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altenbach

Eliminate useless dialogs after unzipping

Status: New

Having downloaded and installed LabVIEW 2011 and several modules (Mathscript, RT, FPGA, etc.) I got annoyed by the following:

 

When running the donwloaded exe, we get an overly complicated dialog with many useless buttons ("run winzip"???), a choice where to unzip and what to do after unzipping. By default the following is selected:

 

  • overwrite files without prompting
  • When done unzipping, open .\ setup.exe.

Well, tough luck with that last one, because it will not automatically run setup but instead popup the most useless dialog in the history of computing:

 

 

 

The only thing we can do is press OK. Why does the entire install process need to stall here and prevent starting of setup.exe unless we acknowledge that the unzip completed? Dialogs should only be present if user interaction is required or something unexpected happened, which is definitely not the case here. (I don't mind a popup if the uzipping encountered an error, for example)

 

(Microsoft has definitely cleaned up its act here when dealing with zip files. Compare the "right-click...extract all" between windows XP and windows 7. Windows 7 eliminated all useless dialogs and works much smoother.)

6 Comments
Neil.Pate
Active Participant

Somewhat related, my new least favourite is the DIAdem installer, which does not even give you the option of only extracting the files, it automatically runs the setup.exe! (which then fails if another install is taking place).

 

This strange sequence of events occurred when I was trying to repair a RIO/FPGA module installation, and it asked for the DIAdem installation (why?). Luckily I had the unextracted DIAdem archive, but because of the automatic running of the setup I could not just extract the files. Grrr! Fortunately when the installation then failed it left the temporary files behind.

Knight of NI

Can NI actually do anything about that since that's a WinZip dialog? I don't think WinZip's command line has options to suppress that dialog. Maybe NI should consider switching to something like 7-Zip.

altenbach
Knight of NI

I haven't touched winzip in 15 years (never liked it), so I am not familiar with the commandline options or if it is possible to eliminate that dialog. (Winzip always struck me as the kind of software used by people who barely know what a zip file is ...).

 

I am all for 7-zip if it allows better control over the behavior of self-extracting archives. I haven't investigated this. For plain unzipping, the OS offers plenty support, but I still have 7-zip installed for unusual operations, such as converting an ISO file to a folder hierarchy.

Jon_S.
NI Employee (retired)

Hello Everyone,

 

Saverio is correct in that the dialog is from WinZip.  I've never had the problem of the self-extracting executable not invoking setup.exe and I've tested a number of patches that used this functionality Smiley Wink  It might be something to do with security settings or running as an admin but that is just a guess.

 

We use the professional version of WinZip because of the ability to create signed executables.  If you right-click one of these exes you'll see that it has a digital signature from National Instruments.  I'm not sure if this functionality exists in 7-zip though.

Regards,

Jon S.
National Instruments
LabVIEW NXG Product Owner
Knight of NI

Unfortunately, 7-Zip doesn't have that functionality, although it's been asked for before many times. The author of the program doesn't seem that interested in adding this functionality to the program, though.

 

I think altenbach is complaining that the dialog shows up in the first place. So, rather than going directly to running setup.exe it tells you that useless piece of information about how many files it unzipped. After you click OK then it goes ahead and runs setup.exe.

 

All in all, this is probably something that should be covered in the WinZip world. Wonder if they have an Idea Exchange.

altenbach
Knight of NI

quote:

I think altenbach is complaining that the dialog shows up in the first place. So, rather than going directly to running setup.exe it tells you that useless piece of information about how many files it unzipped. After you click OK then it goes ahead and runs setup.exe.



Exactly! 😄

 

Even on a fast computer, these things take time, so I typically do something else while it is unzipping. This dialog takes my focus away and then I still need to wait until the installer starts. Without this dialog, the installer would be ready at the welcome screen and I can proceed immediately. I don't like babysitting an installation doing repetitive things that have no value (I still remember installing Windows 95 using a big stack of floppies ;)). I thought computers should automatically do all the repetitive boring stuff that does not need any intellectual input. 😄

 

I agree though that the problem is with winzip. Maybe there is an obscure option to suppress that dialog already and NI just needs to set it.