Error reading setup initialization file: InstallShield Problem

Yesterday I had a support mail from a user who was unable to install on Windows Vista Home Premium. I was rather worried about the report since we'd just release SliQ 1.5.1 the evening before and I always get a bit nervous when we make a new software release.

The error the user was getting was "Error reading setup initialization file". Googling for info I found information saying that the error was sometimes reported if the InstallShield package had been corrupted. I tried downloading the lastest installer from SliQTools and tested it successfully on Vista and XP machines here in the office so I knew the live release wasn't corrupt. More research on Google indicated that the problem sometimes occurred if the installer took a long time to download -it was taking over 20 minutes on the user's Vista machine. Luckily the user was very technically aware and was very helpful in trying out different things.

I asked the user to download the installer to a Windows XP machine. This time the download took only 5 minutes over the same office broadband connection as with the Vista machine. The installation ran perfectly. The user then copied the installer on a flash drive and installed correctly on the original Vista machine. That evening the user download and installed correctly on his home Vista machine.

I find it hard to believe but the finger is pointing at the installer package being corrupted during the download process. There's not a lot I can do about people's broadband connection but I may have to think up some strategies for reducing the size of the download.

Installshield 11.5 and .Net 2.0 runtime install

I'm doing a new installer for a new software package and it's 6 months since I last used Installshield. I find it pretty difficult finding my way around Installshield so I'm making a blog post about what I had to do to get .Net 2.0 installed as well as the main package.

Last time I did an installer I needed to install the .Net 2.0 runtime prior to the main package. I had to a fair bit of research using Google to find the info I needed. This time around I ended up doing the same searching so I'm making a note in this blog for future reference.

Using InstallShield 11.5 ...

1. You have to run the Release Wizard and create a new Product Configuration to include .Net 2.0. The wizard has an option to include .Net 2.0 that appears nowhere else in InstallShield.
2. In the Installation Designer, click on the Media/ Releases node and then, in the middle panel, click on the release to configure more .Net install options. Then ...
3. In the Command Line to dotnetfx.exe option, put " /q:a /c:\"install /qb\"". This forces a quiet install of the runtime.
4. Set Show full user interface when installing .Net framework to Yes.
5. Set display .Net Option dialog to No so the user is not given the option to skip installing .Net 2.0.
6. Set Delay .Net Reboot to Yes.

Then save everything and build the installation. Now, if the setup.exe is executed on a machine that doesn't have .Net 2.0, the installer will make sure the runtime is installed on the user's machine.