List of Standalone Installers

I'm annoyed by software installers which need to constantly download additional content from the internet in order to complete an installation. Besides taking forever to install, it requires you to be connected to the internet and doesn't make efficient use of internet bandwidth if you need to install on more than a few machines.

The following is a list of the most common standalone installers I could find, any other suggestions would be great;

• Skype
• Windows Live Essentials
• Adobe Reader X (10.0)
• Google Earth
• Google Chrome
• Java Runtime Environment (x86) and (x64)
• Internet Explorer 9 RC (x86) and (x64)

Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate (RC) Standalone Installer

The release candidate of Internet Explorer 9 was made available for download on 10 Feb, the final version is expected in April.

Here are the direct download links for the standalone (offline) installer (saves you having to re-download 30MB for each machine you want to upgrade):

• x86:  http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/F/4/5F49F6DB-5538-48CE-9E13-38621B5176D4/NeutralMSU/x86fre/IE9-win7.msu
• x64: http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/F/4/5F49F6DB-5538-48CE-9E13-38621B5176D4/NeutralMSU/amd64fre/IE9-win7.msu

Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 is RTM

SP1 is RTM and will be available for download as follows;

• TechNet/MSDN/VL subscribers - Feb 16, 2011
• General availability (Download Center/Windows Update) - Feb 22, 2011

It would appear that an uninstall of SP1 Beta or RC is still required before installing RTM - there have been reports of users who are not able to remove SP1 RC due to the uninstall files being placed in a Temp folder during installation, any disk cleanup tasks post installation which might have removed these files will prevent uninstallation. I guess the only safe options would be System Restore back to a pre-RC restore point, or a complete rebuild. Hopefully you didn't deploy the RC to any production servers, the RC will expire on Nov 30, 2011.