Favorite installer for minifilters

NTFSD
1

The powers that be have decided we need to standardize on a new
installer because our current one is getting a bit long in the tooth.

Does anybody have a prefered installer that they use? Nice features
would be:

Handles installing drivers nicely
Handles 32/64 bit nicely
Doesn’t cost $1800 (InstallShield) would be nice :wink:

I’m looking at Wix, and NSIS. Wix has the advantage that I can
decompile the msi output by our existing installer, but on the other
hand, that’s some pretty gross XML to look at since it’s doubly machine
generated (existing installer wizard — build installer —> MSI —
dark.exe —> decompiled XML). It’s a start at least.

Thanks!

~Eric

2

InnoSetup, it’s a gem, and for free:
http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php#features

//Daniel

“Eric Diven” wrote in message news:xxxxx@ntfsd…
The powers that be have decided we need to standardize on a new
installer because our current one is getting a bit long in the tooth.

Does anybody have a prefered installer that they use? Nice features
would be:

Handles installing drivers nicely
Handles 32/64 bit nicely
Doesn’t cost $1800 (InstallShield) would be nice :wink:

I’m looking at Wix, and NSIS. Wix has the advantage that I can
decompile the msi output by our existing installer, but on the other
hand, that’s some pretty gross XML to look at since it’s doubly machine
generated (existing installer wizard — build installer —> MSI —
dark.exe —> decompiled XML). It’s a start at least.

Thanks!

~Eric

3

I’ll second Daniel’s vote for InnoSetup – a very nice piece of software.

-Doug

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of
xxxxx@resplendence.com
Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2008 5:50 PM
To: Windows File Systems Devs Interest List
Subject: Re:[ntfsd] Favorite installer for minifilters

InnoSetup, it’s a gem, and for free:
http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php#features

//Daniel

“Eric Diven” wrote in message news:xxxxx@ntfsd…
The powers that be have decided we need to standardize on a new
installer because our current one is getting a bit long in the tooth.

Does anybody have a prefered installer that they use? Nice features
would be:

Handles installing drivers nicely
Handles 32/64 bit nicely
Doesn’t cost $1800 (InstallShield) would be nice :wink:

I’m looking at Wix, and NSIS. Wix has the advantage that I can
decompile the msi output by our existing installer, but on the other
hand, that’s some pretty gross XML to look at since it’s doubly machine
generated (existing installer wizard — build installer —> MSI —
dark.exe —> decompiled XML). It’s a start at least.

Thanks!

~Eric

—
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4

+1. We’re using it for our setups for a long time now.
Though, it won’t install drivers directly… you still need to use the INF
files or an external installer (at least I did not find a way to do it yet).

Doug wrote:

I’ll second Daniel’s vote for InnoSetup – a very nice piece of software.
-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of
xxxxx@resplendence.com
Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2008 5:50 PM
To: Windows File Systems Devs Interest List
Subject: Re:[ntfsd] Favorite installer for minifilters

InnoSetup, it’s a gem, and for free:
http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php#features

Does anybody have a prefered installer that they use? Nice features
would be:

Handles installing drivers nicely
Handles 32/64 bit nicely
Doesn’t cost $1800 (InstallShield) would be nice :wink:

–
Kind regards, Dejan (MSN support: xxxxx@alfasp.com)
http://www.alfasp.com
File system audit, security and encryption kits.

5

Okay, I’ve been fooling around with Inno, and I’ve got it handling my
files and registry keys. Then I started looking for the services
section, and discovered there was none. How do you guys handle this? I
would assume it involves adding some registry keys and poking the
service manager?

Other than the services issue, it’s been pretty slick. I can use the
add-ons to generate a line of the script with reasonable defaults, and
then look at the help and figure out what it’s doing and what needs to
be changed. Thanks for the good suggestion!

Thanks,

~Eric

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Dejan Maksimovic
Sent: Friday, August 01, 2008 12:13 PM
To: Windows File Systems Devs Interest List
Subject: Re: [ntfsd] Favorite installer for minifilters

+1. We’re using it for our setups for a long time now.
Though, it won’t install drivers directly… you still need to use
the INF files or an external installer (at least I did not find a way to
do it yet).

Doug wrote:

I’ll second Daniel’s vote for InnoSetup – a very nice piece of
software.
-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of
xxxxx@resplendence.com
Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2008 5:50 PM
To: Windows File Systems Devs Interest List
Subject: Re:[ntfsd] Favorite installer for minifilters

InnoSetup, it’s a gem, and for free:
http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php#features

Does anybody have a prefered installer that they use? Nice features
would be:

Handles installing drivers nicely
Handles 32/64 bit nicely
Doesn’t cost $1800 (InstallShield) would be nice :wink:

–
Kind regards, Dejan (MSN support: xxxxx@alfasp.com) http://www.alfasp.com
File system audit, security and encryption kits.

NTFSD is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule debugging and file system seminars (including our new
fs mini-filter seminar) visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

You are currently subscribed to ntfsd as: xxxxx@edsiohio.com To
unsubscribe send a blank email to xxxxx@lists.osr.com

6

Eric:

For the rest of us that are intrigued but haven’t actually pursued it, could
you give a few more insights:

  1. Does it handle driver installations? They can be, uhh, interesting.

  2. Can it check for prerequisites like FltMgr service or .NET Framework?

  3. Any idea if it would pass MS Logo certification? I thought that required
    MSI files - this doesn’t do that, does it?

