Category: Tips

If you already have created a folder structure on your hard drive, with the files that you want to install, and want to create a similar folder structure on the destination drive, there is a very useful function in Visual Installer that you can use. The name of the function is Add tree and you can access it via the List menu in Visual Installer, by choosing the List – Add – Add tree menu item (see the picture below):

After you have chosen this menu item, the following dialog box is shown:

Via this dialog box you can browse to the folder, with sub folders and files, that you want to add to Visual Installer’s file list. For example like:

You can see the current folder path to the right of the Folder field name in the dialog box.

After you have selected your folder, you can click on the OK button to continue. The following dialog box will now be shown:

In the option frame (above the three buttons) you can choose how the folder structure will be built in Visual Installer’s file list. You can choose between replacing the root level of the folder tree with the %DESTDIR variable, or add the folder tree to the %DESTDIR variable.

When you have decided how you want to build the folder tree, you can press the Add files button. Now Visual Installer’s file list will be filled with the files and folders. And you can see how many files that were collected in the No. files field name in the dialog box:

To return to the file list, just press Close in the dialog box.

How to obtain only folders of a folder tree
Instead of collecting the files in a folder tree you can also extract only the folders (directories) of the tree and skip all files. In this blog post we explain how to do this.

With the Add tree function in Visual Installer you can add a folder structure including files to Visual Installer’s file list in an easy way. It is also possible to add a folder structure without files to Visual Installer’s file list with the same Add tree function. We will show below how to do this.

1. Open the List menu and choose the Add – Add tree menu item.

2. Select a folder in the Select folder dialog box and click OK.

3. Click on the More options button in the Collect files from folders and sub folders dialog box that now appears.

4. Select the Only add folders option in the More options dialog box that now is shown.

5. Click OK to close the dialog box. The text in the previous opened dialog box will be updated to:

6. Now click on the Add folders button to start collecting folder. All folders and sub folders in the selected folder (in step 2) will be added to Visual Installer’s file list. The number of collected folders will be displayed after the No. files field name in the dialog box.

7. Click the Close button in the dialog box to return to the file list.

We have added new conditions to Visual Installer’s script language that can be used to:

• check whether Microsoft Office is installed in the computer or not
• check if the installed Microsoft Office is 32 bit or 64 bit

This can be useful if you for example:

• install files that require that Microsoft Office is installed in the computer
• install files that require a specific bitness of Microsoft Office (for example 32 bit Office)
• want to install different files depending on the bitness of Microsoft Office

You can read more in this blog post:

> How to check if Microsoft Office is installed during an installation

When using the script language in Visual Installer, it may sometimes be useful to see in detail what happen when the script lines are executed. To get detailed information about the execution of script commands, you can activate a log function in Visual Installer’s script language. When the log is activated, detailed information about every script line that is executed are stored in a log file. Here you can see the contents of the parameters that are passed to the script commands and see the return value (for example error codes) of every command. If you use variables in the script (for example %DESTDIR) you can see their actual values.

How to activate the log function
To activate the log function, you can use the USELOG script command. To enable the log, enter the following in the beginning of your script code:

USELOG 1

As default, the log file is stored in the main destination folder of the installation (the folder path that is stored in the %DESTDIR variable) but you can also specify your own folder for the log file via parameter 2. For example:

USELOG 1, C:\MyLogFolder

To turn off the log, somewhere in the script, you can enter the following:

USELOG 0

If you want to log all lines in the script, you don’t need to turn off the log at the end. It will be turned off automatically after the last executed script line.

In the picture below, you can see an example of how the USELOG command can be used:

And below is an example of how the log file may look like:

If a script command succeeds, it returns OK. Otherwise it returns ERROR and an error code. Below is an example of how the log file may look like if an error occurs:

Most error codes can be found on this web page at Microsoft’s web site:

> Windows Dev Center: System Error Codes (0-499)

Some common error codes are:

2 : File not found!
3 : Path not found!
5 : Access denied!
183 : File already exists!

Filenames
The filename of the log file is Vinstall-Script–Before.log if the script lines are executed in the Before installation tab in the Execute script commands window in Visual Installer, and the filename is Vinstall-Script–After.log if the script lines are executed in the After installation tab in the same window. The filenames can not be changed, but you can change the folder where the log files are stored (as described above).

See also
> Visual Installer’s Scripting Language

In Visual Installer it is possible to block specific license keys from be accepted during an installation. This is useful when using prime number based license keys because they are created and verified mathematically. So if the license key is evaluated correctly, it will be accepted.

In Visual Installer you can create a block list with prime number based license keys that should not be accepted, although they are mathematically correct. This is done via the Block List dialog box in Visual Installer:

In this dialog box you can enter a list with license keys that should not be accepted by Visual Installer during an installation. The block list is stored per installation project and is saved with the .VIP project file. So it is not a global block list. It only adds the block list to the specific installation project.

Where to find the ‘Block List’ dialog box?
You can open the Block List dialog box by following these steps:

1. Open the Dialog boxes tab in Visual Installer’s editor.
2. Click on the “…” button to the right of the License key option.
3. Click on the More options button.
4. Click on the Block List button.

In the Block List dialog box that is now opened you can enter a list with license keys to block. One license key per row. You can also specify an information message that is shown to the user if he/she enters a blocked license key. If no text is specified, a default text is used.

Note
Both prime number based license keys and static license keys can be blocked with this method, although this function is most useful when used with prime number based license keys.

See also
> Visual Installer: Prime number based license keys
> Visual Installer can show visually when a license key is correct
> The setup wizard in Visual Installer