5 replies to this topic

[rameshk01]

I am developing an IE explorer bar and an installer for it. The installer works just fine. But I have some concerns about the size of the installer. The toolbar itself is only around 200k, but the msi comes to about 4 mb, including InstMsiA.exe and InstMsiW.exe and other MFC dependencies such as MFC71U.dll, MSVCP71.dll and MSVCRT71.dll. Now my questions is:

- If I am targeting only XP Pro, XP Home and 2000 machines (Vista later), do I really need to include InstMsiA.exe in the package? And, how about InstMsiW.exe?

- Is it absolutely necessary that the MFC dependencies(merge modules) detected by Visual Studio Setup project be included in the package? Or can they be safely excluded? What is the best practice?

Thanks

[Stefan Krueger]

InstMsiA.exe is only for Windows 95/98/Me.
XP includes Windows Installer runtime version 2.0, Windows 2000 includes version 1.1 (see http://www.msifaq.com/a/1001.htm). If these version are sufficient for you, you don't need instmsiW.exe. But verison 2.0 may be required. Using a bootstrapper you could have the setup download instmsiw.exe only when needed.

Other runtime files should be included unless you are sure they will already exist on the target machine. I don't think that version 7.1 of the C runtimes are included in Windows 2000, not sure about XP (with or without SP 2)

[Gareth at Serif]

Just to expand on Stefan's info, here's a list of Windows Installer versions any end user may have that I'm aware of from...

1.00.5104.0 --------- Redistributable with Office 2000
1.10.1029.0 --------- Windows 2000
1.10.1029.1 --------- Redistributable
1.11.1314.0 --------- Windows 2000 SP1
1.11.2405.0 --------- Windows 2000 SP2
1.20.1410.0 --------- Windows ME
1.20.1827.1 --------- Redistributable
2.0.2600.0 ---------- Windows XP
2.0.2600.1 ---------- Windows 2000 SP3
2.0.2600.1183 ------- Windows 2000 SP4
*2.0.2600.2 --------- Redistributable
2.0.2600.1106 ------- Windows XP SP1
2.0.3790.0 ---------- Windows Server 2003
3.0.3790.2180 ------- Windows XP SP2 (and redistrbutable)
3.1.4000.1823 ------- Redistributable
3.1.4000.1830 ------- Windows Server 2003 SP1 (and Windows XP Pro x64 Edition)
3.1.4000.2435 ------- Redistributable
4.00.6000.0 --------- Windows Vista

*VMTools installs 2.0 for you so it's hard to simulate anything less with VMware Workstation.

Cheers,
Gareth

[rameshk01]

Stefan and Gareth,

Thanks to both of you for the responses. I have one further request for Stefan.

Stefan, would you mind giving me some pointers on how I could do the bootstrapping to have the setup download instmsiw.exe only when needed? I am not familiar with it. BTW, I am developing the setup project using Visual Studio .Net 2003 and using scripts to edit the MSI. Thanks again for your help

K. Ramesh

[Stefan Krueger]

Doesn't Visual Studio have a customizable bootstrapper? Other samples are listed here: www.msifaq.com/a/1036.htm

[rameshk01]

Stefan,

I believe you are talking about the WebSetup project, but not sure. I will give it a try. Thanks for your help.

K. Ramesh