Current versions of the Impact Acquire framework will be distributed as EXE files. These files contain so called bootstrappers - a special container format to distribute multiple packages as a single installation. The internal underlying technology is also MSI. More information about this topic can be found here: https://wixtoolset.org/docs/tools/burn/

Note

Since version 2.18.0 of this SDK all Balluff Impact Acquire Windows® installation packages contain kernel-mode drivers signed for different target platforms. During the installation the merge modules will decide which driver is the one most suitable for the target system. Currently each merge module containing kernel modules will contain up to 3 different flavors of this module:

a version signed with a SHA256 algorithm and timestamped with a SHA1 algorithm (this will be used on Systems running Windows Vista, Server 2008, 7, Server 2008R2, 8, 8.1 and Server 2012).
- For the GigE Vision™ capture filter driver this is divided down in 2 versions signed like this but one version using the NDIS 5 API for Windows Vista, Server 2008 and 7 and a version using the NDIS 6 API for Windows Server 2008R2, 8, 8.1 and Server 2012.
a version signed and timestamped by Microsoft with a SHA256 algorithm (this will be used on Systems running Windows 10 and 11). The processed used in this approach is called attestation signing (https://msdn.microsoft.com/de-de/windows/hardware/drivers/develop/attestation-signing-a-kernel-driver-for-public-release)
- For non-MSI based installation packages please also have a look here: General Considerations When Shipping Kernel Drivers

This SDK currently is built using Microsoft Visual Studio® 2019. When building a custom installation therefore the required Microsoft Visual Studio® runtime libraries must be installed on the target machine. The recommended way of doing that is by installing the corresponding redistributables:

vcredist.x86.exe (for 32-bit target systems AND 64-bit target systems that shall execute 32-bit applications)
vcredist.x64.exe (for 64-bit target systems. This package does NOT include the 32-bit versions of the redistributables!)