If you have ever wanted to build your own Windows Installer and you have access to Visual Studio .NET it is much easier than you may think and of course it is much less expensive than many other third party installer applications. While third party installer applications may provide a greater variety of options, I have found the the Setup and Deployment Projects within Visual Studio .NET work perfectly fine in many cases.

• Setup Project: Creates a Windows Installer project to which files can be added. This project type is the most generic of the five.
• Web Setup Project: Creates a Windows Installer web project to which files can be added.
• Merge Module Project: Creates a Windows Installer Merge Module project to which files can be added. This project type is most commonly used for using third party products.
• Setup Wizard: Creates a Windows Installer project with the aid of a wizard.
• Cab Project: Creates a Cab project to which files can be added.