Wrong size in Add/Remove Programs
Dear all,
Wonder if you can help, please?
I have this 180KB MSI (it deploys 3 shortcuts) that install absolutely nicely and does the job. The problem - it reports its size in Add/Remove Programs as 4,095.00MB - just a meg less than 4 GB.
I looked everywhere in the MSI, there isn't anything obvious to cause this erroneous size reporting.
I'm deploying the MSI on XP SP2 and wonder whether there isn't a bug causing XP to calculate the size wrong on installations that are less that 1MB, thus causing it to report the biggest single sized file that the Os can handle (4 GB, if I'm correct).
I'm open to any wisdom you wish to shell my way.
Thanks in advance
Moo
Wonder if you can help, please?
I have this 180KB MSI (it deploys 3 shortcuts) that install absolutely nicely and does the job. The problem - it reports its size in Add/Remove Programs as 4,095.00MB - just a meg less than 4 GB.
I looked everywhere in the MSI, there isn't anything obvious to cause this erroneous size reporting.
I'm deploying the MSI on XP SP2 and wonder whether there isn't a bug causing XP to calculate the size wrong on installations that are less that 1MB, thus causing it to report the biggest single sized file that the Os can handle (4 GB, if I'm correct).
I'm open to any wisdom you wish to shell my way.
Thanks in advance
Moo
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Posted by:
spartacus
17 years ago
Check out this article which explains why Windows can sometimes make a poor job of estimating the installed size of an application. I include the relevent extract below for convenience.
--------------------------------- Start of article Extract -----------------------------------------
But wait, there's more. There's also the program size. Add/Remove Programs looks in your "Program Files" directory for directories whose names share at least two words in common with the DisplayName. The best match is assumed to be the directory that the program files are installed into. The sizes are added together and reported as the size of "Awesome Program for Windows".
A program can add some properties to its registration to avoid a lot of this guessing. It can set an EstimatedSize property to avoid making Add/Remove Programs guess how big the program is. It can also set a DisplayIcon property to specify which icon to show for the program in the list.
------------------------------------------ End of Extract -------------------------------------------
If you want to populate this information yourself in a package, you can set the ARPSIZE property.
Regards,
Spartacus
--------------------------------- Start of article Extract -----------------------------------------
But wait, there's more. There's also the program size. Add/Remove Programs looks in your "Program Files" directory for directories whose names share at least two words in common with the DisplayName. The best match is assumed to be the directory that the program files are installed into. The sizes are added together and reported as the size of "Awesome Program for Windows".
A program can add some properties to its registration to avoid a lot of this guessing. It can set an EstimatedSize property to avoid making Add/Remove Programs guess how big the program is. It can also set a DisplayIcon property to specify which icon to show for the program in the list.
------------------------------------------ End of Extract -------------------------------------------
If you want to populate this information yourself in a package, you can set the ARPSIZE property.
Regards,
Spartacus
Posted by:
gmorgan618
17 years ago
Or just change the value in the Uninstall key (if your product is already deployed.....)
Posted by:
moobear
17 years ago
Thanks Gmorgan.
Actually, changing that value doesn't have any effect on the size reported in Add/Remove. At least on my 4GB application. I tried other apps as well - no joy.
But not to despair, there may be something wrong with our base build.
Spartacus,
Unfortunately, the ARPSIZE variable doesn't fix it. After many a testing I determined that an MSI that deploys 1 icon and 2 shortcuts is not affected by the this variable. Only and only when I added another file (.txt containing 1 character) the Add/Remove program started to report the size correctly.
But in all cases, thank to both of you for your help and tips.
Regards
Moo
Actually, changing that value doesn't have any effect on the size reported in Add/Remove. At least on my 4GB application. I tried other apps as well - no joy.
But not to despair, there may be something wrong with our base build.
Spartacus,
Unfortunately, the ARPSIZE variable doesn't fix it. After many a testing I determined that an MSI that deploys 1 icon and 2 shortcuts is not affected by the this variable. Only and only when I added another file (.txt containing 1 character) the Add/Remove program started to report the size correctly.
But in all cases, thank to both of you for your help and tips.
Regards
Moo
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