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i tried twice to download and install the newest libre suite. the download went perfectly both times but when i told my computer to install them i got the same error message both times. it said something like 'this is not a windows installer' and to 'contact the makers' or something like that. i love libre office and have used it for many years on several different computers with windows , xp and vista and have never has anything go wrong with anything, ever.
this computer is running windows 7 home premium without sp1 so far.
what should i do?
Thomas H. Phipps
Hi,
i tried twice to download and install the newest libre suite. the
download went perfectly both times but when i told my computer to
install them i got the same error message both times. it said
something like 'this is not a windows installer' and to 'contact the
makers' or something like that. i love libre office and have used it
for many years on several different computers with windows , xp and
vista and have never has anything go wrong with anything, ever. this
computer is running windows 7 home premium without sp1 so far. what
should i do?
What is the extension of the download you try to install? Often IE
changes the extension of the file in .man instead of .msi.
Kind regards
Sophie
Hi 
Finding the "extension" or "file-ending" is difficult on Windows. They try
to hide useful information like that.
On Xp, Vista, Win7 i think you can find out by hovering the mouse arrow
over the file and a tool-tips kinda yellow-box appears with tons of
information in it. It might be tricky to figure out which bit is the 3-4
letter file-ending/extension. So another way is to look at the window that
shows the files&folders (we call it a file-browser) and click on
View - Detail
Now one of the columns after the file-names gives a brief indication of
what the "file type" is.
It might well be possible to 'simply' change that file-ending/extension in
order to get the installer to work. However it is probably a lot easier to
just use a standards-compliant web-browser such as Firefox, Chrome, Opera,
Safari or anything else other than "Internet Explorer" (perhaps on a
different machine?)
These links might be better but they probably need you to be using a ;
Windows version, English (Uk), well English (GB)
http://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-still/?type=win-x86&version=4.2.6&lang=en-GB
Windows version, English (US),
http://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-still/?type=win-x86&version=4.2.6&lang=en-US
I'm not sure why MS seems averse to properly implementing internationally
agreed standards, such as ISO standards, even when they have been heavily
involved in drawing up some of those standards in the first place! It
seems to lock people into buying into the MS products(sometimes called a
"vendor lock-in"). Another neat trick is that they seem unable to
implement the same non-standards spec in any 2 versions of the same thing
so people have to keep buying newer and newer versions of the same thing in
order to be compatible with each other.
Regards from
Tom
Most everyone I deal with locally will not use IE due to its "issues".
I suggest using Firefox or Chrome for downloading the files. They work much better than IE and you can add more "useful" security options to both that make it easier and safer to use than IE.
Actually, the newest version of Firefox for Windows has an ability to run the file after the download DIRECTLY from the download history options - either by clicking the "blue" download arrow for the last few downloads, or via the full history section via the Tools>Downloads option. This works better than the IE run file after downloading option.
I currently have access to Win7 laptops, but I have had not trouble downloading the files via Firefox or Chrome and installing them. I upgraded a Vista [32-bit] laptop to Win7 Pro [64-bit] due to Vista's giving me the same type of errors for many different packages, ones that installed well on XP and Win7 Home. I did have a few times where XP did not like to install .msi install versions when there were .exe install versions available.
So please install Firefox or Chrome browsers and download the .msi files again.
ALSO, MS sometimes changes its internal package installer used to run/install .exe and .msi files. I had to update the installer via MS's web site free downloads section. Sometimes this needed internal package is not updated/upgraded via the automatic Windows Update system. This has happened to me once with XP and twice with Vista. This solved the type of errors you are seeing, in Vista mostly.
Win7 without SP1?
Have you been installing all of the Win7 updates since you installed the Win7 OS, or first ran it when you got the Win7 system??? If you did, then even though the OS install did not have SP1 included, then with all of the MS updates you should have all of the packages that are included with SP1. That is what happened with a desktop that I have that came with Win7 Home Premium with no indications of SP1 was installed. Now it shows SP1 in the Control Panel>System window.
Hi
Sometimes people have no choice about using Internet Explorer but usually
in those cases they also can't install anything else either.
So it might be worth considering getting the "Portable Apps" or
"WinPenPack" version of LibreOffice (and a few other things onto the same
usb-stick. That way you can run the apps that are on the usb-stick without
having to install them to the machine you are on.
Regards form
Tom
Hi,
yes, it can be hard to find file extensions. That's one of the first things I set up on any new computer. Here's how to do it (windows7; Win 8 is probably similar):
1) in a windows explore window, click 'organize' and choose 'folder and search options.'
2) in the 'folder options' dialog that opens, click 'view'
3) UNcheck the box that says 'Hide extensions for known file types.'
Hope this helps,
/Gary
This is why there was so much nonsense with the introduction of OOXML in MS Office - as "display file extensions" is off by default (why one wonders?), people were sending OOXML documents to recipients who had MSO 2003 or earlier, not knowing that the document was *.docx instead of *.doc, and of course the recipients couldn't open them!
