Limitations of a Large MSI Package

If your Windows Installer package contains more than 32767 files, you must change the schema of the database to increase the limit of the following columns: the Sequence column of the File table, the LastSequence column of the Media table, and the Sequence column of the Patch table. Note that transforms and patches cannot be created between two packages with different column types.

Total number of components

The maximum number of rows for the Component table is 65536.

Number of components per feature

There is a maximum limit of 1600 components per feature using Windows NT/Windows 2000 and a maximum limit of 800 components per feature using Windows 95 and Windows 98. There will be a ICE47 validation warning if your package is above this limit.

Depth of Feature tree

There is a maximum limit of 16 for the depth of the feature tree. If you exceed this limit you get a runtime error message "2701. The Component table exceeds the acceptable tree depth of 16 levels." which is a bit misleading because the limit actually applies to the Feature tree, not the Component tree.

Number of disks or CAB files

For each disk or CAB file one row must be added to the Media table. Windows Installer packages are limited to a maximum of 80 Media table entries when installed using Windows Installer prior to version 2.0. The restriction of 80 Media table entries was removed with Windows Installer version 2.0.

Limits of the CAB file format

The only compressed file type supported natively by Windows Installer is the Cabinet (CAB) format. The following limits apply to this file format.

• No one file in a CAB can exceed 2GB
• Maximum size of all files in one folder (compressed) 2GB
• Maximum size of a CAB file (compressed) 2GB
• Maximum number of files in a single CAB 64K

You can avoid these limits by splitting your setup into multiple CABs, possibly up to 64K * 2GB, or by placing your application files on the distribution disk uncompressed.