Friedrich,

No rush on this, just thought of this today. I've no idea how difficult
this could be or the problems that might be encountered.

In recent months, I've acquired two new machines. The biggest pain in
setting these machines up is moving installed applications from one machine
to another. Some are easier than others, and some are just a PITA.

To help vendors transfer their applications from one computer to another, it
would be neat if applications could build new installs based on their
current settings and data. IOW, it mimics the original install, but
includes all the settings, registry keys (especially new ones created by
users in their normal running of the application), data files, etc. This
could be an option in the installed application, not really sure on that
point <g>.

Anyway, what happens is the user gets a new machine, runs a "re-locate"
option, which in effect makes a special "setup" program. Complete with all
the environmental data it needs (unlike the original setup). When the setup
is completed and verified then an uninstall could be performed (that may be
a bit tricky). This setup is then copied to the new computer and run. The
net effect is that the old computer no longer has the application installed
and the new one does, and appears that it has been there for a long time.

Obviously, this won't apply to upgrades.

But if your customers had a way to move (not copy) installs from one
machine to another, and the actual application did its own packing in
preparation for re-locating, this would be quite a feature non-SetupBuilder
users won't have.

Obviously this would need some careful planning. I can think of a few
problems, for example the old machine is XP, the new is Vista. What happens
if the application is signed?

JAT,

--
Russell B. Eggen
www.radfusion.com