Not all to seldom situations arise where you have a application where the installer just won’t do as you want it to Often this is true when it comes to automation, and that makes us script and do other stuff to install simple programs in very “engineered” ways.. However there are tools to “re-package” applications, one of those are Advanced Installer. What basically is the difference to other re-packaging solutions are price. The software does not have  a nightmare price-tag as many others do and still boosts all the features others do!

Anyways; I will just walk you trough creating a MSI installer for 7-Zip. I know there already are a MSI for that but nothing is like home-made.. ;P
I love to use this tool to re-package HP-drivers for instance which are deployed as EXE and not easy to manage MSI-packages.

Get Advanced Installer (including Advanced Repackager) demo at http://www.advancedinstaller.com/download.html

Step 1. Start Advanced Repackager.
The applications runs as Administrator.
Make sure you already downloaded the EXE installer.

Step 2 Locate the package and give it some parameters.
Command line can be used to silence the install for instance. In my case repackaging 7zip
I have selected not do anything specific (yes, 7-zip already exists as a MSI but I just took a
exe installer laying around)..

Step 3: Snapshots
The packager works from snapshots, it takes one snapshot before install and one after and then
compares thees to get the “what did the installer do”-sum. You can also save a base of the
system to reuse between sessions. I feel the process is quite quick and there really is no need.

Step 4: Output and filters
The output from repackager will be a MSI and where do we want to save it..

Step 5: Performing the install..
The install will now commence. Make sure no other applications are running since they
will pollute the capture. But you are most likely to do this install on a virtual machine thats
used only for this purpose..

Step 6: Pre-install scan
The system scans and then launches the installer with the params you specified in step 1.

Step 7: The installer commences…

 

Step 8: After install scan..
After the installer have exited the system waits, if you wish to do some additional actions in the
system before commencing the after-install scan. Perfect for creating shortcuts etc.

Step 9: Done!
The package is done. And its almost done I think, since I have the full Advanced Installer package
it also offers to open the MSI in the studio where I can customize it even more..

Optional last step.. customize in Advanced installer..