Setup Factory

Create Windows 7 Compatible Software Installers with Setup Factory 8.2

(WINNIPEG) – Indigo Rose Software today announced the launch of Setup Factory 8.2 with full support for Microsoft Windows 7. Software developers can now build a single software installer program that works just as well on the latest Windows operating systems (Windows 7, Server 2008, Vista) as it does on legacy systems like Windows 95, 98, 2000 and XP. This makes Setup Factory 8.2 a unique solution for software developers who require the widest compatibility for their setup programs.

An easy-to-use Project Wizard helps programmers create ready-to-build software installation projects in minutes. They can simply drag and drop files and folders onto the project window and they’re ready to build. Setup Factory outputs a compact, single-file setup.exe that is ideal for distribution via Internet download, CD/DVD-ROM, USB memory keys and corporate networks.

“Indigo Rose is excited to launch this new version of Setup Factory,” said Colin Adams, President at Indigo Rose Software Design Corporation. “Making Setup Factory compatible with Microsoft Windows 7 ensures that our customers can deploy their software development projects on the widest variety of Windows operating systems possible. It’s just one more reason that over 20,000 companies worldwide rely on Indigo Rose’s software development tools to help deliver their digital products.”

While retaining Setup Factory’s popular visual development environment, Setup Factory 8.2 also includes a fully featured scripting engine. It has everything from “for, repeat and while” loops, to “if/else” conditions, functions, variables and associative arrays. With a library of over 360+ functions and a fill-in-the-blanks style Action Wizard, advanced installers can be created to handle even the most sophisticated installation tasks. High-level actions are provided to make registry changes, call DLL functions, execute programs, start and stop services, interact with web scripts, enumerate processes, parse XML data, download files and much more.

With Setup Factory 8.2’s Visual Dialog Editor and Skin/Theme System, software engineers can create installers that even the marketing department can approve of. Developers can either create custom install wizard dialogs from scratch, or select from 20+ ready-made dialogs such as license agreement acceptance and serial number verification. Once the dialog sequence has been created, installation developers can then choose from dozens of pre-made visual themes, letting them customize background images, fonts, logos, colors and other style settings with a single click.

Other features of Setup Factory 8.2 include high performance LZMA data compression with up to 300% better compression ratios and 20% faster installation speed, automatic Authenticode signing, support for files larger than 2GB, an extensive Windows Installer MSI action library, auto-detecting international language support, HTML-based project reports, full uninstaller, silent install mode, and support for automated builds.

Setup Factory 8.2 sells for $395 (US$) per developer or $995 for the Five Developer Team Pack. It can be purchased through all major software development tools resellers, or directly from Indigo Rose Software at http://www.indigorose.com. A free 30-day trial download is available from the company’s website.

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Setup Factory

Overview of Setup Factory 8.2

Setup Factory 8 is the result of over a decade of experience in creating software installation tools. Unlike other installer builders that require week-long training courses in order to get up to speed, Setup Factory was designed to be fast and easy to use. By pairing a visual layout of your software’s files and folders with a point-and-click interface, the entire process becomes completely logical and absolutely painless. What’s more, Setup Factory creates a compact, single-file setup.exe that runs on any version of Windows from 95 to Vista and is perfect for distribution by web download, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM and LAN. Setup Factory 8.0 is simply a better way to make software installers. We guarantee it or you’ll get your money back.

• Rapid Installer Development. With Setup Factory 8, you simply drag and drop your files onto the project window, and click on the publish button. That’s it. It’s really that simple. You’ll be up and running in minutes. The Project Wizard can even walk you through it. Whether you want to create shortcut icons on the desktop and start menu, or configure an uninstaller in the control panel’s Add/Remove Programs panel, it’s all just a few clicks away. The same thing goes for adding in third-party runtime modules, with support for Visual Basic, .NET and more.

