Deployment project annoyances

We have built relatively simple deployment project for our .NET and COM
components. They are only deployed internally, so we decided not to go with
expensive packages like Wise or InstallShield. Unfortunately, VS.NET seems
to be quite buggy even for our modest needs. Our biggest problem is to teach
our Setup package or MSM module to exclude certain files: for example, .TLB
files or some DLLs. Every time I open the deployment project in VS.NET, some
of excluded files are back. This is not even persistent: "exclude" flags are
reset in a fairly random manner.

Sometimes this creates fatal consequences: for example when after running
Setup program we discover that it installed and registered ADO components
(and on unistall it removes them leaving whole system without ADO COM
support). I've found on the net similar posts, but never found a descriprion
of workaround or fix.

Is there any remedy, or we just have to buy an expensive installer?

Thanks

Vagif Abilov
Oslo Norway
vagif @ online . no