Alternative to AdminStudio/Wise

If you require software (re)packaging Advanced Installer Architect edition is the tool you need. It contains support to edit and create MSI and MST packages following the latest standards from Microsoft. You can also convert EXE to MSI using our powerful repackager that can run on your machine directly or in a VMware/Hyper-V virtual machine. Import MSI or MSM packages to completely re-write them in Advanced Installer is wizard-based, so you easily migrate any package you have.

AppV is the leading virtualization technology, Advanced Installer allows you to create AppV 4.5 and 5.x packages, and also convert from AppV 4.5 to 5.x. Additional features are ThinApp virtualization support, SCCM deployment, MSI tables editor, and many others.

Editing MSI packages

Making changes to an MSI like adding a new property, changing a default value, or adding/removing a file/registry is very common. You don't want to repackage/import the entire setup package for these types of changes.

Edit MSI

If you were to do modifications with Orca, you would need to keep track of referenced tables; this could lead very quickly to corrupted MSI packages. With our MSI QuickEditor, you can simply add and remove new resources, using the power of our GUI, you don't have to keep track of MSI tables manually, this is done by Advanced Installer. And if you want to edit the MSI tables directly, we support that too, from the Table Editor page.

Creating and editing MST packages

The MSI QuickEditor is very good at making changes directly on the original package, but sometimes you cannot overwrite the MSI package, as it would break the vendor EULA. For this, we extended our MSI QuickEditor allowing you to save your changes as an MST(transform) file, all you have to do is to select "Save as" and change the output package type to MST.

Edit MST

If you want to include new changes in an MST, or maybe want to modify one created by a colleague, all you have to do is double-click the MST package, and our editor will be launched automatically, then select the base MSI on which the MST will be applied and start making your changes.

Editing the contents of an MSI package is now as easy as adding/removing files in Windows Explorer folders, or managing registry entries from the Registry Editor. The MSI QuickEditor is improved with each new release based on the feedback received from our users, making it more powerful and easy to use.

Repackaging

Vendors don't always provide an MSI installer, so if you want to deploy the application through Active Directory/GPO, you will need to convert it to an MSI. Of course, the easy way would be to create an MSI wrapper installer over the EXE installer, but maybe you also need to make changes in the installation package, so you require low-level access. The best way to do that is to repackage the installation, converting it into an MSI installer, using our Repackager. Our latest features include repackaging installations in VMware and Hyper-V virtual machines, from your development machine, without installing the repackager in the VM. This is a considerable improvement, increasing repackaging speed and the result accuracy, allowing you to create cleaner setup projects in no time.

Repackager

To help you even more to create a cleaner setup package we've built a brand new method of defining filters on the fly, by running a scan of the entire machine without actually repackaging an application. Using filters, you can directly add new resources to ignore directly from the setup project generated by the Repackager.

AppV package creation and conversion

Advanced Installer offers full support for creating AppV packages, also for importing and converting older packages to AppV 5.x.

To create a new AppV package, launch Advanced Installer and select the "AppV Package" project type. The wizard will guide you step by step.

AppV 5.x configuration

For converting an older package to AppV 5.x, you start by going to the "Virtualization" section and selecting Import AppV. Our wizard will give you options to create both AppV 4.5 and AppV 5.x packages.

Editing directly MSI tables

Our MSI/MST editor has a powerful GUI that easily allows you to edit the most commons areas from the setup package. However, there are cases when you need raw access to the MSI tables, as in Orca, for this we created the Table Editor. Using this feature you can easily modify existent tables from the package, but also add and remove tables. The GUI helps track changes made directly to the table using colors to mark the edited tables and rows.

MSI Table Editor

Converting your work to an Advanced Installer project

Advanced Installer can also import an existent MSI or EXE and create a setup project from it. Afterward, you can build and modify it as you require.

Advanced Installer project

The first option is to import an MSI package; please note that small adjustments are required to be made after the import, depending on the complexity of the original package.

The second option is to repackage an EXE setup package. As explained above, you can repackage in a VMware or Hyper-V virtual machine or directly on a physical machine. We recommend the virtual machine option as it will give you much more accurate results.

The repackaging process captures only the changes made by the installation. If the original package has custom actions that create files/registry entries, you need to recreate those custom actions in the new package or use existent features from Advanced Installer to replace them, to make sure the same installation logic is followed, as in the original setup.

In both cases, the result is an Advanced Installer project which you can easily edit and modify as if you would have created the setup package from scratch.

Integration with System Center Configuration Manager

SCCM is the standard of application deployment. We have always been following the latest standards from Microsoft, therefore deploying your application from Advanced Installer directly to your SCCM servers should be as easy as possible. If you are using SCCM 2007 or 2012, you can now deploy your applications (MSI, MSP, EXE, and AppV) directly from Advanced Installer's GUI, or by creating a simple script that calls our deployment tool. Our SCCM wizard allows you to deploy packages directly from your packaging/development machine, as long as you have the credentials to connect to your SCCM server, thus skipping the step of remotely connecting to your server or even worse changing physical machines.

MSI Table Editor

Royalty Free

All of these powerful features together with the best development and support teams allow us to give you one of the top products on the market. We also made sure we have the best prices on the market.

Once you purchase a license for Advanced Installer, you can use it to create as many packages as you want. We do not charge you for the number of packages built/repackaged.