Manual installation

I have a .NET web project with a web deployment project that installs the files on the webserver, configures the IIS and restarts it. This works great.

Recently I discovered the need of this setup program to only copy the web project files to a certain location (path entered in the setup program by the user) and do nothing more to it. From this location (e.g the users desktop) the user (in this case a web server administrator) then transfers the files via FTP and configures the webserver himself, in other words he wants to manually install this web program.

So I thought it was easy to just make two radiobuttons in the setup project (Automatic installation/Manual installation) and if the user chooses Manual all the installation program would do is copying the all the files to a directory and nothing more.. but now the tricky part comes.. how to do this. I've tried everything but can't figure out how to do it.

Even harder is to get the setup project not to add itself to the "Add/Remove program" group under the Control Panel. Because if all the setup program does is copying some temporary files, the option of uninstalling is useless..

You may think, "why doesn't he just zip the files and email them to the user". A good question, and the answer is that it is all about "looking good". It certainly looks nicer to ship a setup project then just email a lousy zip file.

If someone could help me with this I really would appreciate it!

Sincerely yours,
Roger