How to perform an unattended / silent installation of the new EV plugin

[stephan_vanheld]

We tried to silently install the EV 10.0.1 Outlook plugin using the MSI file, but on multiple computers this fails like described here:

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/ev-1001-plugin-complains-office-2010-64-bit-does-work

We found that the error does not happen when using SETUP.EXE, but setup.exe does not allow a silent installation (at least it seems so).

Is there either a way to perform an unattended installation through setup.exe, or is there any trick to get it working with the MSI file?

[RahulG]

You need to use setup.exe for  win7 machines if UAC is enabled.

[stephan_vanheld]

I try to run the installation from an elevated command prompt anyway. (In the end I want to deploy it via SCCM.)

So, UAC shouldn't be an issue in that case.

[RahulG]

Yup it would be an issue .

[stephan_vanheld]

OK, so you say I need to use setup.exe (and not the MSI file) if UAC is enabled on the machine, even if I start MSIEXEC from an elevated context?

IF that is so - how can I perform a silent/unattended installation setup.exe?

[rasobey]

Previous clients are fine, why the change to /require/ running setup.exe and then not provide a silent installation options? Backwards step and we need a solution please.

[stephan_vanheld]

Previous client are not fine. We need to deploy to 

a) new machines which never had any EV client

b) machines which had Office 2007 and the classic EV plugin before

c) machines where the installation of the 10.0.0 http-only plugin failed (likely due same issue)

So, if it is true that MSI deployment can't work in that case - is there a way for silent installation with setup.exe, or not? As an alternative we would have to deploy setup.exe in interactive mode and instruct users how to proceed.

[rasobey]

Sorry Stephan, I meant previous clients had a perfectly good way of installing them unattended / silently. But we will need to deploy 10.0.1, which will be a huge pain if there is no silent option!

[rasobey]

Bump. Need a response on this please Symantec.

[ZeRoC00L]

Rasoby,

These forums are no guarantee that Symantec employees will reply.
If you require (urgent) assistance from Symantec you better escalate it to the official support of Symantec.

[rasobey]

It would ne nice to understand the reasons why they've suddenly made it much harder to deply their enterprise products, but point taken, I'll open a support ticket with my reseller.

[rasobey]

Apparently you can still run the MSI on its own with the /qn switch.

[stephan_vanheld]

Yes, but under certain conditions in hangs - in "passive" mode we get the message here:

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/ev-1001-plugin-complains-office-2010-64-bit-does-work

.. which does NOT seem to happen when using setup.exe

Statement above is that when systems have UAC enabled, we MUST use setup.exe and CAN NOT use the MSI file. So, question is still, how to make a silent installation with setup.exe?

[StephenConnolly · Accepted solution]

The setup.exe was added specifically to handle the situation where users are installing interactively and don't understand how to elevate manually - the exe will trigger the elevation automatically. for unattended\silent installations the assumption is that the admin is driving the process without user intervention and therefore UAC is not in play. If you want the install to run silently but in a user session then you need to ensure that the entire process is elevated before you call msiexec.

1. Repackage the MSI in a self-extracting cab file. This can be done easily using the iexpress.exe tool included in Windows. Documentation for it can be found on MSDN. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd346760.aspx . Basically you can create a self-extractor that contains the EV Client MSI and then launch it using a command like
2.  

   msiexec /I <packagename>.msi /qn REBOOT=ReallySuppress MSIRESTARTMANAGERCONTROL=Disable /l*v %temp%\EVClient.log.

3. You can also run the self-extracting file in quiet mode using the relevant command line switches. See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/197147 for more details
4. Alternatively there are some script techniques you can use to elevate the command prompt early enough in the process that you can continue to call msiexec as in earlier releases. You can find details here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/elevationpowertoys/archive/2010/06/20/creating-a-self-elevating-script.as...