InstallShield: Resources

How the World Installs Software on Microsoft Windows

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Datasheets

InstallShield 2010 for Windows: Industry-standard installation authoring tool combines power and flexibility with ease-of-use. Also available in JapaneseGerman, French, Spanish and Portugese.
Read the benefits of switching to an InstallShield project.
Concurrent licensing available for large customers (Professional and Premier Editions): This alternative to the traditional node-locked (named) licensing provides large customers with an option to purchase and use InstallShield more flexibly and cost-effectively. You can also watch this brief Webinar to learn about the value of concurrent licenses.

Guides, Manuals & Help

Use the InstallShield Premier and Professional Editions Evaluation Guide to improve your evaluation experience.
Use the InstallShield Express Edition Evaluation Guide to improve your evaluation experience.
Find answers to the most frequently asked questions about InstallShield Premier and InstallShield Professional.  Also available in Japanese.
Find answers to the most frequently asked questions about InstallShield Express. Also available in Japanese.

Release Notes & EULA

The End User License Agreement applies to all editions.  Also available in Japanese.

Testimonials


“InstallShield 2010 is awesome. I’m extremely excited about the new Microsoft App-V support, which will significantly cut our support costs due to a smoother rollout. I strongly recommend upgrading to InstallShield 2010.”

Tim Stevens
Software Installation Developer
Viewpoint Construction Software

“I love the new InstallShield 2010. It has tons of new features that long-time customers have been asking for, like the new Text File Changes view, categorized Custom Actions and Adobe Flash billboards.”

Samir Vaidya
Product Architect
Computer Sciences Corporation


"We provide software to more then a third of the nation’s banks, so we need to be prepared for the most demanding deployment tasks. InstallShield has always exceeded our expectations and kept us updated in an industry where change is the norm. We’re excited about the new features and increased functionality of InstallShield 2008, and especially the XML testing feature, which lets us test xml file updates without having to first build and run the setup."

Randy Dugger
Deployment/Development Analyst
Information Technology, Inc.

"We're excited about the release of InstallShield 2008," said Bindu Chirra, developer at DMAXX, LLC. "The product's enhancements have made this a great user-friendly product, with all the features necessary to help us create installers that fit the quality of our financial software product portfolio."

Bindu Chirra
Developer
DMAXX, LLC

“Our product is very large and contains many components. Without InstallShield's Automation Interface it would be next to impossible to create everything by hand. It allows me to easily identify and modify components—which is a huge timesaver! "

Pete Delgado
Senior Software Engineer
Product Installation Group
UGS Corporation

“As the leader in business intelligence, SAS sells custom solutions for complex problems - not shrink-wrapped products. So the ability to dynamically create solutions on-the-fly, taking various software components and putting them together in ways that makes sense for our customers, is important to us. With InstallShield's new Collaboration and Assembly features, SAS will continue to deliver our software in new and unique ways to solve new and unique business problems for our customers. Providing the smoothest possible installation experience for SAS solutions allows our customers to deploy our software easily and seamlessly, reducing the amount of time it takes to start getting a return on their investment. "

Jason Losh
Software Manager
Release Management Division
SAS

“BMC Software has been working closely with InstallShield development to establish installation criteria for our industry-leading Infrastructure Management solutions. As a result of this collaboration on the InstallShield product, we believe our customers will speed their 'time to value' when installing our award-winning PATROL and SmartDBA solutions."

Sean Duclaux
Director, Product Management
BMC Software

“Microsoft is pleased to work with InstallShield to provide our mutual customers with the ability to create powerful, flexible and reliable installations from within Visual Studio .NET on the Windows platform. "

Nick Abbott
Group Manager
.NET Developer Product Management Group
Microsoft Corporation

“With InstallShield, our OpenViz development team is able to easily build deployments for all platforms with a single tool, thereby reducing overall costs in implementation and maintenance. The new features in InstallShield, such as support for MSI 3.1 and XML configuration, allow us to stay ahead with the latest deployment technologies and easily maintain our scripts. With Trialware, setting up new packages as evaluation versions is a breeze. "

Anoop Chatterjee
Manager, Product Development
Advanced Visual Systems

“One nice touch in this version is a repository for components - dialogs, merge modules, SQL scripts, and so on. The Professional Edition, which I tested, allows you to keep a local repository on your own computer for these components, so that they can be used in multiple projects. The Premier edition adds a network repository for multi-user sharing. Another significant advance in the Premier Edition is the introduction of assemblies to the product. These are not .NET assemblies but an InstallShield technology designed to make it possible to dynamically reuse components across multiple installers. These modular components are versioned and can be shared between multiple installed products without anything breaking on uninstall. Organizations shipping suites will appreciate the flexibility that assemblies give to build multiple different product editions with little overhead. This looks especially useful when you're working on a cross-platform installation. "

