MATLAB: There are no are no products available to install from this location

Question

When I try to install MATLAB from downloads, I get the following error message:

There are no products available to install from this location. You may need to download the appropriate products from our web-site (www.mathworks.com)

I'm installing from downloads. What is going on here?

Answer 1

The MATLAB Installer is a modular application capable of installing all MathWorks products. The Installer must have access to all necessary product archives in order for a product to appear as an installation option. If the archives are missing or corrupted for all products, the Installer will fail with the error message “There are no products to install from this location.”

This error is most common when installing from downloaded installation files, but can also occur when installing from a repackaged installation disc provided by a university or other institution. In either case, the solution is to ensure that the file structure of the installer is appropriate and contains all necessary product archives.

All product archives must be located in the same folder as the Installer application, either “setup.exe” for Windows, “InstallForMacOSX.app” for Mac, or “install” for Linux. Product archives may also be located in a sub-folder, commonly titled “archives”.

In many cases each product is packaged into multiple archive files, including “common” and architecture-specific zip files (ex: MATLAB711_common.zip and MATLAB711_win32.zip). All archive files, including the common and architecture-specific files, must be present in order for a product to be recognized by the Installer.

Most product archives are provided as .zip files. These files are encrypted and cannot be successfully extracted by any application other than the MathWorks installer. Do not extract these .zip files. If the zip files have been extracted, you must replace their extracted contents with the original .zip file.

In all cases when you are not running the installer from a MathWorks provided installation DVD (including downloads and university or institution provided discs) you must save all files to your local hard drive. Do not run the installer directly from the website, it must be saved first. Similarly, copy the entire contents of the university or institution provided disc to a folder on your hard drive before executing the installer.