HUGE Setup.exe

[Roger Garrett]

I've built an installation using Installshield Express 11.5 The resultant setup.exe is huge, 8.9 megabytes. I tried to figure out why it is so big. I took the drastic approach of actually eliminating ALL of my own files in the installation. The setup.exe is still 5.2 Megabytes. That means that Installshield itself occupies 5.2 megabytes, and even if all I'm installing is a single-byte file, the setup.exe will still be 5.2 megabytes. Yikes.

I created another installation using a very old version of Installshield, version 2. That results in a setup.exe file of just 3.7 megabytes, and that includes all of my application and other files. So a version 2 setup.exe is 3.7 megabytes (which is reasonable) but version 11.5's resultant setup.exe (for the exact same set of my files) is 8.9 megabytes. Way too big!

It appears that Installshield 11.5 includes two files, instmsia.exe and instmsiw.exe, which together comprise nearly 3.5 megabytes.

Do I really need these files?

instmsia.exe appears to be the "Windows installer", but shouldn't the target machine already have that program? Is there a way to tell Installshield to NOT include that file in the setup.exe?

instmsiW.exe appears to be a "web installer". But I'm not doing a web installation. Is there a way I can make it so that it does NOT include the web installer in the setup.exe?

Roger Garrett

[DebbieL]

Yes, you can exclude these from your project. In the Build Your Releases view, select the type of release that you are building (e.g., SingleImage). Set the Include MSI Engine(s) setting to None.

However, you may not want to exclude them from your installation project. Are you creating any OS requirements for your product? For example, does your product require at least Windows XP, for example?

Here's a little background on why I'm asking:

Different versions of Windows Installer have been released with different versions of Windows. To see which version was released with which version of Windows, see Released Versions of Windows Installer (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/msi/setup/released_versions_of_windows_installer.asp) on the MSDN Web site.

Each new release of Windows Installer has had various improvements (for details, see What's New in Windows Installer (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/msi/setup/released_versions_of_windows_installer.asp)), so if your installation attempts to do something that is not supported by the Windows Installer version that is present on the target system, unexpected results may occur, and your installation may not behave as you intended.

Some versions of Windows do not support some versions of Windows Installer. Here's a table that shows the minimum OS requirements for each version of Windows Installer:


Windows Installer 1.1: Requires Windows 95 or later
Windows Installer 1.2: Requires Windows 95 or later
Windows Installer 2.0: Requires Windows 95 or later
Windows Installer 3.0: Requires Windows 2000 SP3 or later, Windows Server 2003
Windows Installer 3.1: Requires Windows 2000 SP3 or later, Windows Server 2003

If someone has an old version of Windows, it is possible that the installation of some product that they installed required a newer version of Windows Installer, and so maybe a newer version is available on their system. However, it is also possible that they still have the older version of Windows Installer on their system.

Debbie Landers
Macrovision Corporation

[Roger Garrett]

Thank you. It's now down to a much more manageable 4.4Mb.

- Roger Garrett