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Installation and Update Management

Installation and Update Management

Windows Vista® investments in installation and update management technologies provide application developers the tools to improve the user's application installation and update experience. These improvements are available both to developers using the traditional Microsoft® Windows® Installer in Win32®, the unmanaged programming model for the Microsoft Windows® operating system, and .NET Framework 3.0 ClickOnce, a Web-based deployment technology.

Properly implemented, these features enable users to install and run applications without requiring complex procedures, encountering compatibility and versioning issues, or introducing system instability. These installation technologies make full use of the security improvements, such as Windows® User Account Control (UAC), available in Windows Vista to protect a system during an installation. For more information, see "User Account Control (UAC)" in the Windows Software Development Kit (SDK).

Additional system-level technologies provide quicker and easier ways to keep systems up to date and make use of Windows Update.

Improvements to the Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) and Component Based Servicing (CBS), to meet corporate-wide installation needs, have been addressed through the Windows Deployment Services (WDS).

The following topics are included in this section:

Installation and Update Management: A User Perspective

Installation and Update Management: Roadmap

ClickOnce Installation

Developer Story Windows Installer

Restart Manager Development

See Also

Concepts

Welcome to the Windows Vista Developer Story