Fiery® Installer Builder User Guide

Fiery Installer Builder is a Windows application intended for Fiery Service Technicians and is used to download and
install Fiery system software. Use the Fiery Installer Builder to perform the following tasks:

• Download Fiery system software files to a local or network storage location.

• Format and load the system software on a USB drive for system software installation.
• Prepare a spare SATA or NVMe drive for installation as a replacement of the factory disk drive.
• Perform a network installation using a peer-to-peer Ethernet cable connection.
You can download Fiery Installer Builder from the Fiery Partner Portal.
In this document, the following terminology is used.

• USB drive
The term USB drive includes any external USB storage devices such as USB flash drives, USB pen drives, and
USB SSDs/HDDs.
• SATA drives
SATA SSDs or HDDs used to replace the Fiery server factory storage drive.
• NVMe drives
NVMe SSDs used to replace the FIery server factory storage drive.
• Network installation
This method installs Fiery system software using a peer-to-peer Ethernet connection between the Fiery Installer
Builder host and the Fiery server.

Fiery Installer Builder Feature Summary

The following table summarizes the supported installation methods and related hardware information based on the
type of Fiery server.

Installation method Fiery NX servers Fiery A-series and E-series Additional hardware
servers required

USB drive installation Minimum 32 GB for single Minimum 16 GB for single An external USB drive is
image and 64 GB or more for image and 64 GB or more for required. For optimal
multiple images. multiple images. performance, use a high
speed (1050 MB/s read and
1000 MB/s write speeds or
better) USB 3.x drive
connected to the host PC
USB 3.x port.

© 2025 Fiery, LLC.

14 January 2025
 Fiery® Installer Builder User Guide 2

Installation method Fiery NX servers Fiery A-series and E-series Additional hardware
servers required

SATA or NVMe drive Supported -

• Replacement SATA or
NVMe drive

• SATA to USB adapter

• USB to NVMe adapter

Network Installation - Supported Ethernet cable

Prerequisites
To support all installation methods, you need the following items:

• Any Windows computer with:

• Windows 10 or Windows 11
• USB port
USB 3.x is recommended for faster installation.
• An active Internet connection
Internet access is required to download product images from the Fiery cloud.

• Fiery Partner Portal credentials

Use your Fiery Partner Portal credentials to authenticate and download product images.
Note on resetting Fiery Partner Portal credentials password: If you reset your Fiery Partner Portal account
password, you must wait at least five minutes before logging back in to ensure the update is complete.
You can also authenticate via the Fiery server; just enter the Fiery server's IP address, user name, and password.

Note: If you authenticate via the Fiery server, you’ll download and install the server’s installed system software.
For the latest version from the Fiery cloud, authenticate with your Fiery Partner Portal credentials.
• USB drive
• You may use any external USB drive compatible with Windows 10 or Windows 11.
• For best performance, we recommend using USB 3.x drives with high read/write speeds.
• Note that actual USB drive capacities are always less than advertised. Fiery Installer Builder does not check the
image size against the USB available storage space. Make sure you have adequate storage space in your USB
drive before preparing the image(s).
 Fiery® Installer Builder User Guide 3

• SATA or NVMe drive

This option is available when you are replacing the factory SSD/HDD boot drive on a Fiery NX server.
If you are replacing the SSD/HDD on the Fiery server, you need a SATA to USB adapter or a USB to NVMe
adapter. With these adapters, you can connect a spare SATA or NVMe drive to the USB 3.x port on the Windows
computer in which you installed Fiery Installer Builder, and prepare the spare drive for installation on the Fiery
server. The spare drive will be formatted and the system software will be copied to a recovery folder on the spare
drive.

Note: USB 3.0 to 2.5” SATA III drive adapters and USB to NVMe adapters are available from various retailers.
Some Fiery servers include the adapter in the Fiery Service Kit.
• Ethernet cable
An Ethernet cable is needed when installing a product image via a peer-to-peer network between the host
computer and Fiery A-series or E-series servers.

Basic operations
This section explains the basic operations of Fiery Installer Builder.

Installing Fiery Installer Builder on the host Windows PC

1 Download Fiery Installer Builder from the Fiery Partner Portal.

2 Read the license agreement.

3 Click Accept to start downloading the software.

4 Navigate to the downloaded Fiery Installer Builder software file and double-click the .exe file.
When the installation is complete, the Fiery Installer Builder window appears automatically. The Fiery Installer
Builder icon is placed on the Windows desktop.

Note: Fiery Installer Builder is a self-updating application. When a newer version is detected, Fiery Installer
Builder downloads and installs the updated program files without user interaction.

Uninstalling Fiery Installer Builder

• From the Windows Control Panel, select Uninstall a program. Right-click the Fiery Installer Builder and select
Uninstall.

