Getting DotNet Offline

How can I store dotnet offline without going through windows update or anything like that. I want to setup a windows cd so that my friends can also setup dotnet in their computers without having to go online. With java this is so easy. I don't understand why dotnet is hard.

Ask and ye shall receive:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=262d25e3-f589-4842-8157-034d1e7cf3a3&displaylang=en

Out of interest, how were you installing the .NET framework before?  You said "windows update or anything like that" so I'm wondering what you mean by the "anything like that" bit.  Or did you just mean "windows update"?

There is only one supported way of  redistributing the .NET framework - it has always been to ship the .NET Redistributable (as pointed out in the first reply in this thread), which has always been a single .EXE file (dotnetfx.exe) that you simply run on the target machine (using admin privileges).  So I'm wondering what it was about this that you thought was hard in comparison to Java - it doesn't get a whole lot simpler than needing just one file to be run... 

(And in my experience, the .NET installer integrates .NET a whole lot better than most JRE installers integrate Java - getting a standalone Java application to make use of your JRE often seems to need a bit of manual editing of configuration files so the application knows where to look for the Java runtime. This is never necessary in .NET. That's hardly surprising of course - one of the benefits of a single-supplier solution is that integration tends to work a lot better. This is why the iPod and iTunes tend to be easier to use than equivalent generic players with Media Player.)

Also, I'm surprised you choose to describe Windows Update as "hard" - with that you don't even need to download and run the file manually, so it's by far the easiest approach. (Short of having someone else install it for you...) Its problem is not that it's "hard" - it's simply unworkable in scenarios where you don't have reasonably good bandwidth, which is why the one-file-redistributable has always been available.

The hard part about windows update is that through modem windows update takes too much time. That's why I want to write it to CD.

The first time I installed .net framework I don't remember how I did it, maybe visual studio .net came with it like asp.net 1.1 sdk. I have the SDK in addition to the run time.

Yeah, now that I found it, it is not hard at all.Though at one point I spend quite a time to fin this, and I think I got lost or misunderstood what this file stands for. I don't remember my experience exactly now, but what I concluded from readings and so on is that you got to retrieve this through windows update.

What is easy abut JRE is that it is much clerarer for sonsumers that they need to install JRE through a web site. For .net there is no such thing. There is a specific site dedicated to java for consumers, for branding and so on. For .net, going to a generic download page may confuse people.

Thanks all