An issue with the Installer

2018-05-19 07:11:01

The step where it's creating uninstall.exe is taking a long time if your foobar directory has a lot of files. Not a huge problem but it's not optimal for sure. In my case I have a lot of lyrics files and artist images, my entire foobar folder is 2.5 GB and about 24k files. It takes at least a minute for the installer.

Re: An issue with the Installer

Reply #1 – 2018-05-19 09:47:33

I'd recommend moving the files somewhere else. The part that takes long for you is installer checking the size of the installation directory so the information shown in Programs and Features is accurate.

Re: An issue with the Installer

Reply #2 – 2018-05-19 14:20:39

Why does it do that though? It shouldn't be removing all my custom files when uninstalling anyway.

As I said, not a huge issue, but if you are able to (I realize the installer might be a 3rd party program) maybe disable this.

Re: An issue with the Installer

Reply #3 – 2018-05-19 16:04:01

It does so because I programmed it to do so. Not listing the size would not allow sorting programs by size and empty size field would look bad in the installed software listing. Showing a hardcoded size for the stuff the installer wrote would be lying, plenty of old time foobar2000 users have custom files placed in the install dir. And reading the size of the install dir takes a split second if it isn't abused for unrelated material. The uninstaller by default only removes files that the installer writes but it has a checkbox that allows nuking the entire install directory away.

I'm not willing to make the installer worse for everyone else without hearing good explanation why you think gigabytes of music material belongs in the foobar2000 install dir instead of a music directory.

Re: An issue with the Installer

Reply #4 – 2018-05-19 17:09:22

Whatever your reasons it is a user interface problem and your should remove it. It makes the Installer slower for no apparent reason.

Re: An issue with the Installer

Reply #5 – 2018-05-19 17:31:01

After Windows XP even Microsoft started to emphasize on the separation of user data and application's binary/runtime data. It is simply bad mixing your personal data with the application data and every halfway decent application puts its user dependent config files into the user's appdata folder. Program files folder isn't there for this kind of data. Of course you can feel free to put there whatever you want but then please don't complain at others about bad consequences.

Re: An issue with the Installer

Reply #6 – 2018-05-19 22:59:40

Lol... First rule in my personal Windows management: keep everything what is important for you far away from OS drive. No documents, music, photos, whatever on OS drive. In case of crash you simply format it and install new OS and few apps (just execs and dll). Settings should be backed up regularly (like every month), so their restoration is also possible. No complicated recovery processes, no loss of private data, no regrets.
And it makes sense as Windows can crash for so many reasons.

And in case of any laptop sold with just C:\ drive - I always use Windows tools to shrink C and create at least one additional partition for data. Even on business machines given by Honeywell or WDH.

Re: An issue with the Installer

Reply #7 – 2018-05-20 09:03:41

Since you refuse to change your ways I was forced to change the installer. Next one will just write the size of written files which is better than nothing but of course incredibly wrong for many users.