Can i use VS Setup Project to build a bootstrapper which can install correct platform version or are there any free 3rd party tools?

Question

I'm building 2 different MSI with Visual Studio Setup Project. One for x86 and x64. But i couldn't find a way to combine both into one project so that the bootstrapper is installing the correct platform version.

Is there a way to do so in VS Setup Project or are are there any free 3rd party tools i can use? I found dotnetinstaller, but i'm not sure if that is what i'm looking for.

Answer 1

You can use WiX bootstraper: More info can be found here: http://www.wixwiki.com/

An example how to build both 32 and 64 bit MSIs you will find here: http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2007/08/09/4317654.aspx

Answer 2

You could write a native app and have it check if the system is x86 or x64 then have it write the correct installer to a temp directory and run it. I wrote a blog post that could probably get you started at http://blog.foldertrack.com/?p=45