Usually, when you install an MSI package on windows, it is installed using the currently logged on user account. but I want to install it to a specific user account. For now, I want to install my MSI package using the system account.
Is it possible? How to do that?
Not that I would recommend it, but there is an old trick you can use to do this under the SYSTEM account…
First, you’ll need to craft the installation command-line to install silently/without user input.** Something like
msiexec.exe /i MyProgram.msi /qb-should work.Second, you’ll need to create a Scheduled Task (XP) or Task Schedule job (Vista/Win7) to execute the command, and have it run as the SYSTEM user. Set it for a time a few minutes in the future, et voila!
(** Okay, technically you could just run
msiexec /i MyProgram.msiand configure the task to allow interaction with the local user, but this only works on Win2k and XP.)Alternately, you could use the great little SysInternals utility PSEXEC with the
-soption to execute the process as the local SYSTEM user…