Why do so many programs have both a setup.exe and a setup.msi?

Question

I have always wondered about this. So many application setups have a zip file that you unzip, and in it are a bunch of files, among other things an exe and an msi. What is t

Answer 1

The setup.exe is a wrapper for the MSI, but it is not only a wrapper.

• The setup.exe can rely on a setup.ini to define parameters
• The setup.exe checks for the Windows Installer (a MSI cannot be installed otherwise)
• The setup.exe can check for frameworks, like the .NET framework. The developer can pick one of those defined in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\Bootstrapper\Packages (for Visual Studio 2008). If it is lacking, it will try to download it from http://www.microsoft.com/
• The setup.exe can be reconfigured with msistuff.exe