How can I use powershell to run through an installer?

Question

I am trying to install a piece of software that when done manually has configuration options you can choose from when going through the process. I am trying to figure out a way to automate this using powershell but am stuck as to how I can set those configuration options. I believe I would need to run the start-process command on the installer .exe but I don't know where to go from there. Can I use the parameters on the start-process command to pass in the configurations I want?

Answer 1

UPDATE: Several links towards the bottom with information on how to handle installation, configuration and file extraction for setup.exe files.

UPDATE: See Windows Installer PowerShell Module on github.com (scroll down for description, use releases tab for download). I haven't really tested it much, but it is from Heath Stewart - Microsoft Senior Software Engineer (github).

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I had a quick look for that installer, but didn't find it easily. Essentially the installer is either a Windows Installer database (MSI) or something else - generally a setup.exe of some kind. An MSI database can also be wrapped in a setup.exe.

You should be aware that for legacy style installers a common practice for large scale deployment is to capture the legacy install with an application repackager tool, and then compile an MSI file to use for installation (effectively converting an installer from an old format to modern MSI format). This is a specialist task requiring good understanding of Windows and setups. It is generally done in large corporations for very large software distributions. If you are in a large company there might be a team dedicated to packaging software like the one you mention. Maybe check with your management. If the setup is an MSI the same team can also modify that for you according to your specifications.

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With regards to your installer EXE. Try to run setup.exe /a from the command line and see if you get an option to extract files to a "network install point" (administrative install). Then you are dealing with an MSI file wrapped in a setup.exe. If that doesn't work you can try setup.exe /x or setup.exe /extract as well.

Windows Installer has built-in features to allow you to customize the install via PUBLIC properties (uppercase) set at the command line or applied via a transform (Windows Installer's mechanism to apply substantial changes to the vendor file - it is a partial database that gets applied to the installation database from the vendor at runtime).

Non-MSI, legacy installer technologies generally have fewer reliable ways to customize the installation settings, and they tend to be rather ad hoc when they are there. In particular the silent running and uninstall may be features that are missing or poorly executed. These installs are generally all wrapped in EXE format, and there are many tools used to generate them - each with their own quirks and features.

In other words, it all depends on what the installer is implemented as. Give that setup.exe /a a go, and update your answer with new information for us (don't add too many comments - we will check back).

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With regards to using PowerShell. I haven't used PowerShell for deployment so far to be perfectly honest. Here is a basic description of how to install using PowerShell: https://kevinmarquette.github.io/2016-10-21-powershell-installing-msi-files/

You can also invoke automation for MSI files from PowerShell, I don't think this is relevant for what you asked, but here is a quick link for modifying a transform file: http://www.itninja.com/question/ps-how-to-edit-a-mst-file.

The normal way to install MSI files is via Window's built-in msiexec.exe command line. The basic msiexec.exe command line to install software is:

msiexec.exe /I "C:\Your.msi" /QN /L*V "C:\msilog.log" TRANSFORMS="C:\1031.mst;C:\My.mst"

Quick Parameter Explanation:

/I = run install sequence
/QN = run completely silently
/L*V "C:\msilog.log" = verbose logging
TRANSFORMS="C:\1031.mst;C:\My.mst" = Apply transforms 1031.mst and My.mst (see below).

What is a transform? Explained here: How to make better use of MSI files.

Advanced Installer has a general page on msiexec.exe command lines. And here is Microsoft's msiexec.exe documentation on MSDN.

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Some links:

• Perhaps see Michael Urman's answer here: Programmatically extract contents of InstallShield setup.exe. This is for Installshield packaged EXE files only.
• Installshield setup.exe commands (general reference with some sample command lines - towards the end of the document it looks like the command lines are not correct, but the first ones look ok. The later ones are pretty obscure anyway - just thought I'd let you know since I link to it). Here is the official Installshield help documentation.
• Wise setup.exe commands - Wise is no longer available, but if the setup is older it can still be packaged with Wise.
• Advanced Installer standard command line. For this tool setups can apparently be extracted with setup.exe /x or setup.exe /extract. See the link for full list.
• There was also a "silent switch finder" tool used to find hidden switches in exe files (for deployment), but it failed a virustotal.com scan so I won't link to it. Maybe it is using something exotic, such as scanning a file's header at a bit level or something weird that is flagged as malware by mistake? Either way, not a tool I would use.
• And finally: http://unattended.sourceforge.net/installers.php. This link isn't bad, it presents some of the tools above and a few others - and the most common switches used. Untested by me, but looks ok.
• And there are other deployment tools that have their own way of packaging and delivering EXE files - it can be a jungle. I can provide a list of such tools with more links, but maybe that's just confusing. Please try what is provided above first.
• Here is a generic answer that might be helpful as well: Extract MSI from EXE