Deployment WinForm, SqlExpress, DB

[franz pilgerstorfer]

I am having some serious problems using the built-in setup project in VS2005. During installation users can check if they want a client programm installation, a client installation including database (and database server) or only database (including database server). Depending on what the user chooses I'd like to show a different setup dialog. i.e. user chooses client -> install -> ready user chooses client incl. database -> show dialog with textboxes for servername/databasename Is it possible to include a user-defined customizable dialog in the setup project? Is it possible to define different "ways" in a setup project? (on a) show this dialogue, on b) show another dialogue) Thank you for your help!

[Jimmanuel]

I don't think it's possible to insert custom dialogs into an Installation using a Visual Studio Setup Project. You can customize the dialogs that are already available, but that's about it. For fine grained control over the setup project you'll need to use some other Installer package to create your MSI file. Orca is Microsoft's basic MSI file editor: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/255905[^] That being said, I've run into the same situation. What I did was customize one of the existing dialogs to allow the user to select a Client (no DB) or Server (lots of DB) installation, and then pass that choice into a Custom Action DLL that performed any configuration items that the MSI wasn't able to handle (that included my DB setup). The custom action can do whatever you want, so I handrolled a dialog sequence that prompted for the DB login info (and a bunch of other stuff) and then went to work beating Windows into submission using C#. Hope that helps.

[franz pilgerstorfer]

Thanks that worked great for me. I modified the installer class to show a form. This form will retrieve any information that I need!