Why msiexec TARGETDIR doesn't seem to work

Question

I tried

msiexec /i "yarn-1.10.1.msi" TARGETDIR="C:\programs" /qb

The software wwas installed, but not into TARGETDIR. Did I miss something?

Answer 1

You can try the following command line instead:

msiexec.exe /i "yarn-1.10.1.msi" INSTALLDIR="C:\programs" /qb

---

• Standards Compliance: Installing underneath %ProgramFiles% is always recommended. Creativity in deployment is generally always overrated and usually causes unnecessary problems. However, you could have an SOE setup that requires custom paths?
• Path Update: A per-user path variable is added to a folder that is not created by default (%SystemDrive%\Users\[UserName]\AppData\Local\Yarn\bin). It is by design. The application probably creates the folder when run.

---

Administrative Installation: TARGETDIR is generally used during administrative installations (essentially a file extraction from the MSI) to specify the output directory for extracted files:

msiexec.exe /a yarn-1.10.1.msi TARGETDIR=D:\YarnExtractedFiles\

---

TARGETDIR: Without over-complicating too much, let me add two links with more information about TARGETDIR (this is to try to make the answer helpful also for others - more "general and generic" info - what you might not need, but that you just might want to know):

• In WiX files, what does Name="SourceDir" refer to?
• Why does the TARGETDIR directory need a name?