check for installation of access and sqlserver

My foolishness.. another thing you could do is check the Windows Registry for your databases

best thing you could do is within your program, have an exception thrown when the connection to your databases (access & SQL Server) is not there.! ex. if(no connection) throw ServerUnavailable If you intend to use the installshield like script, then it would further benefit you. You could have the script itself check for these databases instead of depending upon your code! HTH irfan