Appropriate icon for Windows 8 installer

Question

I'm trying to figure out which icon I'm supposed to (and allowed to) ship with my installer. I'd rather not use a custom one, as many apps (including some of Microsoft's own, such as Office and Visual Studio) do these days. I want the icon to be recognizable as "this installs a piece of software", not "the graphics designer had a little too much fun".

So, I went through the common icons in recent versions of Windows, all of which tend to be found, still, on a current version:

• the icon for .msi files is still, as of the current Windows 10 Technical Preview, the 15-years-old Office 2000 / Windows Installer 1.0 one. It maxes out at 32x32 and lacks an alpha channel. This means, for instance, that it is scaled awkwardly when put on the Desktop.

  

• Windows XP introduced a new style. Plenty of application installers still ship with this today.

  

• Here's Vista's style. I rarely see this used by third parties.

  

• And, lastly, that of Windows 8. Same: third parties don't appear to use it.

  

• Bonus: ClickOnce bootstrapper setup.exe files created with recent versions of Visual Studio have an icon that's hard to describe kindly, and oddly also once again lacks anything larger than 32x32.

  

The Windows 8 one I find the most appealing. It may be a little too generic, but it connotes "running this puts something on your machine" without suggesting legacy technology like floppies or optical discs (my app is distributed over the Web).

However, given that I've never seen an app use this icon, I'm wondering if it's merely a trend that people prefer to ship their own custom icons (or, lazily, still use the extremely dated MSI one), or if Microsoft doesn't want us using it. I couldn't find a license.

The closest to guidelines I've found are these, which haven't been updated since Vista(!) and don't go into details on which standard icons to use when and where. (The Standard Icons article only refers to four icons. Four.)

So, where do I find guidelines and licenses for a setup icon I'm supposed and permitted to use?

Answer 1

According to this answer, these installations icons are system-wide. Therefore you should not bother to think about them. According to your system (XP,Vista,...), they will have different icons as you already pointed out.

If you are using .exe file for installation, in addition to MSI file, I suggest you use your company icon or project icon for your .exe file.

Answer 2

This might be helpful for the question about the licences. Under the category "Microsoft Icons" you'll find "how to buy Microsoft developer products". This should answer where you get them from. About the icon I would say it's a matter of taste. My favourite is clear the Win 7 icon. It suggest that you are dealing with Windows stuff and this is a already known symbol. How you already said the Win8 icon is pretty abstract and it only tells you, that you are about to install sth. on your pc but not what. The Win7 do so.

Answer 3

I'm not sure about the others, but I can tell you that as long as your software is developed with Visual Studio, and you're using it to "install a client application", then you're free to use the Windows XP icon. This icon is released under the Visual Studio 2010 Image Library which is included with Visual Studio.

MSDN Documentation states

Use Restrictions As part of a visual language, the following images (or any part of the images) must be used in a manner consistent with the description indicated below:

The Readme.html file for the category states

Use Restrictions As part of a visual language, the following images (or any part of the images) must be used in a manner consistent with the description indicated below:

[Usage] Description for the icon is

Install a client application

Note: If you use it, then I would suggest using the copy provided in the Visual Studio Image Library and not one found on the Internet.