Standard details such as the name of the application, it’s manufacturer and the install-type that should be performed are all contained within the Property table of the MSI. You don’t always have to create a separate Transform for your MSI – certain values within the MSI can be altered at install time from the command line.
Anything in Uppercase is a “Public Property” and may be directly altered from the command line. Consider the following installation command:
Msiexec / i c:\test.msi OWNER=”Me” /qb
This would force an install (/i) of the MSI found at C:\test.msi. the /qb states that it’s a quiet install with bare dialogs. /qn would give no dialogs. In the example, the Public Property OWNER is being set to “Me”.
When you use variables within your MSI, you normally have to declare them as Public Properties.
Common Property Additions
ALLUSERS=1
When this is added to the Property table, it ensures that the shortcuts are available to all users, not just the User Account that installed the MSI.
INSTALLLEVEL=32767
This ensures that all optional features within a Package are installed. Typically, an Install level of 3 installs a “Typical” configuration, 1 is the same as minimal. When an install level is set, every feature with an install level the same or less that the number specified in the property table will be installed.
ROOTDRIVE=C:\
The ROOTDRIVE property forces the package to install to a particular drive. By default, the MSI package installs to the local drive with most free space.
REBOOT=ReallySuppress
The REBOOT property can be used to stop Windows Installer from rebooting the machine at the end of the installation of the product. As there is additional auditing taking place, we do not want the machine to be rebooted immediately after the MSI installation. Packages are also designed to be distributed during the day and having machines forcibly rebooted while staff members have open work is dangerous.
SOURCEPATH=<NetworkPath>\<Package Subdirectory>
Sourcepath works the same as the old DOS Path statement. This property represents a list of semicolon separated entries that may be searched to find an original copy of the MSI and associated files. When a package is installed onto a workstation, the original location it was installed
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