Blinker
16th March 2010 18:16 UTC

Installation Rules for Windows XP/Vista/7
Hi there.

I have a few questions regarding installation rules/assumptions with Windows XP/Vista/7. We have a software application that's used in the corporate world.

Our software is 10+ years old - and unfortunately, it still breaks some of the rules - this is becoming more of a problem in a corporate environment.

Here are some examples:

1) Our product defaults to install in the ROOT directory. ie: C:\OurProduct - easily fixed.

2) We store application configuration data inside C:\OurProduct. These are application settings - not user settings.

3) Database files for our product are stored in C:\OurProduct\Data

I recently did away with our old installer, and upgraded to NSIS (which I love - thanks for all your hard work). But I'd like to do-away with some of our past-sins and get this installing the way most-applications do with Windows.

Do you know of a resource that gives the "guidelines" or rules for installers?

What do you recommend for #2 and #3 above? We'd prefer not to use the registry for #2, and would like to NOT have these data files/settings associated with the user, but the PC. Is there such a folder?

Any tips would be appreciated.

Cheers.
M.

Zilatica
16th March 2010 18:38 UTC

Variables
Look at the .chm and search for "Variables". There is a page with various variables to use.

1) Use $PROGRAMFILES, $PROGRAMFILES32, or $PROGRAMFILES64

2) Use $APPDATA

3) I would either use APPDATA or store the database stuff relative to the install ($INSTDIR)

Blinker
16th March 2010 19:48 UTC

Question about #2 - %APPDATA% - isn't this tied to the user that's logged into the machine? Is there a writable path that all users have access to, similar to this?

Anders
16th March 2010 20:04 UTC

SetShellVarContext changes some of the variables

Zilatica
16th March 2010 22:24 UTC

Anders has the ticket! Just add the following to the script prior to using $APPDATA:
SetShellVarContext all