Repackaging an existing installation

This tutorial will guide you in creating a project based on capturing an existing installation.

Lets suppose you have an older legacy installation package that does not use the industry standard Windows Installer technology. If you want to bring this installation up to date and benefit from the advantages of the latest Windows technologies you can easily convert your setup to a new Advanced Installer project.

As an example we shall repackage the 7-zip File Manager into a MSI.

1. Starting a "Repackage Installation" project
2. Choose to start a new installation capture.
3. Collect Information
4. System Snapshots
5. Customize Settings
6. Create installation profile
7. Installation Capture
8. Package Installation
9. Finish
10. Import results
11. Customize Project
12. Build Project

Starting a "Repackage Installation" project

If Advanced Installer is not currently running, launch it by double-clicking a desktop icon or selecting it from the "Start" menu. When the application starts, you will see a dialog where you can choose "Repackage Installation" project type.

The Repackager Wizard will be launched assisting you to configure the new installation capture.

Choose to start a new installation capture.

Select the option to "Start a new installation capture"

Before you continue it is important that you have administrator privileges. On Windows Vista, after you click [ Next ] you will see an UAC elevation prompt dialog asking for your permission to continue with full administrator privileges.

Collect Information

In this dialog select the location of the setup that you want to repackage and specify other product information. By default all information in this dialog is extracted from the installation package, if available. All fields, except the package command line are mandatory. Select the location of 7-zip setup package.

System Snapshots

An installation capture is done by comparing system snapshots taken before and after the package installation. You can use an existing saved system snapshot as a starting point for the capture.

Customize Settings

Select the output path for the installation capture files, and customize the capture profiles.

Next we shall create a new installation capture profile that is best suited for our needs. Click on the Create new installation capture profile link.

Create installation profile

We created a new profile "7-zip Profile", which we have tweaked to search for system changes only in the "ProgramFiles" folder and in the "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE" registry hive, as the setup package installs per machine. All the other settings remained as in the "Default" profile.

We set this newly created profile as current. The profile that is "current" is that one that will be used during the system scan unless specified otherwise at the beginning of the installation capture.

Installation Capture

Press [ Next ] to start the installation capture. Before you proceed make sure that you close all unnecessary running applications in order to avoid "false positive" capture results from active file and registry system access.

Package Installation

During this process your setup file will be launched with the command line you specified in the "Collect Information" page. Complete the installation as you would normally do.

After the installation has completed, the system will be scanned again for changes.

Finish

When the installation capture completes you can view a summary report indicating the system changes detected during package installation.

Import results

Press [ Finish ] button to import the installation capture results into a new Advanced Installer project.

Customize Project

After importing the installation capture results you should review the Advanced Installer project and adjust it to your new package deployment needs.

Build Project

Build and run the project to test it.

All the necessary files and resources for the project have been automatically imported to your selected output folder, so your new project will not have any dependencies to the installation you have just captured.