
I don't think simple editing of Data.cab will work. There is installer logic stored in other InstallShield files. It could work if and only if the file set is the same, I mean no files changed its names, no new files added, no new registry entries required etc.
To create a CAB file, use cabarc.exe from Microsoft Windows SDK.
Creating a brand new installer may be a better option. Look at this tools for creating installers:
Advanced Installer
NSIS
WiX toolset (with tutorial)
You best solution is to use dark.exe (part of the WiX toolset).
This will enable to you decompile the MSI and CAB files, edit the installer source as XML and then recompile this into a new executable. Unfortunately this route is not for the faint of heart and what you save on price will cost you in time.
I'm curious how your company created an MSI decades ago, but Sasha is right about time and money trade-offs. However if you're working with Visual Studio, you might try the InstallShield Limited Edition for Visual Studio. It may have enough capabilities to suit your needs.
Thanks for pointing to CABARC, that looks exactly what i was looking for, due to information on:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/bb417343(v=msdn.10)?redirectedfrom=MSDN#top
That make me look how to download it, but i found this post:
Where can I get the cabarc utility?
Where it explains CABARC may be obsolete and there is another utility called MAKECAB that cames with Windows 11, i had try it at command line and it is there.
Thanks a lot.
Looking for an installer that will take any number of files in a folder and make each file into an exe (not put them all into one exe). Will any installers easily do this? I haven't been able to find a feature name for this, so it's made it difficult to determine from a feature list.
Take a look at Nullsoft installer. About anything can be scripted w/ it.
I would like to know how can I detect if help file is contained in setup file for windows platform application (msi or exe). Is there any method to get this information without installing the software first ?
Of course setup file can be created by many setup makers like innosetup, installshield and so on. So I wonder if there is some universal method to solve this.
For an MSI based install it would be very easy. For example you can use the Microsoft.Deployment.WindowsInstaller interop via C# to open the MSI as an InstallPackageClass then access it's Files collection to see if it contains the file you care about.
For a Non-MSI based install, there is no universal way and in most cases, no way period. See, that's kind of the point of MSI: to have a standards based package rich in meta data to be able to see what it's doing. When you do some proprietary script driven installer you lose that openness.
If it's a MSI file, open it up using Orca, and you can view file names.
For both of them, you should be able to do an administrative install, which would extract the files, but not register anything. Depending on where the exe came from, doing an administrative install changes, since each vendor(installshield, innosetup, etc) has their own way to run an administrative install.
for a MSI it's simply
msiexec /a <msi_filename>
For an exe you'll have to look up how to pass the /a argument.