Typical MS.....
The hiding extensions is a pain and if you choose to use the non-default one for a package, like .doc instead of .docx, it can get messy not seeing it. It gets worse when you are dealing with graphics. One of my packages GIMP no longer saves graphics in the "standard" formats, but requires you to export them, and now uses their one proprietary format for the save option. So with Windows hiding option you will not easily know if you made a mistake and saved the file and not exported.
There are a lot of issues that can come up if you do not un-check the auto hide option for extensions and many other auto hide uses.
"tjphipps":
i tried twice to download and install the newest libre suite. the download went perfectly both times but when i told my computer to install them i got the same error message both times.
Use Torrent to download the installer.
Hi
We went off on a tangent around here somewhere. There still seems to be a
problem installing LibreOffice on this Windows 7 machine.
The download is an msi so that IE issue doesn't seem to be the problem.
The installer's file-size is 215,652kb, so that's around the 220Mb figure i
try to remember. We've not tried an md5sum or Sha check to make sure but
it really looks like the download itself was probably NOT the issue.
Firefox has installed successfully so it's not that the user doesn't
understand the weird blockers Win 7 tries to put in the way of installing
anything (which usually seem (to me) more intense when trying to install
non-MS stuff)
Win 7 is still claiming that the installer is not an installer, even though
the installer is an msi file. The exact grumble is
"Windows Installer This installation package could not be opened. Verify
that the package exists and that you can access it, or contact the
application vendor to verify this is a valid Windows Installer Package."
Anyone any ideas about what might be different enough between the Firefox
installer and the LO one to be causing this issue?
Regards from
Tom
Tom Davies wrote:
Hi
We went off on a tangent around here somewhere. There still seems to be a
problem installing LibreOffice on this Windows 7 machine.The download is an msi so that IE issue doesn't seem to be the problem.
The installer's file-size is 215,652kb, so that's around the 220Mb figure i
try to remember. We've not tried an md5sum or Sha check to make sure but
it really looks like the download itself was probably NOT the issue.
That looks about right for the LibreOffice 4.2.6.3 installer. Checking the checksum would help confirm that it hasn't been corrupted.
Firefox has installed successfully so it's not that the user doesn't
understand the weird blockers Win 7 tries to put in the way of installing
anything (which usually seem (to me) more intense when trying to install
non-MS stuff)Win 7 is still claiming that the installer is not an installer, even though
the installer is an msi file. The exact grumble is
"Windows Installer This installation package could not be opened. Verify
that the package exists and that you can access it, or contact the
application vendor to verify this is a valid Windows Installer Package."
Could be a problem with the Windows Installer service. From previous discussion, it looks like this is on Windows 7 without Service Pack 1 (and possibly other updates)? So first, install Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and any other updates offered by Windows Update. The Windows Installer service is sometimes updated, and newer installers don't always work with an older version.
I've also seen mention of people working around this error by creating new Windows user account and logging in to that to install. Probably means there's something not quite right in the original profile. Provided you install for all users rather than just the current user, you'll still be able to use the application from your usual login.
Anyone any ideas about what might be different enough between the Firefox
installer and the LO one to be causing this issue?
It looks like Firefox uses an .exe installer, rather than .msi, so there may be many differences. Even if Firefox's is just an .msi packaged within an .exe, it might work with an older version of the Windows Installer service than LibreOffice's does.
Mark.
Hi
Yeh, i've just googled it and seen tons of problems with the Windows
installers. I think we can safely assume there is nothing wrong with the
download at this point.
I'm not sure i entirely trust any of the links i give below. The first one
that's from microsoft.com is a forum thread so the answers could be from
any random nutter. So it might be worth comparing some of them to see if
they corroborate each other at all. Also use your normal search thing to
get a rough idea of what commands do or what any suggested registry keys or
other stuff they suggest is likely to do BEFORE actually doing what they
suggest (unless it really looks harmless and doesn't touch the registry).
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_vista-windows_install/windows-installer-problems/5848d21b-a29c-40f3-bc93-a793eff05c6e
This sort of thing looks really dodgy to me so i'd normally not include
it. The main reason this time is just to show the sort of 'help' that
could well be really dodgy;
http://www.techsupportall.com/file-association-fix-for-windows-7/
Note that MS provide support that looks very similar (ie trust us and just
click on this link and it'll run a process that does a bunch of stuff we
are not going to tell you about) with MS i do actually trust that their fix
might work but i think it's bad as it encourages people into bad habits
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932857
This sort of thing shows you what to do so you get more idea about what
it's doing. Ignore step 1 as this was written by a different company
tryign to cope with the weird and wonderful craziness of Windows systems
(err and only do step 2 if you've hunted around a bit to make sure it's
safe advice);
http://kb.eset.com/esetkb/index?page=content&id=SOLN561
I thought this was an interesting tangent
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/19449-default-file-type-associations-restore.html
I'm fairly sure it's not what is happening but it's nice to have a list of
what some of the most popular file-types are for.
Good luck and regards from
Tom