• Powerful Enough For Any Installation Task. When you want the ultimate in power and flexibility, you can turn to the all-new scripting engine found in Setup Factory 8. This easy to understand language features everything from loops and conditions to functions, variables and arrays. It’s packed with hundreds of functions to handle everything from text file editing to system registry changes. You can execute programs, call DLL functions, manipulate strings, enumerate processes, interact with web scripts and much more. And thanks to the fill-in-the-blanks style Action Wizard, anybody can create powerful installers that handle complex installation tasks with ease.

• Fully Customizable. While other installer builders make you settle for the same old look, Setup Factory 8 includes an innovative visual theme system and full featured dialog editor. Choose from dozens of pre-made themes or even make your own. It’s as easy as viewing a live dialog preview and picking your favorite style. You can configure everything from fonts and banners to graphics, colors and much more. Whether you want your installers to look corporate, modern or artistic, you can do it with ease.

• Trusted and Reliable. We’ve been making software installation tools since the days of Windows 3.0. We’ve learned a lot over the years. That’s why you can count on Setup Factory to make sure your software installation process is as smooth and trouble-free as possible. In fact, there are hundreds of millions of our setup.exe files out there. That’s a lot of trust. And each one is proudly serving as a banner for its company’s reputation. It’s something we take very seriously. You can leverage our years of experience making rock-solid software installers by choosing Setup Factory 8.

Download the Free Trial and Get Started Now!

The best way to experience the value of Setup Factory is to try it. You can download the free trial version of Setup Factory by clicking here. The free trial version will continue to work for a period of 30 days, so you have plenty of time to build projects and see for yourself what a great tool it is. There is no other software in its class which is easier to use, or faster to work with!

Competitive Position

Many software installation tools have reached a point where they’ve become overly complicated. To some extent this is a reflection of the task at hand; it takes some very advanced features to get software installed safely on a modern system. Unfortunately, for many other tools “advanced” has come to mean “complicated.”

At Indigo Rose, we want to empower developers, not confuse them. Setup Factory has been designed and perfected over 15 years to make installation and deployment intuitive and straightforward. Like competing tools, it has a feature list full of advanced install abilities and technology. But what’s unique to Setup Factory is the way it presents all of these features. Unlike other tools, there are no hurdles in the way of just getting things done.

Everything from checking system requirements to creating multilingual translations is handled in a way that makes sense. All of the advanced features are there, from the innovative visual skinning system, to the high-performance scripting engine. But with Setup Factory, the basics are still easy, and building a normal installer is still a quick five minute, drag-and-drop affair. Even Setup Factory’s intelligent screen layout system keeps things simple. To make room for text, you don’t have to worry about positioning controls or moving things around; you just type it in, and it works.

The end-user experience is just as straightforward. Setup Factory is completely self-contained and does not require any preinstalled services. In fact, its setup executables are compatible all the way back to Windows 95 without any external dependencies – including MSI. It doesn’t take forever to extract, it doesn’t need to be bootstrapped with anything, it doesn’t depend on services which might be turned off, and it doesn’t leave behind any messy uninstallation problems.

For years we’ve been winning customers from other installation tools because of our strong user community and our refreshingly personal product support. Like Setup Factory, this is driven by a single, simple question: if we were our customers, how would we want it to work?

Setup Factory

Setup Factory Product Features

Don’t be fooled by products costing twice as much – Setup Factory 8 has everything you need to make rock-solid professional software installers. It’s also easier to use and faster to work with. Setup Factory 8 features a quick-start project wizard, customizable dialogs, themes/skins, runtime modules, multilingual support, MD5 encoded serial numbers, single-file setup.exe for internet downloads, powerful scripting engine with 250+ functions, Authenticode support and much more.

Standard Features

Install Any File – Anywhere!
Setup Factory 8 features an unbeatable development environment that puts you in total control of your files. Simply drag and drop your files and folders onto the project window and you’re ready to build. Setup Factory is smart enough to maintain your folder structure, automatically query version resource information, create shortcut icons and ensure 100% data integrity with reliable CRC-32 checking. Of course, everything can be customized and overridden if you wish, but for most projects the improved Project Wizard can handle it all with just a few clicks.

