Deploying a 2.0 upgrade for 1.1 users

[Guest]

Our company just upgraded to VS 2005 (and by the way, I love it!) I was able
to migrate the code for our product from VS2003 to VS2005 with only a few
snags, and it's working great now. However we are trying to come up with a
non-intrusive way to allow our fairly large number of clients to be able to
upgrade to the new .NET 2.0 version of our product. We have our own
auto-upgrade code inside our product (it downloads updated dll's from our
server, then launches a little program that copies them over the existing
dll's and re-launches the main program.) I told my supervisor that I believe
we'll probably have to have each of our clients run an installer to get .NET
2.0 onto their machines, but he was hoping we could avoid that, to save all
the extra steps that would require our clients to go through. So I'm just
wondering if there is any way to do a "silent install" of .NET 2.0-- any
program we could download to allow 2.0 to get installed without requiring a
lot of extra clicks? Thanks in advance.

 

[Cowboy \(Gregory A. Beamer\)]

You can add a bootstrap to your updater and force the 2.0 upgrade. If these
are internal users, however, I would talk to your network admin and have
them push the upgrade out.

If admin install is not an option, I would consider a new download for the
2.0 bits and put the bootstrap with the 2.0 Framework in it. While it is an
"upgrade" of sorts, it is really a new program. A bit more of a pain, but
the user will be aware of why it is taking so long to "upgrade".

--
Gregory A. Beamer

*************************************************
Think Outside the Box!
*************************************************

 

[Guest]

Thank you so much for the response! The admin install idea would be
wonderful if it were an option, but unfortunately it isn't, as we have
clients nationwide. I just have a question about what exactly you mean by a
"bootstrap"-- is that a technical term for a specific kind of installer, or
is it just a general term for a little program to get something started (such
as an installer)? If it's a specific term, do you have more information on
how to create a bootstrap? Thanks again!