i am using VS Studio setup project for creating setup, the points i have doubt in are;

1.my application requires directx as prerequist, so i need to add directxruntime setup to it. How can i check condition for directx and then add setup files for its installation to the main installer so that it could be checked and installed before main application.

2.I need toadd shrotcut file to the installer project without already adding the file it is referring to.

I'd ask in a DirectX forum how to detect what version of DirectX is installed on the system. I suspect it's a registry item somewhere, but there are often new DirectX versions so you'll to be specific about which one you want. This might be helpful:

http://www.freevbcode.com/ShowCode.asp?ID=8128

When you know what the check is, I'd add it to the setup.exe prerequisites as described here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/04/10/Bootstrapper/

and I don't know what your 2. means, but if you are referring to the DirectX setup you don't need it if you go with the bootstrapper approach. In any case, a permanent shortcut to an install you only use once seems unnecessary.

Yes bootstrapper seems good option, but i need DirectX packages to be placed in the the bootstraper/packages folder thatfollows publish.xml and product.xml, i downloaded some existing package from some site for DirectX 9.0c, but since it is of older version of directx, it conflicted with my own newer version of directX 9.0c (August 2006). Can you guide me correct package for newer version of directX, so that i can use it with my bootstrapper.

Also can you guide me where can i get msi version of directX runtime , because i am getting cab files version everywhere.