samlogic, Author at SamLogic Software Blog

2016-03-012019-07-07

Visual Installer now supports SHA-2 and dual code signing

Since January 1, 2016, Windows 7 and newer Windows will no longer trust software that is signed with a SHA-1 code signing certificate, if the software is downloaded from the Internet and the software is time-stamped with a value greater than January 1, 2016. This means that if you code sign a binary file (for example an EXE file) this year and uses SHA-1 as a hash algorithm, it will not be trusted in newer Windows. Instead you must use a SHA-2 (SHA-256) code signing certificate; then the binary file will be trusted by Windows 7 and newer. You can read more about this in the following articles on Microsoft’s website:

> Windows Enforcement of Authenticode Code Signing and Timestamping
> Deprecation of SHA-1 Hashing Algorithm for Microsoft Root Certificate Program

Updated Visual Installer
We have updated our installation tool Visual Installer to support SHA-2 (SHA-256) when it code signs a setup package. We have also updated Visual Installer to support dual signing, so you can code sign a setup package with both SHA-1 and SHA-2. This is very useful if you have software that should be able to run also in older Windows (for example in Windows XP). By code signing a setup package twice, first with SHA-1 and then with SHA-2, your code sign certificate will be useful in both older Windows and newer Windows.

How to change hash algorithm from SHA-1 to SHA-2
In Visual Installer you can change the hash algorithm from SHA-1 to SHA-2, for an existing project, by following the steps below:

1. Start Visual Installer
2. Open your project
3. Choose the Special – Setup options menu item
4. Open the Code Signing tab in the Setup options dialog box
5. Open the Option sub tab
6. Select the Use SHA-2 option

Code Signing - Use SHA-2

7. Close the dialog box

If your minimum system requirements is Windows 7, you can use SHA-2 as a hash algorithm. But if you also want to support older Windows, follow the steps below:

How to dual sign a setup package (SHA-1 and SHA-2)
1. Start Visual Installer
2. Open your project
3. Choose the Special – Setup options menu item
4. Open the Code Signing tab in the Setup options dialog box
5. Open the Option sub tab
6. Select the Use SHA-1 and SHA-2 (recommended) option

Code Signing -Use SHA-1 and SHA-2

7. Close the dialog box

When you open your project file
If you have installed the latest version of Visual Installer 2015 (version 10.5.16 or later) and opens a project file, you may see this message box when you open your project:

Update SignTool.exe

It is recommended to answer yes, so the latest version of Microsoft’s code signing tool is used when a setup package is code signed. If you want to dual sign a setup package, you must have a quite new version of the code signing tool. You can read more in this blog post.

Available in Visual Installer 2015 version 10.5.16 and later
The functionality described above is available in Visual Installer 2015 version 10.5.16 and later; in both the Standard and Professional versions of Visual Installer. If you have an active 1 or 12 months maintenance plan for Visual Installer 2015, you can download this update for free from our download page.

2016-03-012019-07-07

What is SHA-1 and SHA-2 and what’s the difference between them?

As we wrote in this blog post, Visual Installer now supports both SHA-1 and SHA-2 hash algorithms when it code signs setup packages. But maybe you wonder what this really means and what the difference is between SHA-1 and SHA-2? We will give a short explanation below.

SHA (in SHA-1 and SHA-2) is an acronym for Secure Hash Algorithm. SHA-1 and SHA-2 is a set of cryptographic hash functions designed by NSA. Cryptographic hash functions are mathematical operations run on digital data, and by comparing a computed “hash” (the output from an execution of the algorithm) to a known and expected hash value, it is possible to determine the integrity of the data. For example, computing the hash of a downloaded file and comparing the result to a known hash result can show if the downloaded file has been modified or tampered with since it was created.

SHA-1 is older than SHA-2 and it is no longer considered as secure. Operating systems (as Windows) and web browsers will soon not accept SHA-1 anymore. Instead must SHA-2 be used. SHA-2 is a family of six hash functions and one of them is SHA-256, which is commonly used when code signing binary files (for example program files, DLL files and setup packages). SHA-256 produces a 256 bit hash value. That is more than the older SHA-1, that only produces a 160 bit hash value.

