The Microsoft Windows Installer Technology has many different possibilities to speed your software package installation time.
MSIFASTINSTALL
The first obvious property MSIFASTINSTALL=0 can be set and will reduce the installation time. It’s a property introduced by Windows Installer version 5.0
Here the list of available values – good to see what options are part of the default setting
| 0 | Default value |
| 1 | No system restore point is saved for this installation |
| 2 | Perform only File Costing and skip checking other costs |
| 4 | Reduce the frequency of progress messages |
DISABLEROLLBACK
The second property DISABLEROLLBACK=1 is a real installation speed improver for large Windows Installer packages. This property is not well known as it’s property name does not reflect that it will enhance the installation speed aswell.
As this property will disable the rollback function, use it on software packages that have been tested in your target OS environment to make sure that the limited rollback functionality will not used.
MEDIA TYPE
Is your installation still not fast enough? Check the source files! Best performance can be achieved by using external compressed cab files.
LOG FILES
Do not create log files! Log files will slow down your installation. Some vendor installation are using the MsiLogging property that will crates log files. Use a transform file and remove this property from the property table.
Insane but a verbose log file for a large installation can reach very fast unbelievable sizes
At the end combining all small possibilities can rocket speed your installation time. But bear in mind that Windows Installer based setup files will take some time when reaching > 30’000 file resources even using all possible speed enhancement tricks.
