Package Installer

The company I work for develops POS software. It is currently Access
based and our install is largely manual. This is tedious, error prone
and time consuming. I am not very familiar with Windows packaging
solutions. From your experience, is there anything to be gained over
using a retail packaging solution versus using the Access package
solution wizard? There are several registry keys, additional
applications and controls that need to be registered as part of the
installation process. Does it make sense to utilize the package
wizard and then perform the additional steps in VBScript? I am
uncertain the best approach to take. The finished product doesn't
have to be very polished looking. This is more for our use than our
customers.

Vincent

Re: Package Installer

On Wed, 31 Oct 2007 06:47:58 -0700, Vincent
wrote:

SageKey has the best installer. You can hire them to put the entire
package together for you.
-Tom.

>The company I work for develops POS software. It is currently Access
>based and our install is largely manual. This is tedious, error prone
>and time consuming. I am not very familiar with Windows packaging
>solutions. From your experience, is there anything to be gained over
>using a retail packaging solution versus using the Access package
>solution wizard? There are several registry keys, additional
>applications and controls that need to be registered as part of the
>installation process. Does it make sense to utilize the package
>wizard and then perform the additional steps in VBScript? I am
>uncertain the best approach to take. The finished product doesn't
>have to be very polished looking. This is more for our use than our
>customers.
>
>Vincent

Re: Package Installer

On Oct 31, 10:31 am, Tom van Stiphout wrote:
> On Wed, 31 Oct 2007 06:47:58 -0700, Vincent
> wrote:
>
> SageKey has the best installer. You can hire them to put the entire
> package together for you.
> -Tom.
>
>
>
> >The company I work for develops POS software. It is currently Access
> >based and our install is largely manual. This is tedious, error prone
> >and time consuming. I am not very familiar with Windows packaging
> >solutions. From your experience, is there anything to be gained over
> >using a retail packaging solution versus using the Access package
> >solution wizard? There are several registry keys, additional
> >applications and controls that need to be registered as part of the
> >installation process. Does it make sense to utilize the package
> >wizard and then perform the additional steps in VBScript? I am
> >uncertain the best approach to take. The finished product doesn't
> >have to be very polished looking. This is more for our use than our
> >customers.
>
> >Vincent- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

I'll check it out. Thanks.

Vincent

Re: Package Installer

Vincent wrote:

>The company I work for develops POS software. It is currently Access
>based and our install is largely manual. This is tedious, error prone
>and time consuming. I am not very familiar with Windows packaging
>solutions. From your experience, is there anything to be gained over
>using a retail packaging solution versus using the Access package
>solution wizard? There are several registry keys, additional
>applications and controls that need to be registered as part of the
>installation process. Does it make sense to utilize the package
>wizard and then perform the additional steps in VBScript?

From what you describe the various deployment tools available should do what you
want. What kind of errors are you having?

Once you've setup the install in Access to include the controls and relate dlls
recreating the deployment package when you have a new version of the software should
be fairly easy. So what is all being tedious and time consuming?

I would agree that Sagekey gives you a good solution if there is potentially already
a version of Access, retail or runtime, on the target system.

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
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