Deploy .NET IIS Application MSI?

[Dave]

Guys

I am developing a small c# web application that installs on the
clients machine. It’s almost ready to roll out to some beta testers,
but I need to figure out a convenient way to deploy it.

It leverages:
• IIS 7.0
• .NET Framework 3.5
• SQL Server Express 2008

I need to be able to deploy a couple web services, configure the port
the IIS application runs on, and configure SQL Server settings.
Ideally I would like to find a free software packaging utility that
can wrap-up all of this in an MSI or EXE. I don’t have any background
in installation packages so I was hoping someone could provide a bit
of direction.
I noticed that Microsoft has a utility that could work as a backup
plan. Is this the best route to go for this type of application?

Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0
http://www.microsoft.com/web/downloads/platform.aspx

Do any of these support the above requirements for free?
InstallShield, Installaware, Wise, Wix

Any guidance or recommendations would be appreciated!

 

[Christopher Painter]

Do you happen to have Visual Studio 2010? If so, you can download a
free copy of InstallShield 2010 LE. I've been using it in
combination with WiX lately. I create WiX merge modules ( using IsWiX
found on CodePlex ) consumed by an InstallShield project. This
allows me to leverage InstallShield Setup Prerequistes bootstrapper
and still be able to inject a lot of behavior that InstallShield
doesn't support in this edition by using WiX custom action extensions.

I think you could pretty much do what you want with tihs except no
ability to customize the UI. I'd reccomend launching an EXE you make
and install at the end of the install to configure the web.config.

BTW, this is less then an 8 hour job for me including requirements,
development and testing if you could use some help.