Compact Single-File Setups
Smaller and faster means a better experience for your customers and Setup Factory 8 delivers. Compare our tiny ~450 KB runtime overhead (including uninstall) to the competition and see for yourself. Additionally, with no “unpacking” step required, Setup Factory 8 installers are also much faster to initialize and install than those created by competitive tools. What’s more, our Publishing Wizard walks you through the build process with a few easy steps. The single-file setup.exe is ready for distribution by web, email, LAN, CD, DVD and even floppy disk.

Project Wizard Quick-Start
Spend five minutes with Setup Factory’s easy to use Project Wizard and come away with a complete, ready to build installation project. You’ll be walked through each option so you can get your project started as quickly as possible.

Flexible Uninstaller
Setup Factory 8 features a new and improved uninstall feature. Simply turn it on and let Setup Factory worry about removing your files. Anything that is installed during the setup will be marked for removal by the uninstaller. However, if you want to go in and tinker with the settings, you’ll find that the uninstaller is now fully customizable. You can take full control of what files are removed, what shortcut icons are deleted, what registry changes are made and anything else you require. Even the dialog screens and sequence can be adjusted to suit your needs!

System Requirements Checking
You can easily enforce system requirements just by clicking a few boxes. Built-in checks include operating system, memory, screen resolution, color depth and administrator privileges. If the user’s system does not meet the minimum requirements you have chosen, the installer can either warn the user or abort the setup entirely.

Advanced Features

NEW! Support for Files Larger Than 2GB
Are you distributing massive data files? Setup Factory 8 is up to the challenge. While many installers will choke on files larger than 2GB in size, Setup Factory 8 sails right on through. In fact, with our new LZMA data compression, you’ll also get dramatically better compression ratios and lightning fast installs.

Serial Numbers, Security and Access Features
Setup Factory includes a variety of features designed to help you manage access to your software, including serial number lists and date-based expiration. With its powerful serial number generator you can quickly create thousands of unique serial numbers, which are stored internally as secure MD5 hashes. Hidden from prying eyes, your installer data is compressed using proprietary algorithms and only accessible to those users who supply a valid serial number. Of course, if you’d rather do it yourself, Setup Factory 8 is flexible enough to support your own custom validation and authorization schemes.

Packages, Categories and Install Types
Creating installers for complex and multi-part products is now easier than ever. With dramatically improved support for grouping files into packages, it’s a snap to group products and features into a single installer. There’s even support for categories so you can group your packages into logical components. It’s the ultimate in flexibility for those large projects that need to support different installation types like typical, minimum, complete and custom.

Dependency Modules & Runtime Support
Instantly add runtime support for many popular third-party technologies, including Visual Basic 5.0, Visual Basic 6.0, DCOM, JET, MDAC, Visual C++ and more. Additional dependency modules are easy to create and integrate seamlessly into the development environment. Setup Factory 8 gives you complete control over the detection and installation of each module, so you can easily adjust the behavior to suite your particular requirements.

NEW! Latest Technologies
In addition to the classic modules like Visual Basic 5.0/6.0, DCOM, JET and MDAC – Setup Factory 8.0 now includes easy-to-use runtime dependency modules for the newest and most popular technologies like .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5, SQL Express 2005, Visual C++ 2008 and Windows Installer 3.1 v2.

International Language Support
Setup Factory 8 offers unsurpassed support for multilingual installations right out of the box. While some products charge you extra for this essential feature (or don’t offer it at all), Setup Factory 8 gives you everything you need to support your customers and clients around the world. Installers created with Setup Factory can automatically determine the language of the client operating system and adjust the display of screens and messages appropriately. Whether you need to support English, French, German, Spanish, Italian or any other language recognized by Windows, with Setup Factory 8.0 you simply provide the text and your installer takes care of the rest!

NEW! LZMA Data Compression
With Setup Factory 8’s new high performance LZMA data compression, you’ll see remarkably smaller installers as well as faster installation performance than ever before. Compared to Setup Factory 7, our test results show up to 300% better compression performance and up to 20% faster installation speed. You’ll be able to fit more on each CD/DVD (that’s a potentially huge manufacturing cost savings) and reduce your bandwidth for Internet distributed installers (that saves both you and your customers time and money). Additionally, customers will notice that your installers finish faster – and that means happier customers!

