Question about Windows Service and Setup projects

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I am reviewing Windows service programming. I'm running VS2005 and
programming in VB. I've just found an example in Support: 'How to create a
Setup project for a Windows Service in Visual Basic .NET or in Visual Basic
2005'

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/317421

I've been able to program and run this example without problems.

However, I wonder if I'm missing the point here. How do you deploy a
service like this to a machine without Visual Studio installed?

(Admittedly I have little experience writing setup projects either.)

[Alex Clark]

Re: Question about Windows Service and Setup projects

When you create a Windows Service project in VS, it should include the
installer classes in the service project itself (ServiceInstall er,
ServiceProcessI nstaller). As you've probably determined already, these
allow for a command line install/uninstall of the service --- fine if you're
a developer, not so much fun if you're a regular user.

That's where the Setup project comes into play. You create the Setup
project in VS and add it to your current solution (side by side your Service
project), telling it that you want to install the output of your service
project. The installer, when run, will detect the fact that your service
..exe contains special installer classes (ServiceInstall er,
ServiceProcessI nstaller) and will call the install methods of those classes
during the install. This means that a nice Wizard-esque GUI can be used to
install/uninstall your service.

The Setup project compiles down to an MSI file and a "Setup.exe" file, which
can be run on the target user's computer without VS installed. It can even
be configured to download and install prerequisites like .NET 2.0 for
example.

-Alex



"B. Chernick" <BChernick@disc ussions.microso ft.comwrote in message
news:CE6371AF-9762-4EFC-A7A2-36DCC82EA2D0@mi crosoft.com...

>I am reviewing Windows service programming. I'm running VS2005 and
programming in VB. I've just found an example in Support: 'How to create
a
Setup project for a Windows Service in Visual Basic .NET or in Visual
Basic
2005'

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/317421

>
I've been able to program and run this example without problems.
>
However, I wonder if I'm missing the point here. How do you deploy a
service like this to a machine without Visual Studio installed?
>
(Admittedly I have little experience writing setup projects either.)