.Net 4.0 Required Additional Installer?

[Niya]

Well first off, 4.0 is not the latest version. 4.5.2 is the latest version. While it is generally a good idea to go with the latest, I wouldn't really advise it in this case. I would suggest that you use .Net 3.5 instead. I consider this version to be the sweet spot if you will. You get the perfect balance of features and platform flexibility. 3.5 is distributed with Windows 7 and up and Windows Server 2008 R2 and up so you don't even have to install it on those OSes. When Windows 8 and higher becomes the most widely deployed Windows version then you can think about using 4.0 and up but Windows 7 remains the most popular version of Windows and you can save yourself a lot of installation headaches by targeting .Net Framework 3.5. 4.0 and higher adds a few niceties but nothing really groundbreaking so you can get on fine without it for now.

If you insist on using the latest version(nothing wrong with that) then I suggest you think about using the Setup templates in Visual Studio to create deployment packages for your apps. They usually work quite well. They are good at resolving dependencies.