You have two options for packaging your software in Visual Studio .NET: cabinet files and Windows Installer files.

Cabinet Files

Cabinet files (or .cab files) are compressed files of your existing files. A few restrictions apply to using .cab files. First of all, your .cab file can contain only one assembly, so a .cab is good if you are distributing a single DLL component or single executable program. Also a .cab file must have the same name as the assembly it is packaging. For example, our SmileyFace.dll cabinet file would have to be named SmileyFace.cab.

Microsoft Windows Installer Files

Microsoft Windows Installer files (or .msi files) are probably the preferred method of installation. The Windows Installer is the standard installer used for Microsoft Windows 2000, Me, and XP (as well as 98 and even 95). Windows Installer not only installs the application, but it keeps a record of everything it installs including file and registry information. You can also use Windows Installer to repair an application since Installer has a record of what it needs and does a check on what it is missing.