Thanks,
Ken

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Eric Diven
Sent: Friday, August 01, 2008 2:56 PM
To: Windows File Systems Devs Interest List
Subject: RE: [ntfsd] Favorite installer for minifilters

Okay, I’ve been fooling around with Inno, and I’ve got it handling my
files and registry keys. Then I started looking for the services
section, and discovered there was none. How do you guys handle this? I
would assume it involves adding some registry keys and poking the
service manager?

Other than the services issue, it’s been pretty slick. I can use the
add-ons to generate a line of the script with reasonable defaults, and
then look at the help and figure out what it’s doing and what needs to
be changed. Thanks for the good suggestion!

Thanks,

~Eric

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Dejan Maksimovic
Sent: Friday, August 01, 2008 12:13 PM
To: Windows File Systems Devs Interest List
Subject: Re: [ntfsd] Favorite installer for minifilters

+1. We’re using it for our setups for a long time now.
Though, it won’t install drivers directly… you still need to use
the INF files or an external installer (at least I did not find a way to
do it yet).

Doug wrote:

I’ll second Daniel’s vote for InnoSetup – a very nice piece of
software.
-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of
xxxxx@resplendence.com
Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2008 5:50 PM
To: Windows File Systems Devs Interest List
Subject: Re:[ntfsd] Favorite installer for minifilters

InnoSetup, it’s a gem, and for free:
http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php#features

Does anybody have a prefered installer that they use? Nice features
would be:

Handles installing drivers nicely
Handles 32/64 bit nicely
Doesn’t cost $1800 (InstallShield) would be nice :wink:

–
Kind regards, Dejan (MSN support: xxxxx@alfasp.com) http://www.alfasp.com
File system audit, security and encryption kits.

NTFSD is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule debugging and file system seminars (including our new
fs mini-filter seminar) visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

You are currently subscribed to ntfsd as: xxxxx@edsiohio.com To
unsubscribe send a blank email to xxxxx@lists.osr.com

NTFSD is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule debugging and file system seminars
(including our new fs mini-filter seminar) visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

You are currently subscribed to ntfsd as: unknown lmsubst tag argument: ‘’
To unsubscribe send a blank email to xxxxx@lists.osr.com

7

Inline:

For the rest of us that are intrigued but haven’t actually pursued it,
could you give a few more insights:

  1. Does it handle driver installations? They can be, uhh, interesting.

Per Dejan, you still have to use inf files. Which is what we were doing
before, except we couldn’t get our old installer to do the driver
install before starting the service, which was causing the service to
fail, which was causing the installer to fail, which makes us look like
enormous morons.

  1. Can it check for prerequisites like FltMgr service or .NET
    Framework?

You can give it a minimum version and service pack level. That should
be good enough for FltMgr, right? We don’t have any .NET, so I haven’t
looked real far into this. In the documenation about “unsafe files”
(c’mon, who wouldn’t click on that out of curiosity?), it says you can’t
install or update the .NET framework. This seems to indicate that you
can check via a registry key:
http://www.blackhillsoftware.com/blog/2006/06/26/using-innosetup-with-th
e-dotnet-framework/

  1. Any idea if it would pass MS Logo certification? I thought that
    required MSI files - this doesn’t do that, does it?

Well balls. Thanks for bringing that to my attention. You are correct
according to here:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/e/4/8e4c929d-679a-4238-8c21-2dc
c8ed1f35c/Windows%20Vista%20Software%20Logo%20Spec%201.1.doc

Anybody want to weigh in on these?

Thanks,

~Eric

8

“Ken Cross” wrote in message news:xxxxx@ntfsd…
> Eric:
>
> For the rest of us that are intrigued but haven’t actually pursued it,
> could
> you give a few more insights:
>
> 1. Does it handle driver installations? They can be, uhh, interesting.

It comes with a full fledged compiler which allows you to do virtually
anything… Also there are add-on libraries available for installing services
and drivers. But I have never made use of them, I always install drivers
after setup, this allows my software to be run from any location without
prior installation.

> 2. Can it check for prerequisites like FltMgr service or .NET Framework?
>
It allows you to check service pack levels and detailed OS info. If that’s
not enough you can query any registry value or call any API or DLL to find
out.

> 3. Any idea if it would pass MS Logo certification? I thought that
> required
> MSI files - this doesn’t do that, does it?
>

Sorry, didn’t think about that. I suppose the author didn’t see the merit of
running a lot of DCOM crap and having another hundred GUIDs added to the
registry, he mentions that he has no plans whatsoever to support Windows
Installer. The good thing about this software is that it supports any
Windows version and archtecture out there and its always ahead of its time.
It’s a fast reliable no-nonsense installer . If Windows Installer is
required for logo certification, then that’s really sad, but I suppose it
doesn’t weigh up to the other pains you then have to go through as well.

//Daniel

9

xxxxx@resplendence.com wrote:

Inno is absolutely great. Regarding the logo requirements for an MSI
package, I’ve actually seen logo’ed software
that was distributed in an MSI, and on run it would extract the
setup.exe to a temp location and shell it open.

Heck of a lot easier than learning how to use WIX in full; kinda defeats
the purpose of the requirement but from what I’ve
read and seen - it’ll pass. Microsoft never said you couldn’t use
executable ‘setup helpers’ inside your msi…

Matt

Sorry, didn’t think about that. I suppose the author didn’t see the
merit of running a lot of DCOM crap and having another hundred GUIDs
added to the registry, he mentions that he has no plans whatsoever to
support Windows Installer. The good thing about this software is that
it supports any Windows version and archtecture out there and its
always ahead of its time. It’s a fast reliable no-nonsense installer .
If Windows Installer is required for logo certification, then that’s
really sad, but I suppose it doesn’t weigh up to the other pains you
then have to go through as well.

//Daniel