Want to create simple installers for Windows, for free (built-in to Windows)?
Note: This blog post is from 2008. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.If you have need to create a simplified installer (on Windows, for Windows), it turns out there's a built-in feature in Windows, called IEXPRESS, that does this for you.
It lets you package a set of files into an EXE which when run will show customized text prompts at the start and end, let the user pick the directory into which to extract, run a selected command at the start or end, and even optionally show a license they must agree to.
It turns out it's a feature that was implemented as part of the IE 6 Administration Kit (thus the IE part of the IExpress name), but I just tried it on Vista (with only IE 7 installed) and it worked just fine. Pretty nifty.
For more, see this blog entry at the awesome "Confessions of a Freeware Junkie" site. He also links there to a MS page that discusses the tool in more detail.