Mike Gunderloy
Contributing Editor
Developer Central

“Our products and installers are localized into nine different languages. We depend on InstallShield's pre-translated dialogs to reduce development time and costs and to help us get our product out the door. "

Pete Delgado
Senior Software Engineer
Product Installation Group
UGS Corporation

"We chose InstallShield Express for its feature set, which met every requirement we had for our installation. In addition, InstallShield Express is an intuitive, user-friendly installation solution that can be used without a manual. InstallShield's expertise and knowledge of their customers' needs is clear-Express has excellent value and we will continue to use it for all future installations."

Robert Harvey
Giardina & Associates

"InstallShield Express is the easiest way to deploy applications. End users appreciate a reliable and well-known installation solution. "

Kurt Bilde
University of Southern Denmark

"InstallShield Express is the easiest and most intuitive installation program to use. Even though it is an ‘express’ version, it contains many valuable features and is fully extendable through custom actions. We are happy to be able to provide professional-looking installations of our products to our customers. "

Carsten Pedersen
Manager, Software Development
Dantec Dynamics A/S

White Papers

The debugging techniques described in this white paper include investigating Windows Installer error codes, generating and interpreting Windows Installer log files, and using the InstallShield MSI Debugger.
This white paper discusses different types of validation, including build warnings and errors, Internal Consistency Evaluator (ICE) validation, and update and patch validation.
This white paper describes the rules for validating MSI updates and patches and how to address any validation warnings or errors that occur.
Written by David Cole, Senior Software Engineer at IBM, this white paper describes using chained .msi packages in InstallShield and MSI 4.5 to componentize a setup. You will learn how to include other .msi packages within your own so that the result may be installed with the appearance of being a single product.
Learn about the changes you make to a Windows Installer (MSI) installation package for it to behave as the desired type of update or patch. Available in English and Japanese.
Learn how to automate the installation of the Oracle Client by using a custom response file that the Oracle Universal Installer (OUI) can process and use to install the Client.
Learn about the types of custom actions supported by Windows Installer, including launching executables, calling DLL or script functions, setting Property-table properties and Directory-table properties, and error actions.
Learn about Windows Installer sequences and the built-in actions that make up a typical MSI installation program.
Learn about several techniques and design issues to always consider when working with different parts of the Windows Installer (MSI) technology. Available in English and Japanese.
Learn expert tips for how to design an MSI setup to best prepare it for future upgrades.

Webinars

Watch this Webinar to learn best practices for building reliable Windows Installer (MSI) installations inside the Visual Studio 2010 interface.
What are the benefits of offering your products as virtual applications? Watch this webinar and find out for yourself.
Make sure your installations are compatible with Windows 7 by watching this webinar. It highlights the new features of Windows 7 and Windows Installer 5 impacting your installations and presents solutions on how to overcome the potential pitfalls.
Learn about all the new tools and technology support in InstallShield 2010 that customers like you have been asking for. The Webinar also highlights the new Microsoft App-V support that is revolutionizing software installations.
Are you wondering if InstallShield is the right solution for you? This Webinar highlights the reasons why the world’s best software companies rely on InstallShield for their Windows installations.
Most software developers understand that Visual Studio Deployment Projects have some major limitations. For some applications you can get by with those shortcomings, for others you can’t. If you use Visual Studio to build setups and aren’t sure if you need a more professional installation tool, this webinar from Flexera Software’s Robert Dickau gives you the answers.
This Webinar highlights the new capabilities of InstallShield 2010 Express Edition, including support for Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, and MSI 5; a revamped IDE; improved IIS abilities; and more.
Join Flexera Software’s senior consultant William Lasiewicz as he explains the new features in Windows Installer (MSI) 4.5 and how InstallShield leverages them.
You've heard the buzzwords – UAC, Restart Manager, Digital Signatures – Windows Vista definitely makes installations more complex. But what does it really mean for your next installation project? And how do you optimize your setups for Windows Vista? Get the answers in this webinar.
Are you having trouble moving node-locked licenses (per user, per desktop) of InstallShield and InstallAnywhere from computer to computer? Watch this brief Webinar to learn about the value of concurrent licenses. Concurrent licenses can be used on any PC by any developer in any office. No headaches, no wasting time.

Tips & Tricks