Deployment ASP.NET website: Why *.msi required if setup is there?

Question

Hi,

I have made website deployment project for ASP.NET 3.5 website. After build i have found two setup 1. MyApp.msi and 2. MyApp.setup.

At deployment PC when i just copy and paste only setup file it will prompt error message for finding msi.

After copy msi when i again run setup i will install successfully.

I am not able to find why we need to have both setup and msi at deployment PC?

Answer 1

You actually only need the .msi for successful deployment. The setup.exe file is only used to detect if Windows Installer is available on the machine, then it launches the msi.