How can I make this install a little easier?

[silverspecv]

I run a web site that serves up streaming video. Some of the older videos were made with a certain codec that notbody has anymore, called Voxware Metasound.. We have a plug-in for it that works, but the installation is far too tricky for the average user, so we have to walk them through this annoying process 20 times a day. Here is a link to the plug-in

http://www.oncourselearning.com/videosupport/download/voxware.zip

Inside it is the main file, VOXACM.INF, which you install by right-clicking and choose install. Then there are some support files and a .DLL, etc. Then there is a SETUP.INF which is just a copy of the VOXACM.INF that I created to try to get people to right click it and choose install, and a SETUP.EXE that simply displays a windows popup box that tells the user to right click the inf and choose install. But it still is not enough. I need a 1-click solution of some kind so I can get these people off my phone. If I could also get rid of the need for WinZip that would be great too, because most of these people can't find their files once they extract them.

Anybody have any clever ideas or know of any programs that will take the name of an inf as an argument, or anything like that? I have searched, but found zilch,.. maybe I don't know what to search for

 

[bcastner]

I could script for you to you a push of the Codec, but why not just convert the thing to known codecs?

You own this video content, right?

 

[silverspecv]

Aha! I found it.. I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier, but since the inf file has a special right-click menu, I went into the windows file types dialog and dug down to .INF files, and clicked EDIT on the INSTALL item, and it gives this:

C:\WINDOWS\System32\rundll32.exe setupapi,InstallHinfSection DefaultInstall 132 %1

Anyway, I'm going to whip up a script with AutoIt 3.0 to make an EXE out of it and embed the files, etc.. it's gonna rule, god I can't wait to get this up on the site so people stop calling me about it

Oh yeah, I asked them why they didn't just recreate the movies too, and they told me we don't have source files, and the ones we have are already so poor quality that they can't bare to process them down another step.

 

[silverspecv]

As usual, my bright ideas come about 10 seconds after I post asking for help, but anyway, I was able to write an installer for this thing once I found that rundll syntax.. incidentally, the syntax is different for other version of windows, so I had to put a conditional in the script.

Anyway, here's a link to the setup, in case you're interested

http://www.oncourselearning.com/videosupport/download/setup_voxware.exe

And here's a like to the source code

http://63.208.2.144/setup_voxware.zip

You'll need AutoIt 3.0 to run it or compile it into an EXE

http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/

this ^^ is one of the coolest programs ever invented

 

[micker377]

my bright ideas come about 10 seconds after I post asking for help"

I find that often, when explaining a problem, the answer was there all the time!