For further reading, we recommend the following Wikipedia pages:
> Secure Hash Algorithm
> SHA-1 (Secure Hash Algorithm 1)
> SHA-2 (Secure Hash Algorithm 2)

2016-03-012019-07-07

Where can I find the latest version of signtool.exe?

When Visual Installer signs a setup package, it runs an external signer tool. Before you could choose between signcode.exe or signtool.exe, but today it is strongly recommended to use signtool.exe because it is newer, and it is the only one that supports SHA-2.

The signtool.exe tool is installed with Visual Studio and with Windows SDK, and Visual Installer will normally find the newest installed version by itself. But if not, you can select the program file manually in Visual Installer’s editor. If you don’t know where it is located, you can search for “signtool.exe” in Windows Explorer.

Try to choose the newest version of signtool.exe that you can find on your hard drive. If you want to dual sign your setup package (with SHA-1 and SHA-2) you must use the signtool.exe tool version that is shipped with Windows 8.1 SDK or Windows 10 SDK. They are usually located in the following folders:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.1\bin\x86
C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\x86

If you don’t have any of these folders on your hard disk, you may have not installed Windows 8.1 SDK or Windows 10 SDK. But these SDK:s can be downloaded for free from Microsoft’s website:

> Windows Software Development Kit (SDK) for Windows 8.1
> Windows Software Development Kit (SDK) for Windows 10

2016-02-212019-07-08

CD-Menu Creator’s button commands explained

Buttons are an important part of a menu interface that is created with CD-Menu Creator. By clicking on buttons the end-user can run programs, open documents, play videos, open web pages, open sub menus, and much more.

To every menu interface button you can select a command that will be executed when the end-user clicks on the button. You can select a command via the Command combo box in the Add Button or Edit Button dialog box.

Below we have listed all button commands that CD-Menu Creator supports. In some cases you can click on a link to read more about the button command and get an example of how to use the command.

Button Commands

Run Program
Choose this command if you want to run a program or start an installation when the button is clicked. This command can be used to run both an EXE file and an MSI file.

Run Program & Close
As above, but the menu interface is automatically closed when the button is clicked.

Show Document
Choose this command if you want to open a document when the button is clicked; for example open a PDF document, a word document, a text file or an HTML document.

Show Internet Page
Choose this command if you want to open a web site or web page on the Internet. It can also be used to open a PDF document on the Internet. If you want to open a HTML page that is distributed with your menu, you can use the Show Document command instead.

Play Movie
Choose this command if you want to play a video when the button is clicked. You can choose between playing the video in a menu window or playing the video using Windows Media Player.

Play Music
Choose this command if you want to play music or play a sound clip when the button is clicked.

Play Flash Animation
Choose this command if you want to show a flash animation. It can also be used to show a video that is saved in the SWF file format.

Show RTF Document
Shows a RTF document in a built-in window. This is useful if you want to show short formated text. No external document viewer needs to be opened.

Open Excel File
Opens an Excel file. Read more about this command here.

Open Picture Gallery
Opens a picture gallery when the button is clicked. If you have some photos or drawings that you want to arrange in a gallery you can use this command. This command can also be used to handle a video clip gallery.

Open Folder
If you want to open a folder on the same drive as the menu when the button is clicked, you can choose this command. The folder will be opened in Windows Explorer.

Send E-mail
If you choose this command and a user clicks on the button, his/her e-mail client will be opened. You can specify a receiver (an e-mail address) and a subject line that is pre-filled, when the e-mail client is opened.

Open New Menu
Opens a new menu with other buttons created with CD-Menu Creator, for example a sub menu.

Return To Previous Menu
Co-operates with the Open New Menu command. Returns to the previous menu, before this menu was opened.

Return To Main Menu
Co-operates with the Open New Menu command. Returns to the main menu. The main menu is typically the first menu that is shown when the CD/DVD or USB stick is inserted in the drive.

Exit
Closes the menu.

