Success with MSI? Any Gotcha's to watch out for?

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I need to create an MSI installation so I can push an installation down to a
number of workstations in one go.

Havent done this before so wondered if anyone else has and if so any
Gotcha's to watch out for that isnt an issue for a normal silent sb
installation?

Richard Rose

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Richard,

> I need to create an MSI installation so I can push an installation down to
> a number of workstations in one go.
>
> Havent done this before so wondered if anyone else has and if so any
> Gotcha's to watch out for that isnt an issue for a normal silent sb
> installation?

Do you mean the MSI wrapper for native Windows .exe installations?

Friedrich

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Either yours or the one MS has done which converts "installers" into MSI's.

Richard Rose

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>
> Either yours or the one MS has done which converts "installers" into
> MSI's.
>

Does MS have such a tool available? To be honest, that's new to me <g>. I
don't know of any MS tool that can convert a native Windows setup.exe into a
..msi.

Friedrich

[NewsArchive]

Hi Friedrich,

> Does MS have such a tool available? To be honest, that's new to me <g>. I
> don't know of any MS tool that can convert a native Windows setup.exe into a
> ..msi.

Neither do I, but VS 2010 has a rather primitive, but useful MSI creator,
which I was able to use to combine merge modules for Crystal Reports
install. Pretty plain and ugly but it worked. I then install the MSI with
a SB install and run it from SB after it's done with the main install;)

Best regards,

--
Arnór Baldvinsson - Icetips Alta LLC
Port Angeles, Washington
www.icetips.com - www.buildautomator.com - www.altawebworks.com
Icetips product subscriptions at http://www.icetips.com/subscribe.php

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Having read more into it since posting its msiexec which is actually being
referred to in what I've seen so far, which isnt strictly a wrapper but just
part of windows installer. What I'm thinking might be easiest is to do a
command line driven SB installer that gets called from the msiexec.exe and
using your msi wrapper or converter so it can be pushed down to the
computers in the active domain from the server, otherwise its an all day job
installing onto workstations manually which is something I'd rather avoid.
:-)

Richard Rose

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Although not as flexible as MSI in an Active Directory setting, is there any
possibility a .ZAP solution could work?
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/231747
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc784175%28WS.10%29.aspx

Jane Fleming

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Sounds risky<g>

> is there any
>possibility a .ZAP solution could work?

Jeff Slarve
www.jssoftware.com
www.twitter.com/jslarve

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Windoze hasn't supported risc since NT4, IIRC... <g>

Jane Fleming

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Quite possible, I'll give both a go and see which works the best.

Thanks!

Richard Rose

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SB has the option of creating a ZAP file, BTW...

Jane Fleming