I've been reading on a MS hosted forum lately about Windows for 64-bit. (In
anticipation of the new workstation). It came up that install shield is a
32-bit app that still has some 16-bit stubs. Whatever stubs are. The reason
this came up is that it has problems on Windows for 64-bit.
Could this be the reason we're supposedly going to be glad for WI? So that
SW will install cleanly in a 64-bit environment? I imagine development has
halted on install shield, so that the 16-bit stuff will never be updated.
In that case, it does make sense to move to WI, however grudgingly.
The stubs alow a program to pop up a warning alongs the lines of 'This
application requires Win32' and not crash in a heap when run on 3.1
machines. Not really very relivant thesdays. When the 16 bit stub sees
thats it's on the right OS it launches it spawns the real installer, which
is 32bit and these that will then hand off to msi to do the work.
Install shield is very much alive and kicking, it is basicllay a layer over
MSI now. Same really goes for WISE as well.
You might ask: "Why can't I just run my standard programs on this new server
and automatically gain all of the additional capacity that 64-bit systems
deliver?" The 64-bit machine architecture is more, however, than just a
standard PC with additional address lines. It has an entirely new
instruction set: it is a different machine architecture. Native 64-bit
components have to be ported and re-compiled to run on a 64-bit machine.
While there is an emulation subsystem (called WOW) in Windows 2003 that
allows 32-bit applications to be run on the 64-bit platform, it is a subset
of Windows and not all facilities are available. Also since it is an
emulation of a different instruction set, it is considerably slower than a
native 64-bit program.
There is another option though and that is to use an AMD 64bit CPU as it's
instruction set is an extension of IA32 that allows it to run both 64bit and
32bit code and 16bit code.
Back to the point in hand, Why would you not want SW to move to MSI? the
technology is far superior to anything that came before it?
Stephen.
"Stephen Woolhead" wrote in news:b_n1c.9730609
$ snipped-for-privacy@news.easynews.com:
The question was asked rather loudly here when SW 04 sp2.1 was released. It
took rediculously long to apply the patch, as long as 2 hours in some
cases.
Doesn't make sense. SW does not seem to be much interested in going 64bit.
My guess is MicroSoft influenced them more than anything. There is no other
reason I can think of that they would do something so detrimental to so
many customers.
Dale Dunn wrote:
Stephen,
Besides what Dale pointed out, the WI installer fails a good percentage of
the time. This causes even more lost time and $$$$
Let's see, It's a 100 times slower, it fails 15-30% of the time.
Yep, you're right. Sure sounds like superior technology to me........
Regards
Mark
Well that's rather screwed up. I have several applications that use the MSI
patch technology, most relevant probably is Autodesk Inventor and that takes
a couple of minutes at most to patch it's self for a service pack release.
Just about every new installer is based on MSI these days, if the
SolidWorks patch takes that long to apply it says more about SolidWorks to
me than MSI.
Stephen
I can't say that's unreasonable. The reason MSI was questioned had to do
with timing. The first experience most SW users had with it in connection
with SW was sp2.1. The update experience was horrible, so we users looked
for what changed. The installer was the only thing most of us could see
that had changed, and several users already didn't like it because of other
admin issues. Call it a scapegoat. Eventually, the blame did fall to SW
implementation of the installer, but the question remained of why the
change was made to the new installer, when everyone was happy with the old.
A good question, and the answer is to the end user not a lot.
Now if you ask the same question from the developers or network
administrators point of view that's a different matter. For the developer
Install is going to be obsolete over the next few years and quite frankly
isn't very nice to use for big projects, especially those that are made from
many components that have cross dependences or ship as different versions
(Student, Developer, Pro etc) and the need to be translated (i.e. Resource
management). Also you gain other features such as Install/uninstall
applications with component-level management
(in installScript you pretty much have to roll your own uninstaller),
automatically repair key product files that have been corrupted, Roll back
to a computer's original state during a interrupted installation, and the
fact the installer runs in the local machine context means you do not have
to be an administrator to install things like device drivers (this can be
disabled via group policy).
As an Administrator you can use MSI via Active directory to advertise
applications (in add/remove programs click on add new programs to see the
list of available programs on the network) this list can be managed on a per
user basis via GPO. GPO can cause a MSI to be installed when a machine is
installed or added to an OU and removed when the machine is removed from the
OU all without any user intervention. The automated install can be done via
other methods but GPO and MSI is the cleanest method there is. Also MSI
supports the idea of transforms that can be applied to installs to control
what options get installed which again can be set on an OU basis.
Stephen
Probably because we complained that we couldn't roll back SPs when the new
one causes more problems than the old one. We had to do a full uninstall
and reinstall and then apply SPs to the point we were comfortable with. I
do agree though that the 2.1 install took me way longer than expected.
Before I had actually done it I thought everyone was just blowing steam and
finding something to complain about, now I realize that it was all
warranted.
Maybe SW just hasn't figured out the best setup for the installer. Not that
that is acceptable.
Some suggestions for SW
Find ways to refine installation.
When you have to apply a 166Mb SP atleast call it a new major release.
If you still want to apply a 166Mb SP please add some prompts
Please go get a cup of coffee. This may take a while.
or
Please leave office/home for 30min to 2hrs. This MAY be done when you get
back.
or you could just add some fun game like Tetris or Bejeweled or Breakout
something to keep our minds off of how long it really takes to apply a SP.
and for goodness sake pleas add a disclaimer to turn of the Virus
protection. I always remember when it is too darn late.
my 2¢
Corey
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