Is this a Publish bug???

. . . or am I just doing something wrong

Here's the situation:

I'm attempting to publish my application on CD with all prerequisites included on the CD. My first Publish attempt gave me an error message saying I need several prerequisite files. I located the prerequisites and put them in a folder on my hard drive. I then went to Project|Properties|Publish|Prerequisites. I made sure that the appropriate boxes were checked and then selected "Download prerequisites from the following location." I clicked "Browse", then the "File System" tab and then located and opened the folder containing my prerequisites. When I clicked "OK" I got the following error message:

"Invalid value for 'Download prerequisites from the following location'. The string must be a fully qualified URL or UNC path, for example "http://microsoft.com/myapplication" or "\\server\myapplication."

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Is this a Publish bug???

Aravind Rajagopal
One further comment I thought of after my last post.

I do understand what you're saying that someone running my app on their machine won't be able to access a folder on my machine to obtain the prerequisites. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the intent of the various alternatives on the Prerequisite window.

What I'm trying to do is to publish an app on a CD. When the person runs the setup program, I want the setup to check and see if their system has the necessary prerequisites needed to run my app (e.g., Net Framework 2.0). If not, I want the setup disk to contain those prerequisites (so the person won't have to do a download from the net, which would be a major download if they don't have a broadband connection) and install them.
Asshen
I found a link that resolved three of my four error messages.

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx PostID=13937&SiteID=1

Still, however, despite following suggestions in above link, cannot get the Publising Wizard to find WindowsInstaller-KB893803-v2-x86.exe which I have tried putting in every folder under the bootstrapper folder.

Any thoughts
Mike Martos

What I saw it should be in the same folder as the others.

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\Bootstrapper\Packages\DotNetFX

I used filemon to see it.
ClaudiaN
Finally!!! I got it to work. I don't understand why, but here's what worked. I already had a copy of the Installer exe which I had downloaded some time ago in order to update several home systems. This is the copy I was working with trying to get the Publish Wizard to work. I finally decided to download the file again, this time doing a search on Microsoft for "Installer Redistributables". Found a page where I downloaded the installer file again (looks exactly like the original file I had - same name, same size, same version #, etc.). However, when I put it into the DotNetFx directory the Publisher Wizard finally worked.

I've got one suggestion to Microsoft, if they are monitoring this site. It took a lot of searching to find out that I had to put the redistributables under the DotNetFx folder in the bootstrapper directory in order to get the Publish Wizard to work. Nothing was mentioned (that I could find) on any of your sites or in any books I poured through at the local bookstore. Might want to consider adding this little hint somewhere in your documentation.

Thanks for everyone's suggestions.
Binayak

You should select to download from same location as your application. This will include the prerequisit when you publish it.

If you specify a location it must be a URL/UNC as the error message states, not a folder available on your local machine. When you install on another computer the path is probably not correct.
prakash_iisc

The KB893803 you can find at

http://support.microsoft.com/ id=893803
Dave Githens

I think I have figured it out. Not all files seem to exist for Express Editions. My first test was on a machine that had the full VS 2005 installed also. Now I test it on my home machine and it failes on the .NET framework and 3 files are missing.

instmsia.exe
WindowsInstaller--KB893803-v2-x86.exe
dotnetfx.exe

are not found here

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\Bootstrapper\Packages\DotNetFX

I wish I could find the files to download from somewhere. They might be in the .NET 2.0 SDK but its around 350MB download.
Ivan_B
I already have the file. Just can't get the Publishing Wizard to locate it.
Jens K. Suessmeyer - MSFT
Have tried the "Same location" option previously (in fact, tried it again after seing your post). I get 4 error messages (one for each prerequisite) saying that the prerequisite cannot be found on disk. Is there some special place that I need to put the prerequisites so that the Publish wizard can find them and add them to the other components of the appication that I will copy and burn to a CD

Also, question regarding your second comment. If you cannot specify a folder on your local machine (which obviously I cannot per the error message), why does the browse button bring up a screen that gives you tab choices, one of which is "File System" (the other two are "Local IIS" and "Remote Site")

Thanks for your response.
Is this a Publish bug???

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