how to verify presence of .net framework and if not present how to install it on user machine

net application. .exe generated is sufficient to use software. since I have 700 MB (~8k media files) data to include as part of installation I do not want to use visual studio deployment wizard.

The problem is if user is not having .net framework installed .exe will not lauch. It gives error (Installation failed to initialize properly is the error message obtained)

So how to check/verify the presence of .net framework on user machine and how to install if it is not present?

Does the code for this needs to be written in other language ? Because if vb.net code is used for it then it will also fail start.

My application works with .net 2.0 also. When i tried to 开发者_开发百科install .net 2.0 / 3.5 on user machine it aborted since windows installer 3.1 is its pre-requesite. So how to handle windows installer installation?

I do not want to use paid application for this.

Please suggest a way to do this.

In the setup generate using visual-studio you can add bootstrape package (like .Net 3.5) which gonna be install if needed.

Visual Studio Setup Projects can do this:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/2kt85ked.aspx