Active Setup is the installation technology Microsoft used for downloading and installing Internet Explorer versions 4 to 6. It was designed to selectively download and install signed Internet Explorer components via the Internet. [1] This significantly reduced the amount of data to download as also the time required for updates. Active Setup could also resume partially completed downloads from the point where they were interrupted. [2]
Active Setup was also used for Microsoft Outlook 98 setup. [3]
Active Setup still available into Windows 7. It is mainly design to complete specific run once settings for each users logged in the machine, for a first time, after installed the active setup. This can be used as complementary the MSI Self-heal feature, but is not dependent or related MSI technics [4]