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daron

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compression or ?

Hi,
  I have created a setup installation using VB package and deployment utility.  My program has quite a few files I have to add to the install(including 15-20 excel files, image files,...,etc).  The install works fine but the number of files causes the install to be painfully slow.  Is there a way I can compress the setup or something in order to speed the install process?    
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Éric Moreau
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Are these files big?

Are you running your installation from a file server? If so copy them locally before starting the setup.
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daron

ASKER

the helper files are with the executable and not from a remote location.  The size of the extra files is about 8mb.  While this is not huge, it causes quite a long process on any computer I install it to. These files are located within the .cab file along with the regular files needed for setup.
Unforunately, the files are already compressed inside the CAB, and they have to be uncompressed as they are extracted. With faster computers these days, the main overhead is per file, not the size of file, particularaly with many small ones such as this. Unless you can reduce the number of files, there's not much to be done about it, sorry.
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would it be possible to add some type of self extractor that would be executed somehow during setup? I think this could possibly be faster.
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I have thought about this some more, and I don't think it is a compression problem, but, rather an extraction problem(the size is fine, but the speed is slow). It may be a .bat file that will execute the files more quickly but I'm not familiar with the process.
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gcs001
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This looks good.  I will give this a try.  Once I've created the .bat file, what call instantiates it in the setup program?
You would have to modify the setup package VB project to call this bat file.
The easiest would be to run it manually - so the installation may be a 2-part process, one installing using the setup.exe that the PDW creates and the next running the bat file.
You can then try to include most of the files in the .bat file rather than in the setup .CAB file.
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This sounds good.  Thanks a million.