I found a page that lists some of the options for Automatic Update of installed software. None of the options look allthat great. What annoys me is that Microsoft tends to indicate that AutoUpdate is available in the standard windows installer. Ahh, I get it. AutoUpdate is not what I thought it was. It is ‘Update from Web’ that I want I think.

Looking at the Code Project, I found a program called Updater which appears to do what I want with regard to upgrading files. It is a seperate program which updates as required. This is a bit clunkier than I had hoped for but it will at least work, and the price is about right – FREE! Every time microsoft releases a new version of Visual Studio they manage to stuff up the Installer somehow. The version in VB6 from memory was horrid. VB.NET 2003 was good, but it is missing some features. But in VB.NET they managed to stuff up version numbers of programs. I cannot even now work out how to correctly version files.

One day Microsoft might actually get it right. Until then I am stuck.