What’s New in InstallShield 12 Express Edition

InstallShield 2019 Express Edition

InstallShield includes the following new features:

Ability to Target Windows Vista Systems

InstallShield enables you to specify that your installation requires Windows Vista. It also lets you build Windows Vista–related conditions for features.

User Account Control Support

InstallShield includes support for the User Account Control functionality that Microsoft added for Windows Vista. Use the new Require Administrative Privileges setting in the General Information view to specify at a project-wide basis whether administrative privileges are required for an installation. Also, use the Required Execution Level setting in the Build Your Release view to specify the minimum level required by your installation’s Setup.exe file for running the installation (the setup launcher, any setup prerequisites, and the .msi file) on Windows Vista platforms.

For details, see:

Digital Signature Enhancements

If you specify digital signature information for your installation, InstallShield automatically adds the necessary information to the MsiDigitalCertificate and MsiPatchCertificate tables. The MsiPatchCertificate table contains the information that is needed to enable User Account Control (UAC) patching. This enables you to create QuickPatch packages that can be applied by non-administrators.

In addition, the Build Installation page in the Project Assistant now offers the ability to specify digital signature information for your installation. Also, InstallShield now enables you to specify digital signature information for all media types in the Build Your Release view. Previously, only the WebDeployment media type could include digital signature information.

For more information, see:

Support for Minimizing Reboots Through the Restart Manager Infrastructure

Restarting the system after an installation is inconvenient for end users. One of the Certified for Windows Vista program requirements is that all installations must contain an option that enables end users to automatically close applications and attempt to restart them after the installation is complete.

To support this quality guideline, an MsiRMFilesInUse dialog is available in all Express projects. The installation displays this dialog if one or more files that needs to be updated are currently in use during the installation. To learn more, see:

Windows Installer 4.0 Log File Support on a Project-Wide Basis

InstallShield enables you to specify on a project-wide basis—without having to use the command line or configure log parameters through the registry—whether Windows Installer 4.0 should log your installation. You can also customize the types of messages that are logged.

To enable logging, use the new Create MSI Logs setting in the General Information view. You can click the ellipsis button (...) in this setting to display the Logging Options for Windows Installer 4.0 and Later dialog box, which is where you specify whether logging should occur. This is also where you override the default logging parameters if you want to customize the types of messages that are logged.

If you do enable logging, Windows Installer 4.0 creates a log file during installation of your product and populates the MsiLogFileLocation property with the log file’s path. In addition, a Show the Windows Installer log check box is added to the Setup Complete Success, Setup Complete Error, and Setup Interrupted dialogs. If the end user selects that check box and then clicks Finish, the log file is opened in a text file viewer or editor.

For more information, see Specifying Whether Windows Installer Installations Should Be Logged.

Multilingual User Interface (MUI) Support

If you are preparing an installation for a multilingual application and Windows Installer 4.0 will be running the installation, you can now use InstallShield to create shortcuts that include support for the Windows multilingual user interface (MUI). Four new settings are available in the Shortcuts/Folders view for a selected shortcut:

These new settings correspond with the four new columns in the Shortcut table for Windows Installer 4.0. To learn more, see Shortcut Settings.

Registry and File Filtering Enhancements for COM Extraction and Dependency Scanners

To prevent InstallShield from extracting undesired COM data from a COM server, you can edit a new Filters.xml file that is installed with InstallShield. Editing this Filters.xml file enables you to customize the list of registry keys that will be excluded from COM extraction.

The Filters.xml file also now lists files that the Static, Dynamic, and Visual Basic dependency scanners will exclude or include. Previously, two different files—Userscan.ini and Iswiscan.ini—were used to list excluded and included files.

For more information, see:

Enhanced Start Page

The list of recently opened projects that are displayed on the Start Page now includes a column that shows the project type. In addition, the maximum number of projects that are listed has been increased from four to eight.

Workaround for Windows Installer Issue with Upgrades and Assemblies

By default, upgrades that are created in the Upgrade Paths view are configured to remove the earlier version of the product before installing the new version. That is, the RemoveExistingProducts action is scheduled before the InstallFinalize action. This default sequencing behavior may cause a problem if the product includes an assembly that is installed to the global assembly cache (GAC): after the upgrade is applied, the assembly may be missing from the GAC. The issue occurs because Windows Installer cannot properly reference count the assembly; therefore, it is removed but not reinstalled during the upgrade.

To work around this Windows Installer issue, you can now configure your project in InstallShield so that the new version of your product is installed before the earlier version is removed.

To learn more, see Preventing the Removal of Assemblies from the Global Assembly Cache During Upgrades.

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