Основные особенности:
• Поддержка Windows Mobile/CE
• Импорт NSIS-сценариев
• Расширение пользовательского интерфейса программы установки
• Очистка генерируемых приложением ресурсов и параметров при удалении
• Стойкость изменения пользовательских данных приложений через обновление и исправление
• Встроенные пользовательские действия для тестирования, если порт свободен (не связан с приложением)
• Встроенные пользовательские действия для закрытия приложений
• Пользовательское имя в аплете панели управления "Установка и удаление программ"

Advanced Installer – powerful and easy to use Windows Installer authoring tool, enabling developers to create reliable MSI packages that meet the latest Microsoft Windows logo certification guidelines. Extremely easy to use, powerful, fast and lightweight. Advanced Installer simplifies the process of building Windows Installer packages by providing a very easy to use, high level interface to the underlying technology. The program implements all Windows Installer rules and follows all the advised best practices. With this simple, intuitive interface, building a Windows Installer package will take just a few minutes. Start the program, add a few files, change the name, hit the Build button and you are done. No scripts to learn, no seminars to attend. Advanced Installer project files are stored in XML format. This way, they can be easily checked into a version control system. The software installer also operates at command line, so you can build your release packages in a completely automated script, like Make, Ant or NAnt. Furthermore, the most common operations are also implemented as command line actions, so you can modify your project in an automated fashion.

Windows Installer is becoming the “de facto” software installation technology on Windows. Being preinstalled on the latest Microsoft operating systems, and also bundled with the most popular productivity packages (Office, etc.) this software installer provides a significant number of power features that improve application management and administration. This power doesn’t come without pitfalls, and the most important of them all is the complexity. Creating an MSI file requires careful planning and editing of dozens of database tables. Hundreds of pages of documentation must be read, countless lists of rules must be followed. Building a Windows Installer package may take days or even weeks. This is where a MSI creation tool comes to help.

Using Advanced Installer’s intuitive interface you can easily add to your install package all the resources your software requires:
• Files, Folders and Shortcuts (to installed files, existing files or URLs)
• Registry keys and entries
• Environment Variables (which can be replace or be appended to existing variable like PATH)
• INI file entries
• ODBC drivers, data sources and translators

If you have merge modules for your components, they can be also added to the installation. Next you can register these resources as necessary:
• .NET and Win32 assemblies
• Services
• File Associations, MIME types
• Permissions for files, folders, registry keys and entries

If your application needs some other software to be installed in order to run, you can easily specify them as Prerequisites. Advanced Installer will search for them, then download and install as necessary. This is an easy way to install frameworks like JRE or .NET, browsers or database engines. Searching for applications, files, folders, registry keys and INI entries is also provided. Using this, installing additional files, extensions and plugins to existing applications becomes trivial.

Advanced Installer will organize your application in Features and Components as per Windows Installer guidelines. This way you can take advantage of advanced software installer features like partial install and repair without having to do anything. Further customizing the organization is easy and intuitive.

Advanced Installer can leave your software’s files unpacked, compress them into CAB files (split in multiple volumes as needed), insert them into the MSI file and add a EXE bootstrapper for backwards compatibility. Digitally signing the generated files will ensure that your customers will never have to question the provenience of your software, and the user registration with serial code validation hooks will ensure that only legitimate users get to install your software.

Packed as native EXEs, DLLs or script files and written in C, C++, VBS or JS, Custom Actions give you the full power to add anything you want, anywhere you want to your software installer.

Changes in Advanced Installer 9.6 (October 5th, 2012):
* Dictionary editor
* Microsoft Office 2013 support
* Prevent Start Page auto-pin for shortcuts on Windows 8
* Option to disable shortcut taskbar pinning
* “Run as Administrator” option for shortcuts
* “New project” command line option
* IIS 8 Express predefined prerequisite
* Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2012 predefined prerequisite
* SharePoint 2013 predefined launch condition
* Ability to digitally sign files in a merge module
* Download progress for web installers
* Over 36 enhancements and bug fixes

...

Возможности программы:
Оригинальный алгоритм упаковки, обеспечивающий высокую степень сжатия исполняемых файлов, объектных библиотек, больших текстовых файлов и т.д.
Дополнительный алгоритм, оптимизированный для сжатия мультимедиа-данных.
Поддержка файлов и архивов размером до 9 223 372 036 854 775 807 байт (8 эксабайт) при условии, что файловая и операционная системы также поддерживают такой размер. Количество добавляемых в архив файлов практически не ограничено.
Полная поддержка архивов RAR и ZIP 2.0, а также распаковка архивов CAB, ARJ, LZH, TAR, GZ, ACE, UUE, BZ2, JAR, ISO, Z и 7Z.
Поддержка прав доступа и потоков данных NTFS.
Возможность использования как интерактивного интерфейса Windows, так и интерфейса командной строки.
Возможность создания 'непрерывных' (solid) архивов, степень сжатия в которых бывает на 10-50% более высокой, чем в обычных архивах, особенно при упаковке большого количества однотипных маленьких файлов.
Создание и изменение самораспаковывающихся (SFX) архивов с помощью стандартных и дополнительных модулей SFX.
Создание многотомных архивов, в том числе самораспаковывающихся.
Множество дополнительных функций, например, шифрование файлов, добавление архивных комментариев и восстановление физически повреждённых архивов.

Изменения в версии 5.00 бета 8:
WinRAR считает файлы с расширением .txz архивами .tar.xz.
Если распаковка архива 7-Zip была прервана, WinRAR удаляет не полностью извлечённый файл. Предыдущие версии его не удаляли.
Исправлены ошибки:
обновление непрерывных архивов прерывалось, если архив содержал контрольные суммы BLAKE2;
панель дерева папок не позволяла перейти в корневую папку архива;
не работал параметр "Открывать в одном окне", если в первой копии WinRAR просматривалось содержимое архива, а вторая копия WinRAR пыталась открыть другой архив в другой папке;
формат параметров диалогового окна "Дополнительные параметры сжатия" в реестре был несовместим с WinRAR 4.20.

Changelog:
1. RAR 5.0 archives can include an optional quick open information
controlled with -qo[-|+] switch or "Quick open information" options
group in archiving dialog. It allows to open the archive contents in WinRAR faster.

This version provides better update peformance for archives
containing both quick open information and service records,
such as NTFS file security. Also default parameters of quick open
information are optimized to achieve faster open time for such archives.

2. Bugs fixed:

a) "Find" command could fail when searching text string in .7z archives;

b) when opening RAR 5.0 archive with encrypted file names stored
in another such archive, WinRAR could issue an erroneous message
that password is incorrect. It happened only if passwords to inner
and outer archives were different. It did not affect extraction,
all files could be unpacked regardless of this message;

c) option "Use for all archives" in password dialog did not suppress
additional password requests for RAR 5.0 archives with encrypted
file names;

d) WinRAR address bar did not process correctly environment variable
based paths, such as %temp%;

e) storing NTFS file security and alternate data streams did not work
for file pathnames longer than 260 characters;

f) "Test" command could erroneously report damaged data in valid
recovery record if only a part of files in RAR 5.0 archive
was tested. It did not happen if entire archive contents was tested;

g) "Test" command erroneously reported errors when verifying
RAR 4.x Unix symbolic links;

h) WinRAR "View" command did not work for files inside of BZIP2 archives;

i) if "High precision modification time" option in archiving dialog
was turned off, WinRAR did not store the modification time at all
instead of storing a lower precision time;

j) destination paths containing .\ or ..\ component did not work
when extracting non-RAR archives in WinRAR command line mode;

...