Windows installer aborts with unhelpful message if the wrong PostgreSQL installation directory is selected

[realityexists]

I ran the Windows installer downloaded from ​http://download.osgeo.org/postgis/windows/pg96/postgis-bundle-pg96x64-setup-2.3.2-1.exe

When prompted for the PostgreSQL directory I accepted the default (C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\9.6) and got an error:

PostGIS has to be installed to the PostgreSQL folder.

Problem 1: it's unclear what exactly "the PostgreSQL folder" is. I thought what I was selecting was "the PostgreSQL folder", because that's what I specified when I installed PostgreSQL. It turns out the installer wanted "C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\9.6\pg96". (PostgreSQL was installed from the BigSQL installer, not the EnterpriseDB one.) The message should be more precise about what the installer is looking for to help the user find the right directory (and ideally find it automatically in the registry, but that's another story).

Problem 2: the installer then aborts and I have to re-run it to try again. It should let the user choose a different folder.

[realityexists]

Looks like BigSQL installations are not supported at all (#3790), but I think these are still usability issues with the installer.

[robe]

realityexists BigSQL distributes their own version of PostGIS.

The main reason it doesn't work is because their paths are all different from EDB and also EDB writes paths to the registry that the installer reads so knows what to default the paths to. IF you had EDB installed it would have defaulted to the right folder.

Don't use the installer with the BigSQL distribution.

either use there's which I would highly suggest unless you need SFCGAL support which they currently don't include.

or

B use the binaries from the winnie section and copy to the right folders.

​http://postgis.net/windows_downloads/

[realityexists]

This issue is not specific to BigSQL. The user could simply enter the wrong path and still run into the same problems.