Poplar
14th June 2003 01:05 UTC

Access Runtime install
Microsoft Access Developer Edition gives you a license to freely distribute the Access runtime with Access databases that you create. However, the "installer" that comes with it is... lame, to say the least (no possibility of even getting the user to agree to a license, for instance). Besides the fact that the install exe it produced didn't work on 3 out of the 3 test machines I tried it on. Hence, my interest in NSIS.

So, I've perused the hints in the archive on installing the VB runtime, but the Access runtime is more complicated (an executable, lots of dlls, who knows which ones are really necessary or which ones need to be registered and which can't). Has anyone had success with using NSIS for this? I figured rather than re-invent the wheel, I'd ask first... I couldn't find anything in the archives or forum posts about it...

Joost Verburg
14th June 2003 13:52 UTC

You can also include the installer and run it silently.

Poplar
15th June 2003 01:31 UTC

I thought of that, and would do it if (a) the installer actually worked and (b) it wasn't so huge -- even if you tell the packaging "wizard" that you don't want IE5 installed, it includes the files in its package. Hmph. Can you sense that I am frustrated?

Poplar
13th May 2004 21:20 UTC

Update: I never got this to work. A company up in Canada, www.sagekey.com, makes an installer wizard that (unlike the one included with Office Developer Edition) actually works, so I eventually bought their software, and have had good success with it.

Joost Verburg
13th May 2004 21:45 UTC

Most Microsoft installers are self-extracting CAB files, so you can extract them using an archiver and see what DLLs are inside.

Poplar
13th May 2004 22:28 UTC

Yes, but the MS installer doesn't actually work very well, and then you have to get all the registry items correct too, even if you figure out what files need to be added and where they need to be put for things to work correctly.

Vytautas
14th May 2004 01:12 UTC

You could use a registry monitor program to see what registry entries where created by the original installer.

Vytautas

Poplar
14th May 2004 01:49 UTC

I appreciate all of these suggestions.

The basic problem that I was having a year ago when this thread started, however, was that the installer wizard that came with Office Developer Edition was not consistently working. So all of these suggestions, involving trying to figure out what files it was installing, or registry entries it was creating, were not going to do any good, since they would presumably just duplicate what the installer was already doing that wasn't working.

That is why I went with the SageKey installer, which had a good reputation, as they apparently spent the time to figure out what *really* needed to happen in the install, and do it correctly.

Anyway, thanks for trying!

kasa0625
17th April 2007 00:32 UTC

Its been a long time
i was searching for this exact issue. someone who has taken the time to make a nsi script that would install the access 2003 runtime because as the OP said microsoft's installer sucks. I had tracked an install of the runtime and compiled a list of the files and registry changes the installer makes in hopes of duplicating the changes in a nsi script of my own.
When i looked thru the changes and saw how big this nsi would have to be i can see how daunting the task would be.
The question i have to ask is: "is there a way to put this massive list of registry changes into an nsi easier than hand-typing them all?" (link to the csv file of the install log created by the install monitor i use.) link to csv (3mb): http://www.fraggednews.com/members/files/installlog.csv
any ides would be helpful

kichik
17th April 2007 20:18 UTC

Write a script that converts the CSV into a NSIS script. It shouldn't be too much of a complex script. All it has to do is parse the CSV and output a NSIS script. A few python/perl lines should do.

kasa0625
18th April 2007 17:45 UTC

but i'm too stupid
i dont actually know how to program in python/perl, but i do have some basic knowledge in vb.net maybe i will try to parse the csv in that.