NEW! Automatic Authenticode Signing
It’s never been faster or easier to “codesign” your installer executable. Authenticode signing is incredibly important for both Internet downloads and Vista compatibility. Simply point Setup Factory 8 to your certificate and private key files, give it the description information and it will automatically sign your setup.exe during the build process.

Customize the Look of Your Installer

Install Wizard Screens
Over 20 pre-built layouts handle just about any task your installer could want, and it’s easy to adjust them to fit your needs exactly using the advanced dialog editor. There’s everything from check boxes, radio buttons and edit fields to popular screens like license agreements, serial number verification, shortcut folder selection and other advanced options. Each screen features a real-time preview so you can see the result of your changes as you work.

Themes and Skins
Choose from dozens of pre-made themes (skins) for your screens or even make your own. It’s as easy as viewing a live dialog preview and picking your favorite style. You can configure everything from fonts (face, color, size, style) and banner images to body/background graphics, control colors (buttons, check boxes, radio buttons) and more. Whether your installer needs a corporate feel or a hip attitude, you can do it with Setup Factory 8!

NEW! Visual Dialog Editor
One of your most asked for features is finally here. You now have the freedom to create your own custom dialogs from scratch! Start off with an empty wizard dialog and then drop whatever controls you require onto it. Resize them, reposition them, call script code and much more. It’s fully featured and totally visual. When one of the built-in dialogs doesn’t get you where you want to go, the new visual dialog editor is sure to fit the bill.

Background Window Options
Choose between the traditional setup-wizard style or the modern Windows Installer style interface. You can customize the background window with gradients, images, color washes, headlines and footer text with 3D effects. Now you can also select a custom taskbar icon, force the setup window to remain on top of other windows or even hide the taskbar icon completely for totally silent installs.

NEW! Custom Setup Icon and Version Resource Info
You can now change the embedded setup.exe icon as well as the embedded version resource information (comments, product version, company name, product name, description, trademark, copyright etc.). While other installers force you to display their branding to your customers, Setup Factory 8 gives you the freedom to brand your installer however you see fit.

Scripting System for 100% Flexibility

Powerful Scripting Engine
Setup Factory incorporates an incredibly powerful free-form scripting engine. Based on the popular LUA language, this easy to understand scripting language features everything from “for, repeat and while” loops, to “if/else” conditions, functions, variables and tables (associative arrays). Paired with the built-in action library, full mathematical evaluation and Boolean expressions, there’s simply nothing you can’t achieve. Of course, we’ve also built in an “Action Wizard” and “Code Wizard” so even complete novices can create powerful installers that handle even the most demanding installation tasks.

Extensive Action Library
Setup Factory comes with a built-in library of more than 360 easy to use actions, so you can do whatever you need without having to be an advanced programmer. There are actions to handle everything from text file editing to system registry changes. You can execute programs, call DLL functions, query drive information, manipulate strings, copy files, enumerate processes, start and stop services, interact with web scripts, display dialog boxes and much more.

Fill-in-the-Blanks Style Action Wizard
You don’t have to be a wizard to create powerful installers with Setup Factory 8. We’ve built the wizard into the software! Simply choose the action you want from a categorized list (complete with on-screen interactive help), fill in the requested information fields and the wizard does the rest. You don’t have to know anything about scripting or programming – just fill in the blanks and you’re done. Making changes is just as easy. Click on the line you want to change and press the “edit” button to go back to the original form. It’s really that easy.

Color Syntax Highlighting Action Editor
If you’ve outgrown the Action Wizard interface or simply want to unleash the power of the fast and efficient scripting engine, we’ve got you covered. The Setup Factory 8 freeform action editor features all of the professional features you’d expect. There’s color syntax highlighting, code completion, function highlighting, as-you-type action prototypes, Ctrl+Space function listings and even context-sensitive help. If you’re used to programming in Microsoft® Visual Basic, Microsoft® Visual C++ or any other modern development language, you’ll be right at home.

