Knowledge Base

Prompting the Installer Utility to Select Program Folder During the Installation

If a product does not prompt you for the installation folder, and you want to be able to select the target install folder, you can do one of the following actions.

Caution

For reasons unknown, if a GFortran installer is not installed to C:\ drive, then in some situations, it won’t work at all or won’t work properly.

Method 1 - Use a Command Line Argument

Launch the Installer with a command line argument, as shown below. The path can be double-quoted as shown below, however, if the path contains spaces, it must be double-quoted.

Installer.exe /InstallFolder="<absolute install folder path>"

Example:            

Installer.exe /InstallFolder="C:\Temp\123 "

In this approach, it still does not ask the user for the installation folder, but it now knows where you want the product to be installed.

Method 2 - Update the Installer Package Manifest

  • Extract the original installer package to a temporay folder.

  • Browse into the Product subfolder and extract that zip file, whatever it is called, into a second temp folder.

  • Open the manifest.xml file in Notepad or Notepad++.

    Caution
    Do not use Word or WordPad.

  • If the manifest contains the following:

<Setting Name="ConfirmInstallDir" Value="False" />

  • Then change the Value it so it looks like this:

<Setting Name="ConfirmInstallDir" Value="True" />

  • If the product is currently installed, you will also need to uninstall the product in order for this manifest change to be recognized.

    If the product is not currently install, there is no issue.

  • If the manifest is missing the ConfirmInstallDir line, then add the following line,

<Setting Name="ConfirmInstallDir" Value="True" />

  • In the <Setting...> section of the manifest, just after the <InstallDir...> line, similar to the example shown below

    Installer Utility - forcing user to be prompted for folder location.png (658 KB)
    Note
    It is important to ensure straight Notepad-style quotes are used, and not slanted Word-style quotes.

  • Save the updated manifest.

  • To ensure that the XML is not accidently corrupted, you can now double click the manifest, and it should launch it in your default web browser without errors. Close the web browser.

  • Now add the updated manifest back to the product zip file referenced in the second step.

  • Now add the updated product zip file for the above step, to the original installer package, reference in the first step.
     

In this approach, the installer will now always ask the user for the installation folder.

 

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