InstallSite Blog

Yesterday, Flexera Software released a new version of InstallShield, called “InstallShield 2012 Spring”.

New features include Microsoft SQL Azure™ database scripting capabilities, automatic update check during installation, new end user interface option for the Professional edition and an improved wizard page editor for Premier and Professional. Also included is pre-release support for Microsoft® Windows® 8, Windows Server® 2012 and Visual Studio™ 11.

In addition, owners of InstallShield Premier with an active maintenance plan are entitled to a FlexNet Connect account (limited to 1000 end points) that can be used to notify end users about available updates (similar to Windows Update).

InstallShield 2012 Spring is a new major version (version 19 internally) and therefore is a paid upgrade unless you have a maintenance plan.

• InstallShield 2012 Spring Release Notes – Premier and Professional
• InstallShield 2012 Spring Release Notes – Express
• Webinar: What’s New in InstallShield 2012 Spring

InstallShield 2010 End of Life

At the same time, Flexera Software announced the end of life of InstallShield 2010. Upgrade pricing from this version ends on 31st August 2012.

InstallShield can be purchased from the InstallSite Shop at http://www.installsite.biz/installshield.htm

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Windows 8 is approaching, a “Release Preview” is coming in the first week of June, according to an announcement today. Therefore I plan to write some blog posts, looking at various aspects of Windows 8 from a setup developer’s perspective. In this first post I’m discussing AppX vs. MSI,

Windows 8 introduces a new application type – Metro Apps – and a new installation method and installer file format: AppX. Some people are asking if that will make Windows Installer (MSI) obsolete. Well, I believe that MSI will continue to play an important role in software installation for quite a while. Here is why.

There is a huge number of existing applications that won’t be re-written as Metro Apps in the near future. And for some types of applications, converting them into Metro Apps doesn’t have significant benefits or doesn’t make sense at all.

One of the most important advantages of Metro Apps is their tight integration in the App Store: they can be purchased, installed and automatically updated in the store. But Desktops applications can also be listed in the store, which gives them the desirable visibility for end users, even if purchase and installation will be outside the store experience. For business customers I think this is even less important. They will prefer other methods to deploy and update applications, controlled by the IT department. Smaller companies without a dedicated IT department can use tools like Windows Intune to manage computers and applications packaged as msi.

A big hurdle for the transition to AppX is it restriction to Windows 8. If you want to build Metro Apps and package them as AppX, but also don’t want to leave your customers behind who are still using Windows 7, Vista or Windows XP, you will have to build and maintain two versions of your application and two packaging types: AppX and MSI.

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Two InstallShield special offers are currently available for a limited time:

• Owners of end-of-life InstallShield versions can buy InstallShield 2012 at upgrade price if they also buy a maintenance plan.
• All InstallShield maintenance bundles (new and upgrades) are currently offered with a 10% discount.

These offers end May 9, 2012.

On May 10, a new version called InstallShield 2012 Spring will be released. At the same time, the prices for InstallShield will be increased (details are not available yet). Customers with active maintenance plans will receive the new version free of charge.

InstallShield can be purchased from the InstallSite Shop at http://www.installsite.biz/installshield.htm

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In the new beta version of Visual Studio 11 you can’t open .vdproj files anymore. This project type was for Visual Studio Installer projects in the Setup & Deployment category, used to create Windows Installer (MSI) setups for your applications.

The current version, Visual Studio 2010, already includes a free limited edition of InstallShield to create .msi setups, but it also supports .vdproj projects. Now with Visual Studio 11 the .vdproj support was removed and users are told to use InstallShield LE instead (although some users prefer other tools with Visual Studio integration, like WiX). InstallShield also includes an option to import existing .vdproj files.

This change was announced quite a while ago, in July 2010, so it’s not a big surprise.

Full-fledged editions InstallShield can be purchased from the InstallSite Shop at http://www.installsite.biz/installshield.htm

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On March 26th, 2012 Caphyon Ltd. released Advanced Installer version 9.0. The new version is a free update for all customers who purchased a license within the past six months or who have an active maintenance plan.

