Easy start of linphone on windows

The Idea

Parts of my familiy live oversees in South America. We hold videotelephone conversations from time to time – seeing each other and chat. Until they have broadband internet at home they go to a nearby Internet café to call. As a Linux aficionado I don't want to bother with proprietary messengers such as Yahoo and MSN installed on those machines. Moreover:
Video and sound quality should be decent
We don't like to argue with the café's staff if we can install fancy software from CD.
My not so computer savvy folks should be able to call to without having to fiddle with configuration.
The ideal
Whoever wants to call simply me goes to a web site and clicks at a link to open the software which downloads and configures automatically. She just presses „Start“ and enjoys the conversation.

The solution

Pack Linphone together with its configuration into an autoexpanding archive and offer it for download.
Linphone stores its parameters such as the SIP proxy, the bandwith and the recent- calls- list in a single config file called linphonerc. Usually it is hidden in Documents and Settings\myuseraccount\Application Data\Linphone (you should set it to visible) – While this is a perfect place for an installed program's config it is not so great for the autoexpander. (e.g. how should it know what account it is running on – ok ok ok ok Administrator would fit in 90% of the cases :-) ) But Linphone is prepared: At start, it first looks into the program directory linphone-wx.exe is in.
So we move the linphonerc there. Now we can open Linphone and do the necessary configuration. We call ourselves to make sure the most recent call in history is us.
Now it's time to gift- wrap the present and send it off. I've chosen Filzip as tool to create autoexpanders. It is free (though not Open Source), lightweight and easy to handle. First we create a new archive and pack all the Linphone files under c:\program files\linphone (or whatever your locale is) into it. Make sure you didn't have the archive option Save full path info checked. Check the other three instead (Add hidden files, include subdirs, Save relative path info)
Now we have everything in the archive and still have to make it autoexpandable. For that purpose there is the menu item Actions / make .EXE. We call it and have a parameter dialog. It's a good idea to leave the default windows temp directory as it is a) usually writable and b) has always the same name no matter where in the world.
We also check always overwrite and Do not prompt user before extracting. That will open without asking. The last item on the to do list is to enter linphone-wx.exe into the command line field. (if necessary we put the relative path to the .exe there) OK and off to the webserver.
Linphone should now automatically start and configure. Have fun videocalling.