Question

I am trying to create a Setup Project in Visual Studio. I want it to be an unattended install. Any idea how I can pass in an answer file to it? So far, I am thinking I can create a custom Install action and copy the contents of the answer file (passed in as a parameter), to another file. Is this the right approach or are there other standard ways to process answer files?

Answer 1

For a normal setup you don’t really need a answer file. Just call your setup file with the q-switch and everything should be installed with the default configuration.

msiexec -i c:\pathtofile\mypackage.msi /q

If your really have to change some default values, although you might just change them directly in the setup project, those can also be changed when calling the msi like this:

msiexec -i c:\pathtofile\mypackage.msi ALLUSERS=1

A complete list of the Property Reference can be found here.