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Sorry for the newbie-ish question, but for all my years, I've never dealt with windows installation except as a user and I'm not sure how to start this.

I have two 3rd party packages to install. One I know is msi based but the other I have not found out yet. It comes with a setup.exe and a wrapper.exe - which we use to install.

Both installation prompt the user for language and a number of various options. I need to wrap or do something to make these unattended installations.

I may be able to get some property information and I've read Silent installation of a MSI package - is that how I go about doing this? There will be a boat load of properties.

Basically, how do I go about wrapping the setup.exe and building / providing some type of response file.

thanks, jon

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jon silver
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2 Answers2

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Try this procedure to test if the setup is an MSI:

  • In the folder where your setup.exe is located, hold down shift, and right click in an empty space. Click "Open new command window here".
  • Type in setup.exe /a and let the setup start. This should launch an "admin install" if the setup.exe is an MSI setup at all. If you see a way to specify a path, define one and press next. This should now extract all files from within the setup.exe exposing the MSI file.
  • Once you have the MSI file extracted, it can in most cases be installed via a standard msiexec.exe command line like this: msiexec.exe /i setup.msi

To learn how to install an MSI file silently, check this thread: How to interactive a silently installing msi? (Progress data and cancel it)

Just one final question: are you delivering these setups as a product, or are you trying to install to your work network or similar?

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Stein Åsmul
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If those wrapper/setup programs don't have a silent mode then the whole process can't be silent. As far as the MSI files are concerned, the msiexec command line stuff is what you need, including specifying properties on the command line, such as TARGETDIR- if the default is wrong, and TRANSFORMS= assuming the language choice is a transform choice. If you turn on Windows Installer logging policy (or the wrappers let you create a verbose log) you'll see what command lines the wrappers use, so duplicate them except you'd add a /qn type of option to make them silent. If they require elevation to admin to install you'd have to launch them from an admin prompt because a silent install won't ask for elevation on UAC systems.

PhilDW
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