Windows Installer is becoming the "de facto" software installation technology on Windows. Being preinstalled on the latest Microsoft operating systems, and also bundled with the most popular productivity packages (Office, etc.) this software installer provides a significant number of power features that improve application management and administration.

This power doesn't come without pitfalls, and the most important of them all is the complexity. Creating an MSI file requires careful planning and editing of dozens of database tables.

Hundreds of pages of documentation must be read, countless lists of rules must be followed. Building a Windows Installer package may take days or even weeks. This is where a MSI creation tool comes to help.

Note: This is a unified package containing the complete Advanced Installer application, which includes Freeware, Professional, For Java, Enterprise and Architect features. Freeware features can be accessed at any time by creating a project of type "Simple".

What's New

Enhancements

  • Notify users when an invalid certificate is detected while setting up a Virtual Machine profile
  • Speed up the dialog UI loading when using Embedded UI or Enhanced User Interface
  • Update the Repackage profile to exclude registry entries under the Uninstall hive, preventing duplicate entries in the Control Panel for newly created MSIs
  • Improve the registry exclusion list used by the Repackager
  • Enable the "Copy To User Profile" custom action to overwrite existing files
  • Add additional search criteria when adding prerequisites via the CLI
  • Improved the "Existing Custom Actions" section in the Custom Actions view
  • Update the .NET custom action template to target .NET 8.0
  • Update MSIX schema for Windows 11 24H2 support
  • Predefined prerequisites and launch conditions for Java 23
  • Update .NET 8 prerequisites to the latest version 8.0.15
  • Update .NET 9 prerequisites to the latest version 9.0.4

Bug fixes

  • Fixed rare exception triggered when duplicating a macOS build
  • Long product names were not fully displayed on dialogs using the Classic theme
  • Corrected display issues with wizards on lower DPIs
  • Investigated and fixed frequent conversion issues in the Dialogs view
  • The "No Prefix" flag was ignored when "WinUI Rendering" option was set
  • Fixed tooltips for keyboard acceleration inside message boxes
  • The Appx manifest was invalid after editing and importing an MSIX package
  • The double colon character was stripped from the ReadMe link, resulting in an invalid URL
  • Fixed build errors related to .pri resources when importing MSIX/Appx files
  • The required attribute "Notification" was missing at build time when generating the assets
  • Removed unintended inclusion of AIStub when importing an MSIX package
  • Fixed a StackTrace error that occurred when opening an AppV package