Floppy Disk Distributions

Although it is not directly supported, you can distribute your release via floppy disk by using the Custom release type. The challenges that arise when you try to build your release on floppy disks are described below:

Disk Space—Although Microsoft ships the Windows Installer service with Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows Me, all other operating systems to date do not ship with this service. Therefore, the Windows Installer service (Windows Installer engine) must be installed before your installation can run. There are two versions of this installation—one for Windows NT 4.0 and one for Windows 9x. Each of these installations requires more than 1.4 MB of disk space. Because of these file size requirements, it is difficult to distribute your installation program on a floppy disk if you need to distribute the Windows Installer engine as well.

Disk Spanning—The .msi file that is created by InstallShield and that interacts with the Windows Installer service cannot be spanned across multiple disks. In addition, it must reside on the first disk of your installation. Therefore, if you want to include all of your files in one compressed .msi file, it might not fit on one floppy disk. However, if your files can remain uncompressed, they can be included on successive disks of the installation.