NEW! Stand Alone Script Editor
Setup Factory 8.0 now includes the Indigo Rose Script Editor application. This new stand-alone program allows you to edit your installer scripts outside of the Setup Factory 8 IDE. Includes support for syntax highlighting, intellisense code completion and help file integration. Simply run “IRScriptEditor.exe” from the Setup Factory 8 program folder.

NEW! Extensive MSI Action Library
For when you want your Setup Factory 8 “script” installer to interact with “MSI” installers like Indigo Rose’s MSI Factory. These new actions leverage the Windows Installer service technology on the user’s system. They make it easy to query the state of products, features and components on the user’s system that were installed with a MSI Windows Installer package.

Expandable with Action Plugins
Setup Factory 8 can be easily expanded with Action Plugins. These plugin modules can extend the product in infinitely powerful ways, such as adding support for databases, XML, data encryption and FTP file transfers. Tight integration with the design environment – including IntelliSense style code completion and syntax highlighting – makes them just as easy to use as built-in actions. Plugins are available through Indigo Rose as well as third-party developers thanks to Indigo Rose’s freely available plugin development kit.

NEW! Custom Error Handling Events
Sometimes things go wrong during install or uninstall. Perhaps the user doesn’t have the correct system requirements, or is missing a required application. With Setup Factory 8 you can either let the installer handle it with intelligent defaults, or you can now trigger script code thanks to the new “On Install Error” and “On Uninstall Error” events. These events are fired when an error occurs during the setup or uninstall, allowing you to handle it in a custom way.

NEW! More Script Actions than Ever
Setup Factory 8 now comes with over 360 high level functions (actions) for use in your installer scripts. That’s 40+ more than in v7.0. We’ve built in some real goodies too, such as the new MSI action library.

Productivity & Team Development

Built-in Spelling Checker
Now it’s easier than ever to make sure that typos don’t creep into your projects. Basically anywhere you can type, you can perform a spell check to ensure error-free text. Dictionaries are available for over a dozen languages including English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Croatian, Czech, Polish and Slovenian.

Reports and Logs
Keeping track of the essential details of your installation project is now just a couple of clicks away. With improved HTML-based project reports (featuring CSS formatting) and text-based install-time log files, you’ll have an accurate record of everything you need. New options let you control the level of detail being logged, including options for recording errors and script actions.

Silent Installs
Create silent installations that operate without displaying user interface dialogs, prompts, messages or errors. Easily read command defaults from a response file and control the installation automatically. Silent installs let you maintain control over hundreds or thousands of workstations while enforcing corporate standards. New options let you enable silent installs with a command line switch, or even force the installer to always run in unattended mode. Setup Factory 8 installers automatically return command line status codes and can be easily called from batch files and automatic build processes.

Visual Basic Project Scanner
If you’re creating installers for your Visual Basic projects, then look no further! Setup Factory can analyze your VB project and automatically add the necessary runtime files and dependencies for you. There’s even an advanced executable scanner that can assist you in determining required DLL’s and libraries for those difficult to manage multi-team projects.

Unattended Builds
Setup Factory 8 fits seamlessly into your daily build process. Creating your product installer every time you build your source code makes it easy to test early and often. Simply include your Setup Factory project in your build process to run automatically and output a finished setup.exe.

NEW! Plays Well with Source Control
For those of you who prefer to keep your Setup Factory project files in a source control system, we’ve made it possible to turn off the recording of file time, statistical data, and version information inside the project file. This makes it much easier to add Setup Factory project files to source control and not trigger immaterial “changes.”

100% Compatible

Works with Windows 95 through Windows 7
While other installer tools are dropping support for older operating systems such as Windows 95 and 98, we believe that your choice of installation builder shouldn’t limit your potential market. Setups created with Setup Factory 8 work just fine on every Windows operating system from Windows 95 to Windows 7.

