How to make software developed in WinForms .NET 3.5 with SQL Express portable

i found that its really pain to create setup and deployment packages for windows xp/vista/7 so my question is can i make my application portable with any third party tool such as thin app ?

my application requires dot net 3.5 framework and sql express 05 installed i want to put it on usb drive and user can execute it directly from usb drive without any setup and deploymen开发者_运维知识库t, if there any other ways to achieve portability for software please let me know?

thanks !

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In order to check if .Net 3.5 and sql express is installed you can check if they are registred in the registry.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP\v3.5
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSSQLServer\MSSQLServer\CurrentVersion - CurrentVersion

But you cannot check this with your 3.5 compiled assembly, so you need a non-dotnet application to do it, like a setup program.

Either you have to create a launcher in something like c++, or you could create a vb script launcher which checks the prerequisites before launching your .net app.

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Neither SQL Express nor the .NET Framework will not run without being installed on the local hard disk.

Source for SQL Express: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sqlsetupandupgrade/thread/fc729d31-8a0b-4156-ab75-4fec652a438b.

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@Mikael already told the trick for .NET detection which you should take a look at.

I just want to add that for portable applications, you should use SQL Server Compact edition instead of Express,

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