Determine if MSI/EXE supports certain flag/argument?

windows-installer exe unattended-processing
Chad picture Chad · Sep 4, 2011 · Viewed 51.7k times · Source

I'm creating an auto-updater that can run MSIs and EXEs. These MSIs/EXEs aren't my own. I'd like to use any unattended/silent install option if it exists. Is there some way to determine if an MSI/EXE has some sort of unattended install support and, if so, get the right argument so I can pass it to the file when I run it? I know, by default '/quiet' is the silent install option, but I'm also curious about EXEs and any MSIs that maybe have customized this option.

This question - detect msi parameters for unattended install - is similar, but the links in the answer are broken and I can't figure out from the answer what I would do.

Thanks.

Answer

Jon Heese picture Jon Heese · Mar 15, 2012

Just run through the installer with logging turned on and it will show you all of the possible parameters that the specific MSI accepts.

For example: msiexec /log logfile.txt /i installer.msi

Run through the entire installer and the logfile.txt will show you the passable parameters as "Property(S)" or "Property(C)" with the name in all caps.

Source: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/16767/How-to-Pass-Command-Line-Arguments-to-MSI-Installe

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