StevenHook
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How do I speed up my installation
Hi,
As in the previous question, our software creates it's own installation files, which we used to pack into a self extracting EXE.
The nice things about the EXE is that it's compressed, so we can fit more onto the disk, and it installs a lot faster (I think isn't much faster to read the 1 big file off the CD than the thousands of tiny files)
The bad thing is that with Vista's UAC, it seems (I think) to want to read the whole file into RAM and check it or something before actually launching it - it can take a very long time on some people's PCs.
We also have the problem that if we install direct off the PC, the files are all read only.
Any further advice would be great.
Thanks
Steven
As in the previous question, our software creates it's own installation files, which we used to pack into a self extracting EXE.
The nice things about the EXE is that it's compressed, so we can fit more onto the disk, and it installs a lot faster (I think isn't much faster to read the 1 big file off the CD than the thousands of tiny files)
The bad thing is that with Vista's UAC, it seems (I think) to want to read the whole file into RAM and check it or something before actually launching it - it can take a very long time on some people's PCs.
We also have the problem that if we install direct off the PC, the files are all read only.
Any further advice would be great.
Thanks
Steven
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ASKER
Installshield also looks like it's way out of our price range, and as the software already has an installation / uninstallation procedure built in, all we would use it for is to get the files off he CD faster before the installation starts.
I do find it amusing tho that it's faster to copy all 700MB off the CD, and then let the installer copy them from a temporary location to the final destination than just to let the installer install them off the CD.
Winzip self extractor worked great - fast and almost professional looking - except for those few PCs (vista mostly) where if you tried to launch the self extractor off the disk it would just hang / not run at all - in these cases we would have to copy the 690MB exe off the CD to their computer, run it and then delete it.
Regards
Steven.
PS. The software is free to use, we charge minimal fees for packaging and distribution (about $3)
Our profit comes from people ordering the things they create using the software, So if they have trouble installing, or it takes long, we will probably lose the customer permanently.
I do find it amusing tho that it's faster to copy all 700MB off the CD, and then let the installer copy them from a temporary location to the final destination than just to let the installer install them off the CD.
Winzip self extractor worked great - fast and almost professional looking - except for those few PCs (vista mostly) where if you tried to launch the self extractor off the disk it would just hang / not run at all - in these cases we would have to copy the 690MB exe off the CD to their computer, run it and then delete it.
Regards
Steven.
PS. The software is free to use, we charge minimal fees for packaging and distribution (about $3)
Our profit comes from people ordering the things they create using the software, So if they have trouble installing, or it takes long, we will probably lose the customer permanently.
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ASKER
:) I'll give that a bash. It also makes professional looking self extracting EXEs?
Thanks for the tip...
Thanks for the tip...
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ASKER
Ok, I made a test compilation self extracting EXE winrar file.
Perhaps this is a question for another topic. But how do I make winrar run the setup file after extracting?
Perhaps this is a question for another topic. But how do I make winrar run the setup file after extracting?
ASKER
no worries I eventually found it :)
ASKER
Thanks for the advice
Either way, to compress 690 MB of files, then expand them from CD to the hard disk, it is simply going to take a long time. Can't you install a "STUB" of the program that then reads data off the CD? This will speed up installation significantly.
ASKER
what's a "stub"?
As I say, extracting / expanding to a temporary folder and installing from there is much quicker than installing the uncompressed files direct off he CD.
As I say, extracting / expanding to a temporary folder and installing from there is much quicker than installing the uncompressed files direct off he CD.
> expanding to a temporary folder and installing from there is much quicker than installing the uncompressed files direct off he CD.
Probably because with many files to copy off the cd, the drive head needs to move to the track with the directory for every file. One might think that this should be eliminated by caching, but probably for some reason it's not. With the CD, it's much slower than the same with hard drive.
Probably because with many files to copy off the cd, the drive head needs to move to the track with the directory for every file. One might think that this should be eliminated by caching, but probably for some reason it's not. With the CD, it's much slower than the same with hard drive.
ASKER
I guess there's no way to make the CD image in an optimised file order.
The only optimization I know is Microsoft utility CDImage that replaces duplicate files by their references, so you can fit more than CD capacilty. http://unattended.msfn.org/unattended.xp/view/web/15/
ASKER
A flash disk install is a nice idea, but it's just far too costly to see as a viable solution, we distribute hundreds of thousands of CDs a year.