Pre-Requisite installation using 'Browse' option...need help

[Tiger12345]

We have one software which needs some pre-requisites .Net Framework, Vc++ redistributables,IIS,Active sync 4.1,MDAC etc. we are able to check whether the pre-requisites are installed in the system. As some of the pre-requisites are not free re-distributables, we would like to give one "Browse" button option to select the redistributable's path.But we are unable to find a solution to give this option. Can any one help me out by giving a solution for this???
When i tried with some work arounds, its not allowing to proceed with the second installation when the current installation of our product is taking place. Is there any option to pause one installation and proceed with the installation of pre-requisite and after the pre requisite installation gets over, contnue with the product installation??? Please help me out in this matter if any one have an idea... We tried using the built-in option of IS to install pre-requisites, But that will not allow browse option and the installer size is going too high.

[MichaelU]

We don't have anything built in for this, but it should be easy to create a prerequisite that has conditions based on the redistributable, and launches an EXE you create. This EXE would allow a user to browse to the real redist, launch it, wait for it to finish, and return its return code. Or for your second method, it could put up a message box asking the user to install something else before clicking OK, but that sounds a lot less pleasant.

[DLee65]

Can you create a simple InstallScript project that handles the install of the prerequisites, calling each one as needed?

We use an InstallScript setup as a bootstrapper to the Prerequisites in order to allow us to check things like available memory, disk space, etc. We had to craft this to find a more polite way to inform the user that their system does not meet the system requirements for one of the prerequisites.

My thought is that you can easily provide a browse button in the bootstrapper. It is too bad that the InstallShield prerequisite item cannot accept properties because you could simply pass in the value in that case, but alas I think you would have to use LaunchAppAndWait from the InstallScript setup to handle at least this one prerequisite that requires the browse dialog.

I am attaching a zip file that contains the bootstrapper that we use so you can get an idea of what we have done.

[Tiger12345]

Thanks Machile and Dan, Both of you have given 2 ideas which we can try out. I will work on this and post the result here.