Free Setup Utilities (Installers / Uninstallers)
Distribute your application with an Installer and Uninstaller (Setup)
Free Setup Utilities (Installers)
One way to make your application more user-friendly is to bundle it with a setup utility (or installer) to automate the installation of your program on your users' computers. Some of these installers also provide an uninstaller so that users can remove your program when they do not want to use it anymore. A number of the setup wizards listed here can create self-extracting distribution files, which are especially useful if you are distributing your application over the Internet and are dealing with novice users who don't know how to extract a (say) zip file.
Note: if you are distributing your applications by CD or DVD, you may also be interested in the Free Autorun/Autoplay DVD and CD Menu Creation Software, which allows your program CD/DVD to automatically start when your users place them in the DVD drive.
For those who have arrived at this page looking for a general purpose software uninstaller to cleanly remove programs you've installed on your computer, please see the Free Uninstallers page instead. This page that you're looking at is meant for people (eg, programmers) packaging their software for distribution.
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Disclaimer
The information provided on this page comes without any warranty whatsoever. Use it at your own risk. Just because a program, book, document or service is listed here or has a good review does not mean that I endorse or approve of the program or of any of its contents. All the other standard disclaimers also apply.
Free Setup Utilities / Install Wizards
- Inno Setup
Inno Setup is a well-known Windows installer that can create self-extracting SETUP executables. It can also install an uninstaller for your application files. One nice feature about this program is that you can generate your distribution files from either a GUI IDE or from the command line (useful for those using makefiles to automate development). The Setup file created is extremely small. The program also supports disk-spanning. Source code for the installer is available. Development is ongoing, and there is support for other languages. You may use the installer for both commercial and non-commercial programs, free of charge.
- Nullsoft Install System (Scriptable)
Nullsoft provides a free scriptable installer that you can use to package your applications. The installer only adds 20-40k of overhead to your distributable file. It can compress your files with zip or bzip2, register ActiveX controls (and deregister them as well), run another executable, call DLLs, create shortcuts, set registry entries, find windows that are open (for example, to detect whether an existing version of your application is currently running), flow control, etc.
- Spoon Installer
Spoon Installer is an open source Windows setup utility released under the BSD licence. It creates a single compressed setup executable file for your applications.
- HJ-Install
This is a Win32 installer without an uninstaller. Documentation for the version I checked suggests that it cannot create self-extracting executables.
- Install Creator
Install Creator is another Windows installer that you can distribute with your program. It creates a single distribution executable for your program that can handle things like creating icons and folders in the user's Start Menu, installation and deinstallation of DLLs, ActiveX controls, fonts, screen savers, etc. It comes with an uninstaller (deinstaller), etc. It claims that it only adds 60Kb to your program, which compares very favourably to many other installers. The free version may be used with commercial and non-commercial products, and includes an advertisement page after installing (but not with your program itself).
- QuickInstall
A Win32 installer that allows you to add keys to the registry and supports more than one language. I have little other information about this installer.
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