Using Fiery Installer Builder

1 Double-click the Fiery Installer Builder icon on the desktop.

Do not exit Fiery Installer Builder before it completes the startup process. Exiting the program too
early may damage the installer.
 Fiery® Installer Builder User Guide 4

2 If you start Fiery Installer Builder for the first time, the Select location window appears. Specify the folder that
you will use to store Fiery product images.
You can browse or type the location on the local disk drive, USB drive, or network. Fiery Installer Builder will
remember this folder location so that you don’t have to enter the folder name again the next time you start
application.
You can change the storage location in the Settings window. See Change the product storage location on page
6 for details.

3 If you have started Fiery Installer Builder before, the downloaded product images are listed in the window. The
Add a new product icon appears if there is no product in the storage folder.
From this window, you can perform the following tasks:

• Download Fiery system software images from the cloud to a local or network storage location
• Remove product images from storage folders
• Format and load the system software on a USB drive for system software installation
• Prepare a spare SATA or NVMe drive to use as a replacement
• Network Installation via a peer-to-peer Ethernet cable connection
• Change the sort order of the downloaded software images using the Sort by icon.
Default sort order is accending.

Add a product image from the Fiery cloud

1 Open Fiery Installer Builder.

2 Click Add.

3 At the Fiery Partner Portal window, enter your credentials and click Login. Proceed to step 4.

• Use your Fiery Partner Portal login username and password to authenticate.
4 At the Select a Brand window, click a brand name.

5 At the Select a Product window, click the product image you want to install.

• If Select a Build window appears, select the build you want to install.
• You can use Sort by arrows in Select a Product and Select a Build windows for easy search.
6 At the Summary window, click Terms of Use and Privacy Policy links to read the software license terms and
conditions.

7 Click the check box if you agree with the terms and conditions, and click Accept to start the software download.
A status bar appears to show the progress. Wait until the download is complete.
You can use the Pause button to stop downloading temporarily. To resume the download, click the Resume
button.

8 When you finish downloading, you will need to prepare the image for installation.
For detailed procedures for installing the system software, see the Installation and Service Guide or Service Guide
for the product.
 Fiery® Installer Builder User Guide 5

To add a product image from a Fiery Server Connection

1 Open Fiery Installer Builder.

2 Click Add.

3 Click the Fiery server link, then log in to the Fiery server by following the steps below.

1 At the Please type a location prompt, enter the name or IP address of your Fiery server, and click Next.
2 Enter Username and Password of the Fiery administrator, and click Next to log in to the server.

Contact the site administrator for the administrator’s account information.

4 At the Select a Brand window, click a brand name.

5 At the Select a Product window, select a product image that you want to download.

• If Select a Build window appears, select the build you want to install.
• You can use Sort by arrows in Select a Product and Select a Build windows for easy search.
6 At the Summary window, click Terms of Use and Privacy Policy links to read the software license terms and
conditions.

7 Click the check box if you agree with the terms and conditions, and click Accept to start the software download.
A status bar appears to show the progress. Wait until the download is complete.

8 When you finish downloading, exit Fiery Installer Builder and remove the USB drive from the computer. You can
prepare the USB drive to install the system software on the Fiery server.
For detailed procedures for installing the system software, see the Installation and Service Guide or Service Guide
for the product.

Remove the product image from the storage folder

1 Start Fiery Installer Builder.

2 At the window listing the product images, select a product image from the list and click Remove.

3 At the confirmation window, click OK.

Update a product image

Fiery Installer Builder detects when updated images are available for a product, it shows Update next to the Prepare
action menu. You can download the updated product image by clicking Update.

1 Start Fiery Installer Builder.

If there are any updates or patches available for a product, the Update button appears next to the Prepare action
menu.

2 Click Update to start the update process.

 Fiery® Installer Builder User Guide 6

3 Read the summary.

4 Click the check box if you agree with the terms and conditions, and click Accept to proceed.

5 Log in to the Fiery Partner Portal.

Wait until the download is complete.

Change the product storage location

You may have specified a storage location in your local computer when you first started Fiery Installer Builder. You
can change this location to a different folder or drive. For example, you can change the location to a USB drive that
you use for installation. In this case, you can select a product image in the USB drive and prepare the USB using that
product image. This method allows you to use the USB drive not only as an installation media but also as an image
repository.
Steps to change the storage location:

1 Click the Settings icon on the lower left corner.

2 Under Product storage location, click Browse to specify a storage location.

• If 32 GB USB drives are used, Fiery Installer Builder will format the USB drive and create two partitions: one
NTFS and one FAT32. Fiery Installer Builder then copies the image build in the NTFS partition, makes the
FAT32 partition bootable, and copies the corresponding image files.

3 Click the Home icon on the upper left of the Fiery Installer Builder window to see the product images stored on
the specified location.

