Software Deployment

Ya, those are a real pain in the butt. If it spawns after the install is complete, you may be able to capture it like you would if you were capturing an exe to make an msi.

Here is a trick I have done many times.

1. Start a repackage capture and use Notepad.exe as the install exe.
   
2. Start the capture and then Notepad opens, run your configuration wizard.
   
3. When done, close Notepad and complete the repackage capture.
   
4. Review the capture to see what changes need to be made.

If it runs at the end of the MSI install, but before the MSI is completed installing, you can sometimes suppress that with /qn and then add the configurations after or with your MST.

Also, check with the vendor for hidden properties which could be in an install readme.

Post-install configs can be tough. You have some data being entered, possibly not by the MSI, and stored either in files or the registry. But you already knew that. Snapshotting the changes is a good way to see exactly what is being changed when you enter that info. It's more work, but you can also do Process Monitor and see exactly which registry keys and files are being written to. Again, that's more work.

Before I go down either road, I make sure I do a verbose log and look for the information entered and see if that corresponds to a public property. Sometimes that saves a bunch of time.