The Advanced Installer IDE now has a ribbon style interface and a redesigned Custom Actions view. New functionality includes the ability to import packed SharePoint solutions and the conversion of existing EXE installers to MSI packages. According to the release notes, the latter was the most requested feature ever. Essentially, it creates a wrapper which will call the EXE installer as a post-install prerequisite. You can specify command line options for different UI levels and maintenance operations which Advanced Installer will pass to the EXE.

Advanced Installer 9.0 Release Notes

Advanced Installer (full versions, upgrades and maintenance extensions) are available via the InstallSite Shop at http://www.installsite.biz/advancedinstaller.htm

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In January, when AdminStudio 11 was released, Flexera Software also announced the end of life for AdminStudio 9.0, 9.01 and 9.5. Upgrade pricing from these versions ends in three weeks, on March 30. If you want to upgrade to the latest version AdminStudio 11 you should do so before the end of March. After that date you’d have to pay the full version price.

If you decide not to upgrade, please save any updates, service packs or Hotfixes for your AdminStudio 9.x before they are removed from the web site.

AdminStudio can be purchased from the InstallSite Shop at http://www.installsite.biz/adminstudio.htm

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Happy New Year to all my readers!

I missed this news over the holidays, so here it is a bit late: On December 22nd, 2011 Caphyon Ltd. announced the release of Advanced Installer 8.8. The new version adds support for VMware ThinApp to the existing App-V support, so now you have more choice of supported application virtualization solutions. In addition there are improvements for digital signatures and prerequisites and many more.

For details please see the release notes.

With this release, the Advanced Installer team at Caphyon continues with their approximately monthly release cycle. Gladly that doesn’t mean that you have an outdated version a few weeks after purchase, because Advanced Installer includes six months of maintenance by default (the Plus editions include 30 months of maintenance).

Advanced Installer (full versions, upgrades and maintenance extensions) are available via the InstallSite Shop at http://www.installsite.biz/advancedinstaller.htm

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On November 29th, 2011 Caphyon Ltd.announced the release of Advanced Installer 8.7. New features in this version include:

• Software Identification in accordance with ISO/IEC 19770-2:2009
• App-V package dependencies
• Tab Host control in enhanced user interface
• Internet Explorer predefined searches
• “Log on as a service” policy support
• and many other enhancements and fixes

Release Notes

Advanced Installer (full versions, upgrades and maintenance extensions) are available via the InstallSite Shop at http://www.installsite.biz/advancedinstaller.htm

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Microsoft has published a new tool to help end users fix setup related issues such as programs that can’t be installed or uninstalled. It replaces the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility (MSICUU) which had been withdrawn in June 2010. Unlike MSICUU, the new tool actually tries to fix issues with the Windows Installer registry. If that doesn’t help, the tool makes some efforts to remove the application, while MSICUU only deleted the entry from Windows Installer and left all the garbage behind.

In my test, the tool successfully deleted the installed file, but left behind the empty folder in the Program Files directory. It also failed to delete the registry entry my test setup had created and the start menu shortcut to the exe.

The new tool also takes precautions like creating a restore point before it starts its work, and making backup copies of the resources it deletes. It even creates an undo script.

You can find the tool at http://support.microsoft.com/mats/program_install_and_uninstall/. For more details about how the tool works, see Aaron Stebner’s blog post. Here are some screenshots from the tool:

The tool has an option to automatically fix problems, but I used the second option.

It helps with installation problems as well as uninstall issues.

The “Not Listed” option opens a dialog where you can enter the ProductCode GUID of a package you want to uninstall. For testing purposes, I created a setup where uninstallation was intentionally broken (via a LaunchCondition of Not Installed).

The summary shows that it created backups of the deleted files and registry entries. However the latter only include Windows Installer’s own entries like those under HKLM:\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\CURRENTVERSION\INSTALLER\… and HKLM:\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\CURRENTVERSION\UNINSTALL\… They entry under HKLM\Software\… which I specified in the Registry table of my msi was left behind.

This is how the backup folder structure looks like:

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With InstallShield version 2010 Flexera Software introduced the requirement that activation of the software has to be repeated yearly. Typically this re-activation happens automatically without user interaction. However in some cases, the automatic re-activation fails and when trying to manually re-activate some users get an error message: “The license for this computer is in use on another computer. … Error 20653 – The number of activations allowed for this account has been exceeded.”

Flexera Software has documented a workaround for this problem in knowledge base article Q212463.

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