Software Deployment

Yes, but you'll need to have a decent authoring tool like wise or installshield. You'd find it very difficult to achive using ORCA or Insted for example.

I use wise and you should be able to achieve what you want. You can change the "theme" of the dialogs and add your own bit map. Also if you open the properties for controls you can add your own graphics to them using the "Graphic" tab.
You'll only know if its possible by having a play with it

To be brutally honest, given the question - and no offence is intended - I'd say that implementing an external UI is probably beyond your capabilities. You really need to know your stuff to do this. For example, handing property values from dialog controls to the installer engine is down to you. My advice is to use a decent authoring tool and create custom dialogs within the standard UI.

what authoring tool are you using. With wise and installshield you can create your own custom dialogs so I'm not sure why you'd need a "third party UI"

Maybe you could explain a bit further

well, the third party UI has quite rich and professional look and is expected to hide some of the details which a user doesn't really need to know this simplifying the installation...!!!

so effectively you've got a wrapper that collects information then passes this to your msi?

you said it...!!!

but I don't want to collect the whole information and then pass it in one go to MSI using command line or something...!!! they both should run in parallel ..!!!

I think you're going to have to think about talking to the WindowsInstaller.Installer object...

I am Sorry .... Requirement was not clear to me and thus I posted a wrong question...!!! Let me rephrase my question again..!!! I don't have 3rd Party UI binaries, I just have UI bitmaps (may be jpeg) depicting how the installer UI should look like...!!

Now, my question is, Is it possible to change the look-n-feel of the installer UI elements ?? e.g. some bitmap in the background, funky buttons etc. ????

Hello.... I am back..!!!

I read something called MsiSetExternalUI. Will it really help me out? I am trying to understand it and going through the documentation, in the mean time just wanted to know from experts...!!!!

Hi Guys.... Thanks a lot for your help...!!! I could do it..!! :) I could get the progress details and reflect it on my custom dialog. Well, it is in a very basic stage yet but at least now I have got the direction...!! Thank you all....!!!!

I used MsiSetExternalUI referring this. I could install the package but the custom actions from this pkg are not getting executed. I tried calling MsiProcessMessage with INSTALLMESSAGE_ACTIONSTART, INSTALLMESSAGE_PROGRESS with appropriate parameters but no luck. Can anybody just give me a hint what am I doing wrong or am I missing some crucial step???

NOTE: CA doesn't get executed if it has an entry in InstallUISequence. If moved to InstallExecuteSequence, it works!!

????

I think you'd be far better off posing your question in a developer's forum.