InstallSite Blog

New Advanced Installer 7.0 brings Windows Mobile/CE support

On May 25th, 2009 Caphyon Ltd. announced the latest edition of its Windows Installer authoring tool. The new Advanced Installer enables developers and system administrators to easily build and repackage complex applications into reliable, ready to deploy MSI and EXE installers, patches and on-line updates.

The 7.0 release breaks new ground with the addition of full support for the Windows Mobile platform. Finally creating fully featured installers for your smartphone applications becomes just as easy as creating installers for your desktop products.

Another major addition in this release is the enhanced installation user interface. This brand new external UI implementation is laying the foundation for massive improvements on how your installers look and feel. Better Vista/Windows 7 integration, transparencies, exciting new controls and more powerful customization are ready to use in your installers.

Do you have installers already written with NSIS that you need to switch to Windows Installer? Advanced Installer 7.0 can import NSIS projects in addition to Visual Studio, WiX, Eclipse and Inno Setup. Quickly and painlessly convert them to MSI - with just a few mouse clicks.

And of course, as always, tons of smaller features come to help every-day's life of the installer developer. Application leftovers after uninstall are now a thing of the past with the built-in support for uninstall cleanup. Predefined Custom actions for port testing and application shutdowns. Prerequisites and launch conditions for XNA Framework, Windows Installer 5.0, Internet Explorer 8 and many more.

Other improvements in this version:

• Windows Mobile/CE support
• Import NSIS projects
• Enhanced installation user interface
• Cleanup application-generated resources and settings at uninstall
• Persist user-modified application data through upgrades and repairs
• Predefined custom action for testing if a port is free (not bound to an application)
• Predefined custom action for closing applications
• Custom name in the "Add or Remove Programs" applet
• XNA Framework predefined prerequisite and launch condition
• Windows Installer 5.0 predefined launch condition
• Internet Explorer 8 predefined launch condition
• SQL Server Compact Edition 3.5 SP1 predefined prerequisite

Advanced Installer is available in four editions, starting with the Freeware community edition and offering a 30-day trial period for the other editions.

For more information and ordering Advanced Installer please see:
www.installsite.biz/advancedinstaller.htm

(Text based on a press release from Caphyon Ltd.)

Windows 7 disguises as Vista to MSI Custom Actions

In every new version of Windows, Microsoft includes numerous “shims” to improve compatibility with existing software. These shims are applied on a per-application basis. You can see which shims apply to an application using the Compatibility Administrator which is part of the Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) – Download ACT version 5.5

The below screenshot shows the application compatibility settings for msiexec.exe, the process that runs all Windows Installer (MSI) setups.

As you can see among the shims that apply to Windows Installer there is VistaRTMVersionLie. This setting causes the GetVersionEx API to return Windows Vista values on Windows 7,when called from a custom action in a MSI setup.

Note that this only applies when a custom action checks for the Windows version using the GetVersionEx API. However the pre-defined MSI property VersionNT will properly be set to 601 on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 as documented. (Remember that that the VersionNT value is not 700 as one might expect, which is another application compatibility measure to work around setups that check the major OS version number.)

For information about the other shims that apply to MSI setups and a discussion about the “OS version lying” see Chris Jackson’s blog where he states that “there’s an arms race between app compat and the people who want to do the checks”.

Sample package from DesktopEngineer.com helps you becoming familiar with new MSI 4 and MSI 5 features

Darwin Sanoy of DesktopEngineer.com has published a MSI sample package with a step-by-step self learning guide that leads you through testing new features in Windows Installer versions 4 and 5. Topics covered include:

• signed and unsigned UAC prompts, signing MSI packages
• elevation scenarios and custom actions permissions
• per-user installations
• full msi file caching
• and more

Download: Test Package and 30 Page Lab Manual for Testing MSI 4.0 (Vista) and MSI 5.0 (Win7) Features

AdminStudio adds support for direct conversion to Microsoft App-V

On April 28, 2009 Acresso Software announced the release of App-V support for AdminStudio.

AdminStudio can now directly convert existing physical application packages to the virtual format for use with Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V), part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack, the most broadly distributed application virtualization technology. With the latest release of AdminStudio, organizations can accelerate the creation, testing and management of virtual applications being deployed through App-V, making AdminStudio a beneficial component to enable customers to rapidly prepare virtual applications and expedite App-V implementations.

AdminStudio accelerates virtual deployments by converting applications into the App-V format natively, without the use of the App-V Sequencer. AdminStudio also speeds virtual application packaging and deployment above and beyond the use of the native sequencing process, by offering vital time and effort saving tools, including:

• an automated process to migrate a single application, a few .EXEs, or an entire library of MSI-based applications to the App-V virtual format
• editing and customization of virtual and traditional applications via the award-winning InstallShield® technology built into AdminStudio
• a pre-virtualization scan which helps to determine which existing applications are the best candidates for virtualization before being deployed in a virtual environment
• a combined application catalog to manage package-centric business practices, including updates for virtual applications deployed via App-V and traditional applications deployed through System Center Configuration Manager
• a direct integration with Acresso Workflow Manager, the blueprint tool for managing application readiness, application virtualization, OS migrations, and other desktop management processes.

In beta use, AdminStudio users have seen physical to virtual application conversion times reduced from weeks to just a few hours. AdminStudio automated tools for converting applications, including batch conversion functionality, have migrated application libraries of over 200 applications from the MSI format to the App-V format in less than two hours.

With the addition of App-V support, AdminStudio now supports three popular application virtualization formats:

• VMware ThinApp (formerly known as Thinstall)
• Citrix XenApp
• Microsoft App-V (formerly known as SoftGrid)

And of course, AdminStudio continues to support Windows Installer (MSI) packaging. Application virtualization support is an add-on package that’s available for the Standard, Professional and Enterprise editions of AdminStudio.

AdminStudio is available in the InstallSite Shop.

(Text based on a press release from Acresso Software)