Including the Windows Installer Engine with a Project

Although Windows Installer is built into Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows XP, and Windows Vista, other Windows platforms require that the Windows Installer be installed before any Windows Installer installations can run on those systems. In addition, your installation may depend on certain functionality that is available in only the latest versions of Windows Installer. InstallShield gives you the option of including with your installation a Windows Installer redistributable in a self-extracting executable file called Setup.exe.

For a list of the minimum operating system requirements for each version of Windows Installer, see Target System Requirements. For a list of which versions of Windows Installer were released with which versions of Windows, see Released Versions of Windows Installer in the Windows Installer Help Library.

Windows Installer Distribution

If you choose to compress all of your application files into one package, Setup.exe contains your installation package along with a copy of Windows Installer.

Otherwise, your release folders contain Setup.exe, your application and installation files, the Windows Installer files, and a file called Setup.ini.

Including Setup.exe with Your Installation Package

By default, InstallShield creates Setup.exe along with your installation package.

On the Setup.exe tab in the Releases view, you can control whether you want to create Setup.exe and which platforms you want to distribute the Windows Installer service to. You can also specify where the Windows Installer engine should be located: on the source media, compresed into the Setup.exe file, or downloaded from the Web. Changing any of these settings in the Releases view applies to only the current release.

Overview of the Installation Process

First, Setup.exe determines if Windows Installer is already installed on the target system. If Windows Installer is found on the target system, it launches your installation package. If Windows Installer is not installed, or a more recent version needs to be installed, Setup.exe installs Windows Installer and then launches your installation package. Note that the system may need to be restarted for Windows Installer to be updated.