Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
60 lines (41 loc) · 3.53 KB

msi.md

File metadata and controls

60 lines (41 loc) · 3.53 KB
Raw

Microsoft Windows Installer (MSI) Commands

A curated list of Windows Installer commands.

Microsoft Windows Installer is an installation and configuration service provided with Windows. The installer service enables customers to provide better corporate deployment and provides a standard format for component management.

Extracting MSI Contents Without Installation

To examine the contents of an MSI package without installing it, you can leverage the Administrative Installation feature in conjunction with the TARGETDIR property. This is particularly useful for analyzing package contents.

Administrative Installation

An administrative installation creates a source image of the application on a network share or local directory. This image serves as a centralized repository for installations, enabling users to install the product from the network without requiring access to the original installation media. Unlike a standard installation, an administrative installation does not install the application directly onto the target machine.

TARGETDIR Property

The TARGETDIR property designates the root destination directory for the installation process. In the context of an administrative installation, this property specifies the location where the installation process will extract the MSI package contents. This facilitates a structured and organized extraction of the files, allowing for subsequent analysis or deployment.

Important

The value provided for the TARGETDIR= property must be an absolute path.

Command-Line Options

Option Meaning
/a Performs an Administrative Installation.
<package.msi> Path to the MSI package.
/passive Progress bar only; no prompts or errors.
TARGETDIR= Absolute path to the extraction directory.

Example: Extracting a Surface Laptop Driver Package

The following examples demonstrate how to extract a Surface Laptop driver package (.msi file) to a directory without installing it. This technique allows for inspection of the driver files without the need for a full installation.

Relative Installer Path

msiexec /a "SurfaceLaptop3_Intel_Win11_22000_24.051.12562.0.msi" /passive TARGETDIR=P:\SL3Pack
msiexec /a "SurfaceLaptop5_Win11_22621_24.072.21679.0.msi" /passive TARGETDIR=P:\SL5Pack

Absolute Installer Path

msiexec /a "C:\provisioning\software\surface\SurfaceLaptop3_Intel_Win11_22000_24.051.12562.0.msi" /passive TARGETDIR=P:\SL3Pack
msiexec /a "C:\provisioning\software\surface\SurfaceLaptop5_Win11_22621_24.072.21679.0.msi" /passive TARGETDIR=P:\SL5Pack