2016-02-182019-07-07

Visual Installer: If a specific version of .NET Framework is missing

We have improved Visual Installer’s behaviour in situations where a required version of Microsoft .NET Framework is missing in a computer. Before you could choose between stop the installation or warn the user if a specific version of .NET Framework was missing in the end-user´s computer. But now you can also let the end-user download the missing version of .NET Framework from the Internet and install it. Or, if you distribute .NET Framework with your software, you can start an installation of Microsoft .NET Framework directly from Visual Installer.

This was partially possible already in earlier versions of Visual Installer / Professional using script commands, but now this can be done without script. You can choose if you want this behaviour by selecting an option in Visual Installer’s editor.

How it works
If Visual Installer discovers during the installation of your software that the required version of Microsoft .NET Framework is missing, a mini wizard is started. The mini wizard will help the end-user to start an installation of .NET Framework. Visual Installer pauses the installation until .NET Framework is installed. The pictures below show an example of how it may look like:

Step 1 – Initial information
Step 1

Step 2 – Download information
Step 2

Step 3 – Information about how to continue
Step 3

Where to find this new functionality?
You can turn on and off this new functionality by opening the Special – Setup options menu item and opening the .NET tab:

Setup Options - .NET

In the .NET tab you will find a new option named Download and install .NET Framework. If you select this option, the new behaviour will be invoked if the required version of .NET is missing in the end-user’s computer. If you click on the Options button, you can set some options for this new function. You can for example specify your own download page if you don’t want to use the default download page at Microsoft’s website. You can also specify a language for the download page.

2016-02-182019-07-07

Visual Installer: More available versions of .NET Framework

We have increased the list of available versions of .NET Framework in Visual Installer to also include sub versions of .NET Framework, for example version 4.5.1, 4.5.2 etc. The picture below shows which versions of .NET Framework that Visual Installer currently supports:

More available versions of .NET Framework

Also the scripting language in Visual Installer have been extended to support the above versions.

You can use this functionality, for example, to install a missing version of .NET Framework or to run different tools depending of which versions of .NET Framework that are installed.

Available in Visual Installer 2015 version 10.5.15 and later
The extended list of supported .NET versions is available in Visual Installer 2015 version 10.5.15 and later. If you have an active 1 or 12 months maintenance plan for Visual Installer 2015, you can download this update for free from our download page.

2016-02-162019-07-07

CD-Menu Creator: How to open a folder from a menu

From a menu created with CD-Menu Creator you can run programs, show documents, show pictures, play videos, open web pages + much more. But if you only want to open a folder on the drive. Is it possible?

Yes. It is easy done. Follow the steps below to create a button that opens a folder on the same drive as the menu:

1. Start CD-Menu Creator.
2. Create a new project or open an existing project.
3. Open the Buttons (text) tab.
4. Click on the Add Button button.
5. Enter a button text at the Text (button) input box, for example “Open Folder”.
6. Choose the Open Folder command from the Command list.
7. Enter a folder name at Folder (disc). This is the folder that will be opened when the user clicks on the button. The Add Button dialog box should now look like this:

8. Click OK.
9. Create the menu.

If you have not created the folder (specified at step 7) on your drive yet, you can follow the steps below to create it:
10. Open the folder where the menu was created.
11. Add a sub folder in the creation folder with the same folder name that you specified at step 7 above. For example a sub folder with the folder name MyFolder.

Now you can test your menu. Click on the button in the menu interface that you created:

and the folder will be opened:

In the example above we have added three text files to the folder. But you can add what contents you want to the folder; for example pictures or videos.

2016-02-152020-10-30

CD-Menu Creator: How to open a web page from a menu

Besides opening documents on the local drive you can also open web pages on the Internet from a menu interface created with CD-Menu Creator. There is button command with the name Show Internet Page that can be used to open the web page.

