InstallAware

Our Microsoft rep recommended that I add our licensing information into our setup file when I ran setup / admin. I did that.

We found InstallAware as a product as a way to compress our downloads and as a way to give us some scripting capability.

However, when I run a wizard and open the directory containing the setup.exe and files for Office 2007, the installable exe that installaware produces effectively only installs the Microsoft setup.exe, there are some registry related errors as Installaware runs, and the Installaware generated setup from this process is useless.

I think I've done something wrong.

However, the only idea I have for moving ahead with this is to add the microsoft generated setup.exe and call it as an external program from Installaware.

I hope to get some advice on this. I'll be trying out what I just explained from now, and will watch my email.

Thanks in advance

(we're not currently a customer, but this won't affect our purchase, I believe)

Your description is not clear...

sorry

1) microsoft recommended that we run setup / admin of office 2007 and enter the licensing keys. They recommended that we place setup.exe, all office2007 directories, and the licensing bits on a file share for all our users to execute. All users will have the same license.

2) I generated an installaware setup.exe by running InstallAware Studio Admin, creating a new project from the MSI/MSM import wizard, and then generated a new setup.exe in the release folder.

3) I moved this Installaware-generated setup.exe to a test Visa pc and executed it. It ran for about 4 minutes, and toward the end generated error messages related to the registry. Finally it seemed to stop - when I clicked on Start/Programs, under Microsoft Office 2007, the only program was "Setup". I believe that InstallAware installed the setup.exe from Microsoft, rather than Office 2007.

4) In this instance, I think that perhaps I will forego any of InstallAware's installation capability, and use it only as a nice way to distribute and compress our files, and then execute the Microsoft setup.exe as an external program from the installaware script.

5) I thought I would ask here on the forums if there were any other way to generate an installable. I do need to distribute the licensing bits which I believe are in an MSP file generated by the microsoft setup / admin process.

Thanks in advance.

maybe I should have clarified further that I used all the microsoft generated setup files and directories as the input to the installaware wizard-generated project.

It may be that InstallAware is simply not made for the purpose I am attempting.

I have a microsoft generated setup.exe (bootstrapper), and then about 15 directories with a bunch of cab, msi, and various other files.

I guess I just assumed the wizard was reverse engineering all that stuff, and that seems to not be the case. A lot of cab's etc were pulled in when I ran the wizard (500 meg), but it seems I was assuming something about the product different than what it actually delivers.

I woudn't mind if I could figure out how to add all the folders to a blank project and then just call the microsoft bootstrapper (setup.exe), but I can't figure out how to do that without adding each msi file sepearately, and then there are many, many xml, dll and other files that surely play an important role in office 2007, and I have no way to take all that stuff apart and then some how put it back together. Is there no bulk add of files? or add of directories to an installaware project?

You may use either the PackageAware tool or the Database Import Wizard for this purpose, but your mileage may vary. This is because Office setup has its own bootstrapper which does some stuff behind the scenes. Office setup is also very complex and some items may get lost in translation.

If you were able to successfully create an admin point install, the ideal way of installing that from InstallAware would be by using the (Un)Install MSI Setup command. You would add Office installer files to your setup as a temp resource using the File Bag command and then natively run the Office installer MSI using (Un)Install MSI Setup. This will natively run Office installation and will always work exactly as constructed by Microsoft. The nice thing is, no separate installer window will show - your own setup progress window will natively capture and display all installation progress!

If you find out that you still need to use the Office bootstrapper instead of the MSI, use Run Program instead. The drawback of this method is that native progress cannot be captured, unfortunately.

Also read our blog - it contains examples of this stuff.