making an installer?

[Rh0ads]

You know when you download programs off the internet you run an installation program that extracts all the files and saves 'em to your hard drive. Is it possible to make something like that in VB? How would you go about doing that?

-George

[Cander]

no you cant make an installer with VB. You would have to install the installer since it would require the VB runtime..and that is juts dumb.

[Gaming_World]

It is possible.

The easiest way (although not using VB for the installer), is to have winzip create an exe. This would auto-extract all the files.

Another easy way is to use the package & deployment wizard (included with VB).

You could also write your own program (you would need to have the vb runtimes in the programs folder or in the system folder). You would either have to reasearch ways to compress the files, not compress the files, or search the web for predisgined compressing rotuines. Then, use the rotines to compress the files togather, and include them with the exe. This would create a completely custom installer (and would require a lot of work).

[Cander]

compressing/decomprssing the files is not the issue and you seasily add files to a cab file. The issue is you would have to have all the vb runtime stuff installed ebfore someone could use the setup.exe program you make...just doesnt make sense to do that..install an installer so that someone can install your app..

[Gaming_World]

You can also have the files located in the same folder as the installer (I have done this before with sucess).

[Gaming_World]

Or as I said, you could also ue the package and deployment wizard (which creates a VB-based installer with the runtimes taken care of by microsoft). The wizard's file will work on any computer running win 95+/nt 4+, aslong as it is a P1 75MHZ. It wouldn't need the runtimes to work.

[Cander]

Myth:
Package & Deployment Wizard is a Vb based installer.

That a big no no. Package And Deployment Wizard is just a wizard that creates a cab file with required files and the setup.lst file. The actual setup.exe file is a precompiled exe written in c

[Gaming_World]

Then how come you can modify the look of the installer though vb?

[007shahid]

by modifying the setup1 project and setup.lst file.
But make a duplicate of it first

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VB98\Wizards\PDWizard\Setup1\Setup1.vbp"

[Gaming_World]

You must have missed the Come in my last post:

Then how come you can modify the look of the installer though vb?

[007shahid]

oops

[Gaming_World]

lol, a minor mis-read.