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I work for a non profit that employs mainly blind people, myself included. Many of us use text to speech software and so we have Jaws (part of the Fusion bundle) by Freedom Scientfic installed on the machines. My job as the noob IT associate is to update all the machines. A fresh install of Fusion seems to overwrite the older edition. So I used a free program called MSI wrapper to create an MSI. now, in CMD I can get the exe to launch, but none of my MSIs work. So I tried a different way to make an MSI, by forcing an uninstall of Fusion without it being installed. No MSI. Looked in the temp folder. No MSI. So I kept plugging with the MSI made from MSI wrapper at exemsi.com. I can get it to launch with its GUI, but using CMD to try switches on it, (I even verified with Freedom Scientific that the switch is /silent) no luck. The only thing I have done that kind of worked, was a silent uninstall of the exe in cmd, which actually did the opposite and installed it, completely silently with no gui or user agreement.

I think the EULA is the problem. Or even the MSI I made. So I got Orca and took a look in properties. Could I find it? Maybe I'm stupid. I couldn't. Obviously.

Anyhow, dear stack overflow, in order to overcome this hurdle, I would like someone to download the offline version of Fusion 2020 and make and MSI that can be deployed silently over Group Policy, and then tell me how they did it, and how they made it work.

I want to learn how to fix this, because even my friends at another IT department, at a charity for the blind have been installing Fusion manually on 40+ machines. Using a deployment software is not an option. I would really like to do this with MSI and group policy.

Thank you in advance!

Joanna Jang
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  • Welcome to stackoverflow :) In meantime can you read this support guideliine ? in the following link https://support.freedomscientific.com/support/technicalsupport/bulletin/1687 – Bilel Feb 25 '20 at 00:30
  • For an EXE file you generally need to "repackage" it to MSI format. This is not a trivial process and requires expert knowledge. Suggest you check with whatever charities you can find if they have a version already converted to MSI format. In order to deploy correctly from Group Policy the MSI file also has to be pretty well-designed. Also: [This site has a database of tips for various software with regards to how to deploy them](https://www.itninja.com/software-library). I don't have time to look at it tonight. [Freedom Scientific](https://www.itninja.com/software/freedom-scientific/browse). – Stein Åsmul Feb 25 '20 at 03:52
  • For the record, [the download page](https://support.freedomscientific.com/Downloads/OfflineInstallers#fusion). Also, this question does not fit the stackoverflow.com format of coding questions only (perhaps serverfault.com or superuser.com would be more helpful), but hope those links can help you. – Stein Åsmul Feb 25 '20 at 03:54
  • Thank you, however I have already packaged it as an MSI, I just can seem to get CMD code to run a /quiet or /qn or /s silent download. The licence agreement keeps popping up. I'll try asking elsewhere. – Joanna Jang Feb 25 '20 at 04:31
  • [Quiet installation of an MSI is done like this when using msiexec.exe](https://stackoverflow.com/a/46780834/129130). I unfortunately don't have access to test using group policy. I will see if I can find a video. – Stein Åsmul Feb 25 '20 at 12:34
  • Maybe this helps: [Deplopy an MSI via GPO](https://www.advancedinstaller.com/user-guide/tutorial-gpo.html). I never use GPO. Most companies use SCCM or some other deployment system. [I have this answer explaining how to customize the installation of MSI files in general](https://stackoverflow.com/a/58232330/129130). The /QN switch is generally enough to suppress all GUI for a well-designed MSI package. Out of scope for the question, but [silent running is a major MSI benefit](https://stackoverflow.com/a/49632260/129130). – Stein Åsmul Feb 25 '20 at 13:04
  • If your MSI is not well-designed and is in fact a wrapper around an EXE file, then that will generally not work since it does not comply with technical restrictions and requirements that are complex to understand. You should obtain a properly packaged MSI via whatever channel you can find - there will be one that has it, I am sure. There could be people doing application packaging and software distribution for a living in corporations who could ask their bosses to give you their MSI-version if it is for charity use? Might work - stretching it I know, but whatever solves the problem :-). – Stein Åsmul Feb 25 '20 at 13:18
  • Too many comments, but just trying to give you a few things to help solve the problem. [Here is a small summary on the complexity of large scale software deployment](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/53289402/silent-run-installer-exe-with-parameters-on-windows/53296461#53296461). – Stein Åsmul Feb 25 '20 at 13:21

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