A setup prerequisite is a base application or component that must be installed on the target machine before your application can be installed. The Setup Prerequisite Editor in InstallShield is a tool that enables you to create custom setup prerequisites that you can include in your projects. You can also use this tool to modify the settings for any of the prerequisites that are included with InstallShield.

If Needs to be downloaded is specified in the Location column for the setup prerequisite that you added to your project, that prerequisite is not installed on your computer. You can download the prerequisite from the Internet to your computer if you would like to include it in your project. If you build a release without first downloading one or more required prerequisites, and if you specify that the prerequisites should be extracted from Setup.exe or copied from the source media (instead of being downloaded from the Web to the end user's computer), one or more build errors may be generated. To eliminate the build errors, remove the prerequisite from your project, download it to your computer, or change the setup prerequisites location for the release to the download option; then rebuild the release.

To download a specific merge module, object, or setup prerequisite:

1. To specify which types of redistributables—all types, merge modules, objects, or setup prerequisites—should be displayed, select the appropriate option in the Object types to display list.
2. Right-click the merge module, object, or setup prerequisite that you would like to download and then click Download Selected Item.

To download all of the merge modules, objects, and setup prerequisites that are needed for your installation project:

Right-click any merge module, object, or setup prerequisite and then click Download All Required Items.