MSDE 2000 Release A and Windows Installer

I am currently writing an installer for our product, which needs to incorporate MSDE 2000.
Previous versions of the MSDE install included merge modules (.msm files) that could be incorporated straight into a Windows Installer .msi file. However, the latest version (Release A) does not include the merge modules, and to top that, also states tha
t "Desktop Engine does not support nested installations. You must not call an .msi file from within another .msi file".
My questions are:
- How are we supposed to install MSDE when we are distributing .msi files? We need .msi functionality for other components of our install, so using a non-Windows Installer technology is not an option. Do we need to ask our users to install MSDE separat
ely (ouch)?
- Why did the merge modules disappear? I thought that these were the Microsoft-sanctioned method for installing runtime components...
- Are there any other options - we want to distribute a single file, and we really don't want to have to mix and match .msi and other setup technologies...
Marc Durdin
Software for Specialists
Hi Andy,
Thanks for the comment. However, this page is not up to date. It recommends using the merge modules... which are not supported any more by Microsoft (and are not even included in the latest release of MSDE). Any other suggestions?
Regards,
Marc

MSDE (SQL 2000) Full Service Pack 1 (2)

I need the full Service Pack 1 (or 2) MSDE Installation files to include in an Installer. I am not interested in upgrading current MSDE RTM installs but rather need to install an MSDE SP1 (2) Instance on the client machines. I found a lot of places to get the files but the weird thing is in the supposed MSDE SP2 download files (SQL2KDeskSP2.exe) the sample.msi and samplupgr.msi files are missing that are the templates to be used to create the unique (GUID) MSI installation files for MSDE. Microsoft highly recommends creating the unique MSI files to ensure a previous instance did not use an MSI file with the same GUID.

see:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/distsql/distsql_74qd.asp

The SQL2KDeskSP2.exe does include the SQLRUN01.MSI SQLRUN16.MSI files, but nowhere does it say you can use one of these files as a template and change the GUID internally using ORCA and VC++.

Are we supposed to use the old sample and sampleupg.msi files with SP2 .. but use all the other Install files for SP 1 (2) ?

Please excuse my ignorance of the "Windows Installer" software.

Thanks very much for any information,
Billy MatlockI have been able to get the full sql server sp1 files using msdn subscriber download. I think you have to order a cd if you do not have an msdn subscription.

I have not found a full desktop download for sp2 - although the page that announced the availability of sp2 implied that it would be in the subscriber downloads and that was a while ago.