Need advice about software installers

M

Max Moor

Hi All,
My Access application is nearly done, and ready to ship. It's been
done in Access 2002 with Office XP developer. It has a separate front and
backends.

I need an installation package, of course. For testing around here,
I've just used the packaging wizard, but it looks like the learning curve
for doing anything very fancy won't be trivial.

I suppose like many startup people, time is tight. So is money...
Soooooo... I'm wondering about cheap to free alternatives.

I've downloaded the Tarma and Inno installers. Does anyone have any
experience, good or bad, with either of these?

Maybe I have a bad impression of using the raw windows installer. Is
it easier than I think? Is there a good resource that could get me up to
speed quickly?

I'd appreciate any advice I can get. This is one of my last "big"
things to get a rope around.

Thanks, Max
 
G

G. Vaught

Are you planning to support users that do not have Access 2002 on their
machines or are you assuming your users will have Office 2002 or above? If
you are planning to support non-Access users or users with older versions,
then you must use the Developer's edition.

If you use the package installer that comes with the Developer's edition,
this will install a Runtime (Royalty Free) copy of Access on the user's
machine. If your user already has Access 2002 or above on their machine,
then you would not want to install the Runtime edition as it is limited on
what the user can do. Therefore, you may wish to set the Runtime as a
separate install from the database installs. Users who already have Access
2002 only need the databases. Users who have any other version lower than
2002, will need to install the Runtime.

If the user installs the Runtime version and they have any version of Access
on their machine and open that full version, in my experience, they will
kill the Runtime version and may not be able to open your database. Be sure
you create thorough instructions.

Having said all the above, it is not that difficult to create an install
disk. What I have done in the past is use a machine that does not have MS
Access installed to test my install and uninstall of the program. I would
read any documentation that appears under the Deployment and Packing help
file. This will aide in getting it right or nearly right the first time
around. If you created any help files with your database, be sure you
include them in the install process. I installed/uninstalled several time to
ensure that any unforeseen problems did not arise. After success I then
burned everything to CD.

Good Luck!
 
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