NEW! Updated for Windows 7, Vista, XP, Server 2003 and Server 2008
Build your installer with Setup Factory 8.2 and relax. We’ve included all of the latest OS detections, automatically populated built-in variables with the latest “popular” folder locations (e.g. CommonDocumentsFolder, MyMusicFolder, MyPicturesFolder, MyVideosFolder) and built-in the smarts so your installer will work on the newest operating systems as well as legacy systems all the way back to Windows 95. Ask the competition if they can do that…

NEW! 64 Bit Windows
There is now a new global variable that returns the location of “_ProgramFilesFolder64″ as well as session variables for locating “%ProgramFilesFolder64%” and “%CommonFilesFolder64%.”

Comprehensive User’s Guide

We listened when you said you wanted more learning resources. The new user’s guide has been written from scratch to cover everything you need to know to create professional installers. You’ll learn everything from basics like working with files and customizing the user interface all the way up to lessons on mastering the scripting language and creating multilingual installers. It’s sure nice to have when you want to move beyond the wizards and get the most out of your software investment.

Setup Factory

Setup Factory Product Brochure

Creating a professional software installer doesn’t have to be a chore. With Setup Factory 8 you simply drag and drop your files onto the project window and click the build button. It’s really that simple. On the other hand, Setup Factory 8 also gives you full control over the installation system with its powerful yet easy-to-use scripting language. For years we’ve been winning customers from other installation tools because of our strong user community and our refreshingly personal product support.

Click here to download a printable Setup Factory 8 brochure

Note: This brochure in Adobe Acrobat PDF format. You may need to download and install the Adobe Reader software in order to view it.

Setup Factory

Download a Free Trial Version of Setup Factory 8.2

The best way to decide if Setup Factory 8 is right for you, is to download the free 30-day trial version. The trial version is fully functional, so you’ll be able to really “kick the tires” and see what it can do.

To download the free trial version, please enter your information into the fields below. We’ll email you the download instructions within minutes of submitting your request.

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Note: By submitting this form, you agree to receive followup emails regarding Setup Factory. You may unsubscribe from these emails at any time. We do not sell, rent or give away your email address to anyone. We only use it to keep you informed about Setup Factory and how to get the most out of your free trial.

Setup Factory

Frequently Asked Questions for Setup Factory

Setup Factory 8 is your best choice for creating rock-solid software installers, in a timely and efficient manner. Compared to other products, Setup Factory is easier to learn and faster to work with. Yet, it produces a professional setup.exe file that is smaller, quicker and more customizable than the high priced competitive tools.

Here are some answers to common questions about Setup Factory 8…

What’s New in Setup Factory 8?

Setup Factory 8 includes hundreds of improvements since v7.0 was released. There are dozens of little productivity boosting gems and tons of enhancements that make this major new version better than any other.

Who needs Setup Factory?

If you are creating software applications that need to be installed on your customer’s computers, you definitely need Setup Factory. But, it’s is not just for software developers. Anyone distributing files or data can benefit from using a professional installation builder. It makes it easy to deploy your data, ensure it arrives intact, create start menu and desktop icons, or any other system configurations you require.

What Can I do with Setup Factory?

With Setup Factory you can create professional, secure, full-featured installers. Setups created with Setup Factory are 100% self-contained; i.e. the setups do not require any external technologies to be installed. As well, because published setups are self-contained executable files, they are perfect for web downloads or CD/DVD distribution. You can use Setup Factory 8.0 to package up your software for distribution, or to securely package up internal documents to distribute to your sales-force. The possibilities are limitless.

Does Setup Factory 8 support Windows 7, Vista and XP?

Yes! Setup Factory 8 officially supports Windows 7, Vista and XP. In fact, installs created with Setup Factory can be used on any version of windows, from Windows 95 through Windows 7 and Server 2008. We work hard to ensure your installer is compatible with the widest range of Windows operating systems possible.

How easy is it to learn?

Setup Factory boasts an easy-to-use, task based visual design environment. When creating a new project for the first time, you will be presented with the New Project wizard, allowing you to create a fully functional setup in just minutes. Once you have a wizard-created project, it’s a snap to add new screens from the screen gallery, as well as customize existing ones. Adding additional files and folders to your project is just as easy through the intuitive drag-and-drop interface. And with hundreds of high-level actions available through the user-friendly action wizard, adding complex functionality has never been easier!

