Hi Friedrich,

Thanks for the reply.

The reduction in installer size comes from the removal of VS redistributable modules that we don't need. For example, we don't need ATL and localized MFC. The compressed size of the VS redistributable modules we do need comes to about 800KB, as compared to the total size of the whole redistributable installer of 1.8 MB for VS 2008 RTM and 4MB for SP1.

I believe the recommendation in MSDN is to create a *new* merge module that contains only the redist modules you need. I look forward to SetupBuilder 7 where I can make use of merge modules.

In the meantime, is there anything I can do with SetupBuilder 6 to achieve the same effect? The workaround I've made so far is to install private assemblies of the modules we need (e.g. c/c++ runtime) in one folder, then because of the nature of private assemblies, I copy these to every subfolder that has c/c++-based dlls. If SetupBuilder has functionality to let me install shared assemblies in WinSXS, I'd rather use that than my ugly workaround.

Thanks,
Alex