Want to create simple installers for Windows, for free (built-in to Windows)?

Note: This blog post is from 2008. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

It lets you package a set of files into an EXE which when run will show customized text prompts at the start and end, let the user pick the directory into which to extract, run a selected command at the start or end, and even optionally show a license they must agree to.

It turns out it's a feature that was implemented as part of the IE 6 Administration Kit (thus the IE part of the IExpress name), but I just tried it on Vista (with only IE 7 installed) and it worked just fine. Pretty nifty.

For more, see this blog entry at the awesome "Confessions of a Freeware Junkie" site. He also links there to a MS page that discusses the tool in more detail.

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