Do I have to be a programmer to use Setup Factory?

Absolutely not! Using the Project Wizard, even beginners can create a fully functional setup in just minutes. And with an intuitive user interface, customization is accomplished in the same point-and-click fashion.

Can I patch my software with Setup Factory?

Setup Factory was designed to package up a complete version of your software and install it on a user’s system. While this can certainly update a system to the latest release, it is not as efficient as using a dedicated patch builder. Our Visual Patch product is more suited for creating software patches.

Can I secure my installs with serial numbers?

Absolutely! Setup Factory has built-in support for serial number lists. You can generate random serial numbers within Setup Factory based on a structure you specify, or you can import a list of serial numbers from a text file. Then, simply add a pre-made or custom serial number screen to your setup, ensuring that it will not function without a valid serial number.

Can my setup check with my server to see if a serial number is valid?

Yes! Setup Factory includes various actions for interacting with a web server. Integrating your setups with a web-verification system has never been easier! Simply have your setup submit the given serial number to a web server, and choose how to continue based on the returned result.

Can I make my setups expire?

Yes! Setup Factory has built-in support for setup expiry. You can configure your setup to expire after it has been run a certain amount of times, after a specific date has passed, or both.

Can I make a setup that spans multiple disks?

Yes! Setup Factory can automatically split your setup file into either pre-determined or custom sized segments, perfect for distribution on media of any size.

Does Setup Factory require Windows Installer MSI services?

No. Setup Factory creates stand-alone, bullet proof setups that run on any PC using Windows 95B or higher. Setups created with Setup Factory are self-contained; they do not require any external technologies to run. With that in mind, Setup Factory can run any file supported by your user’s system, including Windows Installer MSI files — it just does not need or create them. If you would like to create MSI installers, please consider our MSI Factory product.

Does Setup Factory support installation components (packages)?

Yes! Thanks to the built-in support for packages, your setups can have as many (or as few) packages as you like. Create one setup that contains both required and optional components, and allow your user to choose which components are installed and which ones are not.

Can my setup download files from the web?

Yes! Setup Factory comes with a variety of built-in actions to interact with a web server. Thanks to the intuitive design environment and easy-to-use scripting language, your setups can be configured to download any files from your HTTP or HTTPS server. You can create a setup that downloads only the components to be installed, saving bandwidth costs.

Can Setup Factory work with registry values and INI files?

Yes! Setup Factory comes standard with easy-to-use actions for reading from and writing to the user’s registry as well as reading from and writing to INI files. As well, there are actions to determine if the user has the appropriate permissions to read from and/or write to the registry or to INI files.

Can I open my v7.0 Projects in Setup Factory 8?

Yes! Upgrading to Setup Factory 8 is completely hassle-free. Simply open up your Setup Factory 7.0 project file and go. That’s it! 

System Requirements

In order to build installers, a developer requires:

• Windows 7, Vista, or XP
• 1 GB RAM
• 1024×768 display resolution
• 5 GB free hard drive space

In order to run the setups, an end user requires:

• Windows 95/98/ME/NT4(SP6)/2000/XP/Vista/7/Server 2003/Server 2008
• 256 MB RAM
• 640×480 display resolution
• 100 MB free hard drive space + data space

Setup Factory

Choosing Between Setup Factory and MSI Factory

Setup Factory 8.0 and MSI Factory 2.0 are the two different installer development tools created by Indigo Rose Software. While they ultimate perform the same task, they approach it from different angles.

Both products support all standard installation functionality, such as installing and removing files, making changes to the Registry, modifying INI files, registering controls, etc. (See the features page for either product for a full list of their features.) The chart below outlines the similarities and differences in some key areas that may affect your purchasing decision.

