Install older versions of MATLAB

I am trying to install 2012b based on this instuction:

https://www.mathworks.com/downloads/web_downloads/select_products?dl_action=choose_products&platform=win64&release_name=R2012b&tab=f

but when I am selecting a folder it says there are files from earlier installation and it does not point out to the file. Also the only files in that folder are the ones that I downloaded from there.

Answer 1

[Jan]

When does the question for selecting the folder occur? During downloading or during the installation? Do not install the Matlab application into the folder you use for downloading. I've choosen the default location of the installer successfully, so I suggest to try this.

[Marzieh Karami]

I used a different folder and then I copied all files to the default folder. It happens during the installation.

[Walter Roberson]

The installation process uses three directories these days:

1. The installer unzips into a directory and invokes the setup.exe in that directory. This is a a temporary installation directory that can be removed afterwards
2. The setup.exe creates a per-version directory under your Documents and downloads the .xml and .enc and a (potentially different) setup.exe into there. This Documents directory acts as a cache to make it faster to install/reinstall toolboxes afterwards, but can be deleted if you are tight on space. So this first setup.exe is mostly a downloader.
3. When all of the .xml and .enc are in place, the setup.exe in the Documents directory installs from the files that have been already downloaded, into the directory that you give as the destination; this would typically be under one of the two standard Windows executables directories (I do not remember at the moment if it is the one with x86 in the name or not.) This will be your MATLAB installation directory hierarchy and is required for MATLAB to run properly.