Create an installer from Visual Studio 2012 to run an application on another PC

Question

I wrote an application with Visual Studio EXPRESS 2012 on a Windows 7 PC for research purposes. Now I want to run it on another PC (with Windows 8), which will be used by a medical group. Now my question is: HOW? InstallShield LE doesn't work on Express... I tried to install Visual studio Express 2012 on the other PC (obviously the win8 version) using absolutely the SAME version number: 11.0.60610.01 Update 3; but it gives me an error importing the project and says that my project is "not compatible". What should I do?

Answer 1

As Wix cannot integrate directly into Visual Studio Express, you can install the Visual Studio Isolated Shell Environment along side the express edition.

Or you can use a stand alone Wix IDE like WixEdit to author the installer. I suspect that you've downloaded the wrong Visual Studio Express version.

The Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows 8 is meant to build Windows 8 Store Apps, you probably need the Visual Studio Express 2012 for Desktop Applications version instead, even when building on Windows 8, the name is a bit confusing, I agree.

See also: https://stackoverflow.com/a/14676758/736079