How do i make an installer instead of a crash (.NET)

Question

My situation is

• Using .NET 3.5
• Using SDL.NET
• Need to make a friendly installer or warning system.

Chances are the user will be on XP (.NET 1.1). If possible can i do something to let the user know he needs to update to 3.5? Maybe have a yes/no dialog which downloads and install the .NET runtimes for him?

Now how do i detect if the user has sdl.net installed (chances are its in program files/sdldotnet) and let them know they need sdl.net runtime and have a yes/no dialog that brings them to http://sourceforge.net/projects/cs-sdl/files/

The problem i have mostly is how to make the app not outright crash and how to download 3.5 .NET runtime if it is possible.

Answer 1

Just to be clear, your program uses 3.5, but you wish you use it to inform the user to upgrade to 3.5? I'm not so sure this is possible, you'd need to write the installer so it doesn't use .NET, or uses a version that the user can run. Maybe there is an option in Visual Studio to compile for older versions.

Answer 2

Isn't prerequisite checking one of the purposes of the setup.exe that is dropped in the output folder of a VS installer project along with the msi file?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms165429.aspx