Patching and msi

[elwood]

Please forgive my ignorance ahead of time as I am a novice at installers.

Here's my situation: I have an application which I need to install at several client sites. Due to the nature of this application we are issuing updates to it almost weekly. The clients' preferences are to have one msi which can be installed silently (not prompting the users through the installation process), and patches in the form of msp's, which will also be installed silently. We need them to be installed silently so that users cannot cancel out of the install thus making them be on a different version than everyone else.

So far I'm ok up to the point of creating the msi. I have successfully done this and made it install silently.

However, when I create a patch, I have two main issues:
1- The patches that get created are in the form of a .exe and I cannot figure out how to make them be a .msp nor can I figure out how to make them install silently. Is there an option I am missing?
2- When the patch installs it prompts for the original install source. The only way I have found that I can make it not prompt for this is to run the original installer, copy the uncompressed files to a different directory, cancel the original installer, then point patch to that directory. This option is unacceptable to our clients.

I am aware that I can create a web installer to avoid the prompting during the patch install, however, from my understanding this does not allow for silent installs. Please correct me if I am wrong here.

Any help on this is much appreciated.

Thanks,
Joe

[mmiron]

Just wondering if any follow up occured on this topic? if so I would appreciate the same direction or help

Thanks.
Marc.

[Tinus]

1- The patches that get created are in the form of a .exe and I cannot figure out how to make them be a .msp nor can I figure out how to make them install silently. Is there an option I am missing?

You can use setup.exe /s for a silent install.

I am aware that I can create a web installer to avoid the prompting during the patch install, however, from my understanding this does not allow for silent installs. Please correct me if I am wrong here.

For patches to work you need either an uncompress CD/DVD layout or a web based layout. See here http://www.installaware.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2605
The silent option /s should work in the same way for a patch.