Some history…
I started the Nero Lite project about 2 years ago. At that time I just discovered how to build an unattended Windows XP setup. Using nLite I could gain some extra space on my installation cd, and I would like to have Nero included with it.
One problem, the Nero 7 installer was about 140 MB in size and including it would leave no space for anything else. As I didn’t need the full suite stripping the installer was the key to success. I read about modifying the existing installer on MSFN. It turned out to be a hard process and knowing modifications were different for each update I decided to build my own installer for Nero 7.
I chose Inno Setup for its ease of use and built in features, like the possibility to select different components and multi-language support.
Updating the Nero 7 Lite installer to the latest version was a lot of work each month, so automating the process was necessary. This was the beginning of the Nero Lite SDK.
When Nero 8 was released it was even bigger than Nero 7. Almost all binary files had loads of visual resources inside them. Nero 8 Lite would now become two times as big as Nero 7 Lite. I already had experience modifying resources for Nero 7 Micro, but trimming Nero 8 down was a much bigger project.
Automating this resulted in building resource scripts for every file included meanwhile keeping track of application breaking changes.
During this project I have fixed loads of bugs in the installer, implemented new features and tried to keep Nero working properly on each update. I even ported back most changes to support latest Nero 7 updates.
To maintain such a large project is very useful to me, and automating does save some time after all.
You can download latest Nero 7 Lite, Nero 8 Lite and Nero Lite SDK (for developers only) here.
Nero Lite 8.3.6.0
With the release of Nero 8.3.6.0 no longer is stored the demo serial inside the installer, so maybe Nero updates will be less frequent from now on.
I have not tested current builds, as I don’t burn that much lately. Please report any issues here.