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Remote Testing Winzip alternative (which is not so useful it appears).

    And then to add insult to injury after buying the Winzip Self Extractor Package I find an article about a hidden built in installer in XP already!  The article that follows just outlines the simple use of it, we'd want to be making use of the self installer features the author doesn't go into but it looks like it would work.  After playing around with it myself I would conclude that filenames had better be 8.3 (no long file names) as checking "Store Files using Long File Names inside Package" results in nothing happening to speak of (perhaps the batch file doesn't get executed) and leaving it off results in file names like commst~2.rtf instead of commstest2.rtf and if you've told DMDX to use commstest2.rtf it doesn't grok that it should be using commst~2.rtf.  Worse it's complaining that my poster.exe is too large to fit in memory, seeing as it's a fraction of DMDX foot print that's a mystery.  Tried starting it with start /wait but that didn't lead to any success either.  Only thing I can think of is that IExpress uses a 16 bit DOS session for the installation and that has 784 kB of memory and when poster.exe tries to link in winsock2.dll it's too darn big.  Amazing that DMDX does fit.  Guess the bought version of WinZip may in fact be worth the money.  Many thanks to PC Mechanic (even if it might not be so useful for me) who I ripped the following from (http://www.pcmech.com/article/hidden-installer-creator-in-windows-xp/) in case their page disappears:

Hidden Installer Creator in Windows XP

Category: How Do I - December 3rd, 2007. Posted by Rich Menga.

Some people like to create their own installation executables because it looks professional and it’s just plain cool.

Windows XP has a utility called IExpress that will do just that.

Note before continuing: Yes you can do this with WinRAR and WinZIP also, however this is free and free is good. 

To Access: Start / Run / Type iexpress / Click OK

You get this:

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Hit Next.

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Let’s say we want to create an installer that will extract some photos to a specific part of the hard drive. We’ll select Extract files only and click Next

You get this:

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I called my Package title “Rich’s Photos”. You can name yours whatever you want. Hit Next when ready to proceed.

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You can opt to prompt the user with a message or not before install. I decided to put in a message. When done hit Next.

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You can opt to use a text file for a license agreement if you wish. I decided not to. Hit Next

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This is the part where you choose the files that will be installed. I chose 5 photos. You can add as many as you wish. Hit Next.

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It’s suggested you leave this screen as Default. Hit Next.

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You can have the installer display a message once completed if you wish. I decided to put one in. Hit Next when done.

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On this screen you tell IExpress the path an the file name to create. I clicked Browse and set the file name as fotos.exe. Click Next when finished.

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You can opt to save this whole process if you want, but since I wasn’t interested in doing that I ticked Don’t save. Hit Next when finished.

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Windows XP is now ready to create your package. Click Next.

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You will get a black Command Prompt window and the window above while the package is being created…

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Ta-da… your package is finished. Click Finish.

On a test install of the package I just created, this is what happens:

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Note on above: I had to click “Browse” to choose my desktop.

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Yep, it works!

 



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