If you choose this command from the Command combo box in the Add Button or Edit Button dialog box, a text box with the name Web Page (URL) is shown. Here you can enter a URL to a web site or web page on the Internet. For example:

http://www.samlogic.net/cd-menu-creator/cd-menu-creator.htm

Also PDF documents can be opened
You can also enter a URL to a PDF document on the web in the Web Page (URL) text box. For example:

http://www.mycompany.com/mydocuments/myuserguide.pdf

If you specify a URL to a PDF document, the PDF document will be opened in the end-user’s web browser. Specifying a URL to a PDF document on the Internet instead of specifying a file path to a local version of the PDF document (that is distributed with your CD/DVD or USB stick) can be a good idea if you update the PDF often. The end-user will then always have access to the latest version of your PDF document. But if you do not update the PDF so often, it is probably better to distribute the PDF with your menu and use the Show Document command in CD-Menu Creator to open the PDF.

If your URL contains uppercase letters
CD-Menu Creator converts normally uppercase letters in URL’s to lowercase letters, but if you need to preserve the uppercase letters in the URL, you can insert a @ character in the beginning of the URL. For example:

@http://www.mycompany.com/MyWebFolder/MyPage.htm

New setup dialog box in Visual Installer: User Options

We have added a new setup dialog box to the Professional version of Visual Installer. The name of the dialog box is User Options and it is a general dialog box where the user can select and unselect options that you add to the setup project. These options co-operates with conditional statements in Visual Installer’s scripting language and with Visual Installer’s Registry tab. Below is an example of how the User Options setup dialog box may look like and how it can be used:

In the example above we have added three options to the setup dialog box. The user can select and unselect the options of his/her choice.

To activate this dialog box, you need first open the Dialog boxes tab in Visual Installer’s editor and check the User options option:

Then you can click on the button marked “…” to the right of the option. This will open a new dialog box in the Visual Installer editor with the title User Options. Below we have filled the dialog box with the text and options that is needed to create the setup dialog box in the example above:

As you see, it is very easy to create a setup dialog box with your own options. You just need to enter a title, a short description text and your options. And it is done!

Co-operates with Visual Installer’s scripting language and ‘Registry’ tab
The main purpose of this new option dialog box is to let the end-user decide which script lines to execute and which keys and values to add to the Registry, during the setup process. This is a more flexible way to handle user choices than file components (file groups) because you don’t necessary need to copy files based on user choices; instead you can use Visual Installer’s whole scripting language to do whatever you want. This is useful if some special operations must be done, based on user choices.

Below we show how Visual Installer’s scripting language can co-operate with the User Options dialog box:

And below we show how the Registry tab in Visual Installer can co-operate with the User Options dialog box:

Scripting language
In Visual Installer’s scripting language we have added a new condition check, IF OPTION(n), that can be used to check which options the user has selected in the User Options setup dialog box. We have added a similar condition check to Visual Installer’s Registry tab: IF_OPTION(n).

The IF OPTION(n) condition in the script language can check both if an option is ON (selected) or OFF (unselected). So for example to examine if option 2 was selected by the end-user, you can enter the following condition:

IF OPTION(2)=ON
…
END IF

If you for example need to examine if option 3 was not selected, you can enter the following condition:

IF OPTION(3)=OFF
…
END IF

‘Registry’ tab
The condition check in the Registry tab works in a similar way. IF_OPTION(n) or IF_OPTION(n)=ON can be used to examine if an option was selected by the end-user. IF_OPTION(n)=OFF can be used to check if an option was not selected.

If you use IF_OPTION(n) and the option number n was selected by the end-user, the key or value will be added to the registry. The example below shows how to examine if option number 1 is selected, and if yes, add a value to registry:

2016-01-262023-07-12

Visual Installer’s scripting language now supports ELSE

SamLogic Visual Installer Logotype We have updated Visual Installer’s built-in scripting language so it now supports an ELSE statement. This will help creating simpler scripts in some situations.

For example, assume that you want to run a particular and specialized application or setup program in a specific version of Windows, and a general application or setup program in all other versions of Windows. Before you needed to cover all Windows version with IF statements and OS checks, but now you only need to check for one OS, and add an ELSE statement to cover the rest. Example:

Example how to use ELSE