Feature	Setup Factory 8.0	MSI Factory 2.0
Creates MSI (Windows Installer) packages	No	Yes
Supports a free-form “scripted” approach for setup logic	Yes	No
Level of flexibility	High	Medium
Create self-extracting executable setups (i.e. “setup.exe” files)	Yes	Yes
Create installers that run on Windows 98-Vista	Yes	Yes
Create “Certified for Windows Vista” compliant installers	No	Yes
Create “Works with Windows Vista” compliant installers	Yes	Yes
Register COM (ActiveX) controls	Yes	Yes
Install .NET Assemblies to the Global Assembly Cache (GAC)	No	Yes
Supports the use of Windows Installer merge modules	No	Yes
Install Internet Information Services (IIS) Websites, virtual directories, etc.	No	Yes
Supports automatic uninstall	Yes	Yes
Supports “repair” mode	No	Yes
Flexible configuration of installer dialogs	Yes	Yes
Free-form dialog editor	Yes	Yes
Detect and install third-party technologies	Yes	Yes
Supports more than one language/localization per installer	Yes	No*
Can be used to create Windows Installer merge modules	No	Yes
Built in WiX support	No	Yes
Custom LUA scripting support	Yes	Yes

 

Summary & Recommendation on How to Choose

The fundamental architectural difference between the two products is that Setup Factory 8.0 uses its own proprietary, self-contained setup engine to perform the installation. It includes a powerful built-in scripting language to control the installation procedurally. As such, it is very flexible and configurable.

MSI Factory 2.0, on the other hand, creates Windows Installer packages (.MSI files) that are interpreted and run by the Windows Installer Service which must be pre-installed on the end user’s system. Like all standard MSI installers, these are essentially database files that describe the installation in a declarative fashion, and must abide by the rules of the Windows Installer technology.

Although both products are easy to use, many people find that Setup Factory is both easier to use and more straightforward. This is because of its procedural approach, rather than the declarative approach of the MSI Windows Installer technology (the .MSI technology is inherently more complicated and will require you to learn some new and potentially foreign concepts).

Ultimately, if the chart above does not lead you to a clear choice based on your requirements, you should evaluate the free trial versions of both products and see for yourself.

As a general recommendation, if you do not require an .MSI based installer for your product, then we’d recommend that you choose Setup Factory as your installer builder. If you know that your development requirement calls for an .MSI format installer, then your choice is clear that MSI Factory is best for you.

* Each Windows Installer package can only support one language – this is a limitation of the Windows Installer technology itself. However, MSI Factory 2.0 does allow you to design your installer in multiple languages from one source project and then lets you choose the target language each time that you build.

Setup Factory

Setup Factory Screenshot Gallery

Join the thousands of developers who have made the switch to Setup Factory. Simply drag and drop files and folders onto the project window and you’re ready to build. It’s everything you need to make rock-solid professional software installers for Windows. Features include a visual dialog editor, multilingual support, MD5 serial numbers, single-file LZMA compressed setup.exe, powerful scripting engine with over 360+ functions and much more. Our tools are trusted by 20,000+ developers worldwide!

Click on any of the screenshot images below to see a larger, more detailed version.

Setup Factory

Video Tutorials for Setup Factory

Learn all about Setup Factory. These videos were created for Setup Factory 7.0, but are fully compatible with Setup Factory 8.

Setup Factory 7 Training Chapter 1

Setup Factory 7 Training Chapter 2

Setup Factory 7 Training Chapter 3

Setup Factory 7 Training Chapter 4

Setup Factory 7 Training Chapter 5

Setup Factory

Setup Factory User’s Guide

It is extrememly easy to get started with Setup Factory 8. You’ll be able to create your first installer project in no time. However, there is a lot of power hiding under the hood!

The easiest way to get started is to just boot up the software and create your first project using the Project Wizard. It’ll walk you through all the steps needed to create a standard installer for your software. If you have any questions about what a particular dialog box option does, just click on the Help button to get a full description. Many people never need to learn anything else…

However, if you enjoy learning everything there is to know about your software (and maybe getting your hands a little dirty), the Help menu is your friend. That’s were you’ll find links to both the User’s Guide and the full Help File/Command Reference.

We’ve also made these resource available to you online in “webhelp” format, if you’d like to take a peek before installing the software.

Click Here to View the Setup Factory 8.0 User’s Guide