Generate log files

Fiery Installer Builder can generate log files for use by technical support.

1 In the Fiery Installer Builder windows, click the Settings button on the lower right corner.

2 Click Generate Logs and specify the file name and location where you want to save the file.

3 Click Save.

4 The log files will be saved in the location selected in step 2.

Preparing external USB drives for Fiery software installation

You can use USB drives to install Fiery system software on Fiery NX, A, and E-series servers. Make sure that you are
using a USB drive that meets the conditions described in Prerequisites on page 2.
If you use a USB drive larger than 32 GB, you can save multiple Fiery product images (see Fiery Installer Builder
Feature Summary on page 1).
Before you prepare the USB drive, you must download the product image from the Fiery Cloud.
 Fiery® Installer Builder User Guide 7

Preparing USB drive for a single product image

1 Connect the USB drive to the host computer.

2 Open Fiery Installer Builder.

3 At the window listing the products, select a product from the list.

4 From the Prepare action menu, select Prepare USB drive.

5 Click Next.

6 At the Select USB drive window, click the USB device you attached to the computer, and click Next.
If more than one USB devices are displayed, make sure to select the correct USB drive that you will use for
installing the system software. Different icons are displayed depending on the type of USB drive detected.
If the USB drive is not formatted properly, a warning message appears before the USB drive is formatted. Click
Yes to format the drive and proceed.
For USB drives larger than 32 GB, go to the next section "Prepare a USB drive for multiple product images"

All data on the USB drive will be lost after format. Make sure that no valuable data resides on the
device.

Note: It will take some time to format and prepare the external USB drive for Fiery Software installation. Do not
interrupt the operation.

7 Once the preparation is completed, safely disconnect the USB drive from the computer.
You can now use the USB drive to install Fiery system software on the Fiery server.

Prepare a USB drive for multiple product images

You must use a USB drive larger than 32 GB to load more than one product image.
You can select a product image in a storage location and make the image installable. The FAT32 partition will be
updated with the new image and the product image will be copied to "Software Release" in the NTFS partition of the
USB drive.

Note: If you do not select a product image to install, the FAT32 partition of the USB drive has been formatted for the
product image that was most recently prepared or made installable. Make sure to select the product you want to
install and make it installable.

1 Prepare a USB drive larger than 32 GB by following the procedure in Preparing USB drive for a single product
image on page 7.

2 Add product images to the local storage location (see Add a product image from the Fiery cloud on page 4).

3 Select the product image you want to install, and from the Prepare action menu, select Make it installable.

Installing Fiery system software using the prepared USB drive

The installation procedure using USB drives differs depending on the Fiery server hardware platform. For detailed
procedures, see the Installation and Service Guide or Service Guide for the Fiery server you are servicing.
 Fiery® Installer Builder User Guide 8

Preparing SATA or NVMe drives (Fiery NX servers only)

You can use Fiery Installer Builder to prepare a spare SATA SSD/HDD, or an NVMe SSD to use as a replacement.
Process to prepare a SATA/NVMe drive:

• Properly format the drive

• Load the system software on the drive
It is recommended to prepare the drive before you visit the customer site.

Proper handling of the SATA/NVMe drive

When you prepare the drive, please remember the following:

Improper handling can damage the drive. Handle the drive with extreme care.

• Use proper ESD practices when grounding yourself and the Fiery server.
• Keep magnetic and magnetic-sensitive objects away from the drive.
• Do not remove the screws on top of the drive. Loosening these screws voids the warranty.
• Never drop, shake, bump, or put excessive pressure on the drive.
• Handle the drive by its sides and avoid touching the printed circuit board.
• Allow the drive to reach room temperature before installation.
When you carry the drive to a customer site, remember the following:

• Keep the drive inside the ESD bag until you are ready to physically install it into the computer system.
• Avoid shaking the drive.

Preparing SATA/NVMe drives

1 Attach the USB to SATA/NVMe adapter to a USB 3.x port on the computer in which you installed Fiery Installer
Builder.

2 Connect the drive to the other end of the USB to SATA/NVMe adapter.

3 Start Fiery Installer Builder.

4 At the window listing the products, select the product image to install.

5 From the Prepare action menu, select Prepare SATA drive.

6 At the Select a SATA drive window, click the SATA/NVMe drive that you connected to the computer.

7 Click Next.
The drive will be formatted and the product image you selected will be loaded on the drive.
 Fiery® Installer Builder User Guide 9

8 Once the drive is prepared, remove the drive from the USB to SATA/NVMe adapter.
You can now install the drive on the Fiery server.
For detailed instructions on how to install the disk drives on the Fiery server, see the Installation and Service
Guide.

Note: If you are installing a drive on a Fiery server that is equipped with Fiery QuickTouch, follow the
instructions shown on the Fiery LCD screen.

