Deployment project output question.

DavidStein

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Jun 7, 2004
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I have a vb.net solution that includes a windows form project and a deployment project. When I build for release, I get three files: Setup.exe, Setup.ini, and MyApp.msi. It appears that I can install the program by running either Setup.exe, or MyApp.msi - what's the difference? And which is preferred?

Thanks.
 
Setup.exe is a bootstrapper for the .msi, basically it checks that the OS has a compatible version of the windows installer service, if not it upgrades it so your msi can run.
 
Thanks. I assume then that the preferred way to install the app is to run Setup.exe, since it checks for the Windows installer?
 
yeah, however this is really only needed for pre win2k machines as 2k and xp have windows installer 1.1 (the latest version i believe) as part of the OS
 
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