How do I create a chained installation?

A chained installation can only run on systems which have Windows Installer 4.5 or higher.

Only MSI packages can be included in a chained installation. If you need to install non-MSI packages you can add them as prerequisites.

A chained installation allows you to install multiple msi packages through a single install process. The first step in creating this type of installations is to configure your main project. After that, you can use the Prerequisites page to add and configure the installation of the other chained packages.

The basic steps for adding and configuring a chained package are:

1. add the chained package by selecting its MSI
2. if the MSI has the files outside or uses other files, you can add them in the "Additional Files" section
3. in the "Folder" field, set the name of the folder which will contain the chained package's extracted setup files
   1. if you specify a name, it will be the name of a folder in the TEMP directory
   2. if this field is empty, the chained package's setup files will be extracted directly in the TEMP folder
4. configure the Install and Uninstall UI Levels
5. set the Install and Uninstall conditions (they are evaluated by the main package and they are used to condition the chained package install and uninstall)
6. use the "Properties" field to set installer properties for the chained package

The chained installation is usually distributed as a single MSI file which contains all chained packages. When this MSI is launched, it will extract the packages and launch them one after another.

If the "Rollback whole products installation if this package fails" option is checked, you should create a Windows Installer 4.5 launch condition in the Launch Conditions page. This is recommended because on a machine which doesn't have Windows Installer 4.5 the chained installation will fail and the entire install will be rolled back.