Bootstrapping asp.net deployment with .net 3.5SP1

Question

We have a asp.net product that currently runs on .net 2.0 framework. We are using the vs2008 bootstrapper for the deployment.

Few months ago I tried to upgrade to .net 3.5SP1 and used the bootstrapper for 3.5SP1. Some of our pilot users complained that it took about 30-45 minutes to download and install the framework. This usually gives an impression to the user that our program itself is too slow to install (and also for sometime there is no activity on the screen, so they tend to reboot thinking that the machine is stuck!).

I am wondering if anybody faced this problem and how they dealt with it. Some things comes to my mind are.

1. Show a splash screen when .net 3.5sp1 is downloading and installing so that user knows that it installing the big famework and they need to wait! BTW: can this be done using the vs.net 2008 deployment project?

2. Do not do bootstrapping at all, use a launch condition to find out if .net 3.5SP1 is not in the customer machine, if so, just send them to the microsoft site to install and download.

3. Somehow isolate the dlls that are required from the full 231MB (or so) package and install only those are required. Is this a possibility?

The "Client Profile" does not seem to help much for asp.net programs with user having .net 2.0 on their machine, it just defaults to full install...

Answer 1

Hello,

maybe the link above may help you out, why these strange things are happening.

"Pay attention if you run .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 on a non-English OS! If you run the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 on a non-English OS, it will attempt to install the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 language pack in the language that matches the OS language by default. As the language pack is not a part of the full package, the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 installer will attempt to download it and install it for the user behind the scenes on non-English OS's".

And here is the link Deploying .NET Framework 3.5 SP1

Answer 2

Also note, the bootstrapper version of .NET 3.5 SP1 requires an internet connection.

You can replace this with the full install that comes in the VS2008 SP1 distribution.

We distribute CDROM's to allow for complete offline scenario's.