In April 2025, version 6.0.0 of WiX Toolset introduced the Open Source Maintenance Fee (OSMF), and since then, IT professionals have been reviewing and reassessing how they build and maintain their installers, as well as how they budget for their infrastructure.

Understanding how actions are sequenced when building or customizing Windows Installer (MSI) packages is essential.

What version of Windows do I have? This is a far more common question than we’d think. Checking the OS version is important in software packaging and deployment, especially in the modern world. Each new OS version may include new functionality that third-party software developers can use. In cases like this, it is recommended to first check the actual OS version before installing or updating the software.

Visual Studio is a complete development environment for writing, testing, and deploying applications across different platforms. Beyond coding, it also supports creating MSI installers directly within the IDE.

One of the greatest things about software packaging is the variety of choices available to you to achieve your objectives. However, having too many alternatives to choose from can make it challenging to pick the best one for your requirements.

Creating installer packages sometimes requires presenting item lists in custom dialogs, where data must line up cleanly rather than drift into uneven text blocks. Advanced Installer offers controls such as ComboBox, ListBox, and CheckListView. However, to correctly align columns in these controls, there are some steps you should be aware of.

Java applications are compiled into JAR files, which need the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) to run. However, JAR files cannot be executed as standalone files.

The Windows Installer service is a standard in the industry when it comes to software packages, but it doesn’t mean it’s not prone to errors.

Customizing the App Installer UI used to require manually editing an XML file and adding it to your MSIX application. With Advanced Installer, however, you can do the customization directly from its graphical user interface, no XML editing is required.

The Windows services are apps that run in the background of the Windows operating system without direct user interaction. But how do you build and install a .NET-based service?

The operating system manages Windows Services, the background processes that can run continuously without user interaction.

Environmental variables, as their name implies, are variables that specify the environment in which a program runs.

In this article, we will learn what “Log on as a Service" is, when and where to use it, and how to enable it.

In a previous blog article, we explored Suite Installer, a new feature in Advanced Installer available starting with version 23.0. We discussed how to create Suite Installer applications, discovered the wide range of visual customization options for each bundled application, and presented some practical use cases.

Launching your application is such an exciting milestone, but soon you realize that distributing an executable means more than simply sharing it. I cannot stress enough how important it is to make sure your users have a smooth experience from installation to updates, even more so if your users are redeploying your software within a complex IT environment.

We’re excited to introduce a new, powerful addition to Advanced Installer: the Suite Installer feature.

When it comes to building software installers, Inno Setup stands out for its simplicity. It is a lightweight, script-driven installer framework that software vendors and internal IT teams widely adopt.

Windows Services are long-running background applications that operate autonomously, without user interaction.

Windows Services are applications that run in the background without displaying any user interface. They are a great option for performing tasks without disrupting the user’s workflow on the machine.

The application packaging, deployment, and virtualization landscape is constantly evolving.