Installer extract location

[janisito]

Hi!

By default, the installer extract location is: [AppDataFolder][|Manufacturer]\[|ProductName] [|ProductVersion]\install

This works fine in most cases. However, I recently ran into an issue where a file wasn't found after pressing the install button. It had something to do with the user profile.

Wrong Path.png (63.86 KiB) Viewed 5019 times

If I were to change the extract location what path would you recommend using instead?`

Thanks,

Regards
Jan

[janisito]

I checked with my friend ChatGPT, and this is what it says:

I’d recommend switching to using the local app data folder. In other words, instead of extracting to:

  [AppDataFolder][|Manufacturer][|ProductName] [|ProductVersion]\install

you could use:

  [LocalAppDataFolder][|Manufacturer][|ProductName] [|ProductVersion]\install

The reason for this is that the [LocalAppDataFolder] property points to the non‐roaming part of the profile (typically something like C:\Users\username\AppData\Local), which is generally more stable and less prone to issues—especially in scenarios where profile loading or redirection might interfere with file access. This change should help resolve problems related to file not being found due to user profile issues.

What do you think?

[Catalin]

Hello Jan,

The LocalAppData can indeed be a good second option.

Just like you mentioned, here would be the difference between the two:

%AppData% is for a roamed persistent user settings
%LocalAppData% is for non-roamed machine-specific settings or other discardable kind of data

Fairly speaking, you can choose to extract the setup in any folder, we simply selected %appdata% due to that being the most at hand.

Here is an article that delves deeper into the subject: AppData | LocalAppData | ProgramData Explanations, Differences, Use Cases

Best regards,
Catalin

[janisito]

Thank you!

[Catalin]

You are always welcome, Jan!

Best regards,
Catalin