Nero Lite updated installer
Last month I uploaded new builds to test some changes I made to the Nero Lite installer code to clean up the Automated Serial Entering code. Although the updated code worked in most situations, it was not reliable enough. I hope the new code works as good as it used to be.
Nero 7/8 Lite Build 1.17.2.2 changelog:
- Implement AutoItX dll calls (Automated serial entering)
- Improve filetype associations
- Fix Nero 7 English ProductSetup tool (Do you want to apply changes? prompt)
- Cleanup some temporary files after install
- Improve uninstall
You can download Nero 7 Lite here and Nero 8 Lite here.
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.