How to create NI Installer Backups (Windows) · Mastering.com Members Club

How to create NI Installer Backups (Windows)

NI doesn't apparently allow you to directly download the installers for offline installation or backup. In the event that Native Access stops working as part of the insolvency situation, I wanted a way to be able to re-install the software I purchased in the future.

After a bit of research and testing, I came up with a fairly simple way to create backups of all your NI installers. For me it's just NI and iZotope stuff. I assume anything that uses Native Access would work too. I was a software engineer for 40+ years so I am fairly confident these will work, but use at your own risk...

These steps require using a command window to run the "icacls" command to modify the permissions on a folder. If you aren't comfortable using the command line, then perhaps you should try to find a Plan B.

0) You need to be logged into Windows using an account with Administrator privileges

1) Create a special folder to store your NI installers. The default is "C:\Users\Public\Downloads". I created an "NI" folder in my user's "Downloads" folder (C:\Users\garry\Downloads\NI) to ensure that I was the owner of the new folder without inherited permissions getting in the way. For the purposes of these instructions, I will refer to the folder as your "NI" folder.

2) Launch Native Access

3) Click on the Preferences link in the bottom left corner

4) Click on the File Management link

5) Change the Download Location folder to be your new "NI" folder

At this point, Native Access will download the EXE/ZIP files to your new NI folder. The problem is that Native Access cleans up after itself and deletes the files it downloaded. Our next step is to prevent Native Access from cleaning up by removing the ability to delete files in that folder.

6) Click on the Windows Start menu icon and search for "cmd"

7) Click on the "Run As Administrator" link. A black command window will open.

8) Enter the following command to prevent anyone from deleting anything in that folder:

icacls "C:\Users\YourName\Downloads\NI" /deny "Everyone:(OI)(CI)(DE,DC)"

Now it's time to patiently re-install all your NI software using Native Access. If you have apps shown that are not installed yet, you will see an Install button. If already installed you need to select the "Re-install" option from the "..." menu. Either way, your software will be downloaded and installed. Note that the Install seems to take a little longer than normal because (I think) it tries to delete the installation file, then eventually gives up.

NOTE: The installer files can be quite large (RX 11 Standard is 2GB!) so be sure that you have plenty of free disk space for the new "NI" folder.

If you monitor your new "NI" folder you will see the new files appear. You will see the EXE/ZIP files along with temporary files created when installing. All you need to backup are the EXE/ZIP files. When the install is complete, all the files should still be there (no cleanup allowed). I have included a screenshot showing my NI installer folder after re-installing most of my apps. The iZotope stuff downloads as EXEs. The NI effects are downloaded as ZIPs. Note that I deleted all the *_temp files in the screenshot.

When all done re-installing everything you'll have a folder full of ZIP and EXE and a bunch of temp files (one per app). You can use that folder as your backup or copy them elsewhere. Note that if you run one of the EXE installers, you'll be in a step-by-step InstallShield interactive thing, not a blind/silent installer.

If you want to restore normal privileges to that folder (perhaps to delete the temp files), do the following:

icacls "C:\Users\YourName\Downloads\NI" /remove:d Everyone /T

You can view the current folder privileges using:

icacls "C:\Users\YourName\Downloads\NI"

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