Setup is taking forever

[Ton_B]

Hi,

I've created a Setup which wil install 74 files (all smaller than 700kb)
and makes about 48 registry-key changes.

But my setup is taking forever to complete.
I've got the feeling that the progress dialog is not always showing exactly what the setup is doing.
The progress begins with "Calculating required disk space" which is on itself taking a very long time! (the progressbar is not showing anything.)
Then, it says it is validating the install, and now the progressbar is doing something, but is also taking a a long time to complete.
After the validation, it says it is going to install my setup ($TITLE$) and begins with saying something about Services, ODBC, and other stuff my setup is not using !!!!
Now the setup seems it went into it's highes gear, but suddenly "hangs" saying: "Deleting applications" (i've translated this myself, because my setup is running in dutch)
After this, finally the installation of the files begins because i see them coming by in the "details" and the progress bar is moving.

But my setup is taking up to 3 minutes to complete!!!
Is there a way to speed up the installation ?

[MichaelNesmith]

Nope, this is already as fast as it will get. Windows Installer has to run through these steps every time, and InstallAware in fact optimizes this for you, so you have something which is a lot faster than the other alternatives (or native MSI); however there will still be an overhead.

Try to test on a clean machine - it should go a lot faster there. Hopefully that makes you feel a little better.

[Ton_B]

Hi Michael.

After your answer (nov. 15th) we had accepted the installation would take this long.
But after many of our customers had complained we had to find a way to make the installation go faster.
So I've created a simple setup, using the IA wizard and only added the files. So no personalized scripts etc.

Running this setup it took less than 1 minute to complete, vs. the 3 minutes of my own setup.
So, we concluded something was wrong in my original script.
The next step I took was adding some persionalized scripts to it, compile and test it. Add some more code, compile and test again .... and so on.
Strangly enought the setup still kept below the 1 minute to complete.
Because our script is very big, it took me 1,5 days to add all the special codes to the new setup.
And still the setup stayed below 1 minute.
But when I added the last line of code : $LOGGED$ the setup time exploded from below 1 minute up to 3,5 minutes !!!

So that had to be the problem.
So I commented that line in the original code and the setup finished in 1 minute and 12 seconds !

Unfortuanally, you did not suggest me this option, what makes me a bit sad.
Of cource I had to read the help file better, but because it is only explained in the chapter "Setup Command Line Parameters" I probbaly would not had found it! (Logging is always on! and we do not pass it through a commandline parameter.)
Maybe if you had asked me if I had an logged installation or this behavour would be explained better in the help files, this problem would not had to have this kind of impact (1,5 days !!)

So I think it would also be better if the line : "Be aware that logging significantly decreases the runtime speeds of an installation."
be added to the helpfile topic where the Logged installs are explained:
"Setup Command Line Parameters" (this is wher you only can find it)
"Logged execution"
"Pre-Defined Variables"
and
"(Un)Install MSI Setup"

[MichaelNesmith]

How could I possibly have known you were logging? It could have been anything for all I know!