I am ready to deploy an application and I am trying to find
out the pros and cons of setup packages.
We all know PDW and all the problems that come with it...so
I went for the Visual Studio Installer... Everything's fine
except some things:
1) I checked the setup lists and I saw that VSinstaller
didn't include the following files, which were included by
the PDW
[email protected],$(WinSysPathSysFile),$(DLLSelfRegister),,4/23/99 10:22:00 PM,237840,4.0.2521.8
[email protected],$(WinSysPathSysFile),,,4/23/99 10:22:00 PM,553232,4.0.2521.9
[email protected],$(WinSysPathSysFile),$(DLLSelfRegister),,4/23/99 10:22:00 PM,315664,4.0.2521.8
[email protected],$(WinSysPathSysFile),$(DLLSelfRegister),,4/23/99 10:22:00 PM,422160,4.0.2521.9
[email protected],$(WinSysPathSysFile),,,4/23/99 10:22:00 PM,831760,4.0.2521.8
[email protected],$(WinSysPathSysFile),,,4/23/99 10:22:00 PM,614672,4.0.2521.8

My app uses DAO and MsJet 4.0

2) The version of Visual Studio Installer I use is 1.1 This version Microsoft claims that works ok with SP3. Installer 1.2 requires SP4 which I don't have (I beleive it has a ridiculous size and it's impossible to be downloaded!!!)
I have tested the setup on a machine with no installer
redistributables. I have downloaded the 1.2 version (from http://www.microsoft.com/etc), run myapp.msi file and reboot! That was a mistake because now there is the mighty error window of the windows explorer describing memory registers with wrong values! I don't know what to blame but windows98 have become unusuable!

Can someone specify what is going on with the distribution
files..how they interact with IE5 or IE4, what they need,
what is going on with WinMe and so on...

Thank you!

Nikos

p.s.
(i)I have read most of the topics about installers and
there is nothing but complaints! This makes me wonder..
(ii) ok I know Inno Setup...but i cannot ignore the
convinience of the automatical detection of dependencies!