Installing Fiery system software using the SATA/NVMe drive

The Fiery server system software is stored in a recovery folder on the prepared replacement drive. Replace the drive
on the Fiery server with the prepared SATA/NVMe drive and restore the Fiery server system software from the
recovery folder on the SATA/NVMe drive.

1 Remove all USB devices connected to the Fiery server.

2 Shut down the Fiery server (see Installation and Service Guide for details).

3 Remove all external cables from the Fiery server.

4 Open the Fiery server (see Installation and Service Guide).

5 Replace the SATA/NVMe drive on the Fiery server with the prepared replacement drive.

• For SATA drives: Replace the drive that is connected to SATA 0 connector on the motherboard.
• If a DVD drive is connected to the SATA 0 connector on the motherboard, replace the drive that is connected
to the SATA 1 connector.
• For NVMe drives: Replace the drive that is inserted into NVMe slot on the motherboard with the prepared
NVMe drive.

For more information, see Installation and Service Guide for your Fiery server.

6 Reassemble the Fiery server (see Installation and Service Guide).

7 Plug the power cable into the wall power outlet.

8 Start the Fiery server (see Installation and Service Guide).

Allow the Fiery server to start.

9 Follow the on-screen instructions on the Fiery LCD display or through the monitor connected to the Fiery server.

Install the system software through network connection (Fiery A-series or E-series
servers only)
Use the Ethernet port designated for network connection to install Fiery system software. When you install the
system software, all the data and configuration information on the server disk drive will be lost. Make sure to create
a backup of the data and system configuration.

1 Remove all USB devices that may be connected to the Fiery server.
 Fiery® Installer Builder User Guide 10

2 If possible, print the Configuration pages.

The Configuration pages contain a list of installed options and a record of the customer's current Setup
configuration.

3 Power on the Windows computer and do the following:

• Open Fiery Installer Builder.

• Close all software applications except Fiery Installer Builder.
• Make sure that the Windows computer is configured to obtain its IP address automatically (DHCP).
• Remove any network cables between the Windows computer and the customer network.
• Disable all power-save and hibernation settings.
It is important that you complete all the tasks in the preceding list. If you do not complete these
tasks, the installation may fail.

4 At the Downloaded window of the Fiery Installer Builder, select the product image that you are going to install.

5 From the Preparation action list, select Perform Network installation.

6 Read the instructions in the window and click Next.

7 Power off the Fiery server (see the Service Guide).

8 Remove all external cables from the Fiery server, except the power cable.

Note: Be sure to leave the power cable connected between the Fiery server and the power outlet.

9 Flip both Fiery server service switches to the Service (ON) position.

Figure 1: Flipping the Fiery server service switches

1 Flip the service switches from normal (OFF) position

2 Flip the service switches to service mode (ON) position

Note: After you install the system software, return the service switches to normal mode (both switches set to
OFF).

10 Connect the Ethernet cable between the Fiery server network port and an Ethernet port on the Windows
computer.
 Fiery® Installer Builder User Guide 11

11 Power ON the Fiery server, click Next on FIB and select the network connection that corresponds to the network
port that you have attached the Ethernet cable, then click Next.
The C1, C2, C3 readings will be displayed on the LED around 120 seconds (when Fiery server and Windows
computer are synchronized) or 00 will be displayed around 130 seconds (when Fiery server and Windows
computer are not synchronized).
A message appears stating that the installation has started.
If the Windows computer connected to the Fiery server is slow, there is a chance that the installation may fail
when the Windows computer and Fiery server synchronization is not happened immediately. The LED will
display 00 and reinstallation is required in that case. Repeat from step 4 on page 10 and at step 11 on page 11,
click Next on FIB and select the network connection that corresponds to the network port that you have attached
the Ethernet cable, then click Next. After the message appears, power ON the Fiery server.

12 LED display on Fiery server starts showing C1 C2 C3 for approximately 12 minutes. The time may vary depends
on the speed of the Windows computer and the size of the product image.
After the copying is complete, the Fiery server will shut down automatically and show the message below:

Figure 2: Fiery server shut down

13 Flip both of the Fiery server service switches to the OFF position.

Figure 3: Flipping the Fiery server service switches

1 Flip the service switches from service mode (ON) position

2 Flip the service switches to normal (OFF) position

14 Disconnect the Ethernet cable from the Fiery server network port and the Windows computer.

15 Reconnect all the cables that were connected to the Fiery server.

16 Make sure that the Fiery server power switch is in the ON (|) position, and power on the Fiery server.
See the Configuration and Setup Guide, which is part of the user documentation set for more details.
 Fiery® Installer Builder User Guide 12

17 After the Fiery server is powered ON, the LED display takes about 18 seconds to show 00 and moves to FF state
(approximately after 11 minutes).
The Fiery server then shows 00 (approximately after 18 minutes).