If you’ve ever wanted a quick and dirty installer – and I mean dirty – but not have to pay for something like InstallShield, then look no further than IExpress!

According to Wikipedia, IExpress was introduced in versions of Windows 2000 and later, so, its been around for awhile.

You can start the IExpress wizard by typing IExpress into your run bar.  You will probably want to run it as administrator (right click, Run as Administrator) in order for it to actually package up the installation files.

It brings up a wizard that is pretty straightforward:

Result

This produces a nice little .exe and a .SED file.  The file is basically just an .ini that you can load with IExpress if you want to create the same installer but tweak some settings or add additional files.

Don’t use this for production

There are a whole bunch of security vulnerabilities with this product.  The look and feel of it alone should be a red flag.  But, for something quick and dirty to pass out internally to your testers, it is extremely easy.