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Silent Options

In order to have a successful Deployment it is critical to understand the concept of a silent, or unattended, installation.

A silent installation is one which installs software without requiring any intervention from a user on the computer's console. If an installation asks for information from a user, such as an installation directory or to read a license agreement, then the software cannot be installed remotely. This is because the user interface which is waiting for a button to be clicked is not visible when run remotely, so a user won't be able to do what the installation is asking, even if they knew it was there. The result is an installation that appears to "hang" and never return.

Many application packages support an option known as silent, or unattended. This option will install the software either with a default set of properties (such as file locations) or with options provided on a command line. The vast majority of application installs that use MSI, MSU, or MSP support a silent option (in fact, the installation developer would need to go out of their way to break the silence, as it were).

EXE installations, however, are a mixed bag. Some support the silent option, while others don't. And even for those that do, it's sometimes difficult to determine how to enable it.

Finding the Silent Options

There are a number of resources that can be tried when trying to find the silent option for an install.

Product documentation

Quite often, vendors who have a silent option will list the option in their documentation, usually along with other command line options to configure the installation.

Web searches

It's likely that other people have been looking for the silent option online. Searching for "acrobat install silent" for example yields a number of hits.

Ask the install

Many installs have an option which can give you some usage information. Try using /? or /h.

Trial and error

There are a number of silent options which are used repeatedly. Options which we've seen include /s /q /qn -silent /p:silent -option "silent"

If all else fails, you can visit our forums for some more assistance, we get this question quite a bit and may be able to point you in the right direction.

Test It Out

It's important that you test out the silent install before you deploy the install remotely, otherwise you may end up waiting for quite a while before you realize you're missing something. Simply run the install on a test computer directly from the console with the proper options and make sure it completes without prompting for anything. It's okay if the install shows an interface, such as a progress bar, as long as it never stops and waits for you to do anything.

More Information

For more information on software deployment issues, please download our white paper, Unplugging the Sneakernet: Remote Software Deployment for Windows.

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