For versions 2.0, 3.0, and 3.5, installing .NET Framework
directly from the .msi
database would fail with a message about needing to launch setup.exe
unless either the ADDEPLOY
or VSEXTUI
properties were set to 1. I'm assuming that when using Group Policy
it automatically sets ADDEPLOY
to 1 for every installation it performs, but otherwise you'd need to do this explicitly.
For both the Client Profile
and Extended
editions of .NET Framework
4.0, it works the same way except the one and only property you can set is called EXTUI
; ADDEPLOY
won't have the desired effect. (If you look at the CA_BlockDirectInstall
action in the InstallExecuteSequence
table of the .msi
database you'll see that the condition for that particular action is "NOT (EXTUI = 1 OR Installed)
"). After setting that property to 1, I've been able to perform deployments directly from the .msi
via Novell ZENworks
or msiexec.exe
with no issues whatsoever. One would think Active Directory
should be just as easy except, unlike with ADDEPLOY
, I'm guessing you'll probably need to set the EXTUI
property yourself, which can be done with a transform.
A minimal command line to perform an unattended installation of, for example, 64-bit .NET Framework 4.0 Client Profile
would be...
msiexec.exe /i netfx_Core_x64.msi EXTUI=1
...or simply...
netfx_Core_x64.msi EXTUI=1
Since there are no installation options for the user to customize, the (default) full interface mode is already effectively an unattended installation, so you don't need to add /passive
or any /q
switches to make it execute unattended.