Basixx Installer

If you are „the local computer professional“ who will be called if some comp fails, you will know how annoying it is to install the same stuff , ie: codecs; winrar etc, again and again. This is why silent installs got invented, to give you the possibility of automate such tasks. But then again, who wants to write batch files these days. And how about setups that doesn’t support silent/unattended installs?

About „Basixx Installer“

Purpose

This is where my new tool, Basixx Installer, jumps in – it will install software based on a „package database“. In this pseudo-database there is a entry for each software package. Every package has a name, filename, params… – and now comes the interesting part – … and a script. So you can a) define packages with params for unattended installs and more importantly b) define packages with a custom script (most likely a compiled AutoIt or maybe VBS) to automate the install process.

Pre-configured packages

If you gonna download it, you will also get a small predefined database for common stuff I install on my customers PCs. You will notice that some packages will be installed in german locale –  you can adjust this either by changing the params (InfraRecorder i.e) or by using a different installer package (Firefox i.e). The following packages comes predefined:

• AiO Runtimes (Usual Installer, automates itself) [German]
• CCCP – Combined Community Codec Pack (Usual Installer, just with params) [International]
• DirectX 9.0c (Custom Installer, created as WinRAR SFX out of the Aug. ’09 redist package) [German]
• Firefox 3.5.5 German (Custom Installer, created as WinRAR SFX out of the official package) [German]
• Adobe Flash for MSIE and others (Usual Installer, just with params) [International]
• FoxIt Reader (Usual MSI-Package, just with params) [International]
• Internet Explorer 8 (Full Installer, just with params) [German]
• InfraRecorder 0.5.0 (Usual MSI-Package, just with params) [International – need to adjust params, configured=german]
• IrfanView 4.2.5 (Usual Installer, just with params) [International]
• ESET NOD32 Antivirus 4 (Usual MSI-Package, just with params) [German]
• Winamp 5.56 (Usual Installer, custom script for automation) [German]
• WinRAR 3.90 (Usual Installer, just with params) [International]

Like you can see, i linked most install files needed to download. Except those i build myself, i don’t want to get into some kind of trouble for redistributing them. However, you can simply build them yourself. You can set the filename of the installer in the corresponding package (ini) file, or simply name the downloaded files like predefined in the packages.

The future

Planned features for the future:

• Multi-Language Support
• Tool/GUI to configure packages

Download

Contained in the package:

• „autorun.inf“ – You can place it along your „Basixx Installer“ distribution on a media to ease installation in case you wanna give it to your customer/clients
• „_Basixx_Installer.exe“ – The compiled script executable
• „update.ico“ – Icon file for distribution with „autorun.inf“ on media
• „\sourcecode“ – Wanna see how it works or change some stuff? You can find the AutoIt v3 source of the script in the folder \sourcecode along with the „Koda“ form draft
• „\packages“ – Pre-configured package info files listed above

For details about the package database and the package info files see the next page!