Software Deployment

Hi,

If you use setup.exe /v "/qn" do you need to specify /x after /v to pass a msiexec uninstall? Just checking?

Usually an install can place an uninstall entry which ARP uses in the reg location of:
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current version\Uninstall\{Product Code}
Where Product Code is the Unique GUID for the Autocad package.
I would jump to the uninstall key in the registry and search for Autocad and if you find a result in a sub-folder within the Uninstall subkey, just look for the Uninstall string key.
If it has a msiexec command, most likely will be written like
msiexec /x{ProductCode} - therefore use /qb /qb! or /qn to perform a quiet uninstall.

Otherwise if this string is not available, look for the cache MSI in the c:\windows\installer folder by searching for the "Autocad" string. If it finds the .MSI, open it in an editor like Orca, Wise etc and check the property table for the ProductCode which you can use the basic formula as mentioned above: msiexec /x [ProductCode] /qn

Another option, can you perform an answer file with the setup.exe file - this is the Installshield method.
Check the Appdeploy page: http://itninja.com/link/product-website

Hope this helps..good luck mate.

Hmmm...Ole's link takes you to a product called JMP 6.x but, if you look up AutoCAD 2010 in the 'Package KB', it seems that the ultimate container is indeed an MSI so as he suggested, using MSIExec with '/x', the ProductCode and the silent switch of you choice is the way to go.

Thanks for the Post.
the /x sounded feasible, tried every variation that I could think of. No joy, still just brings up the uninstall/repair option window.
re the uninstall string - that is line 4 of my post. As I said in my post - not a very standard string
checked the installer folder - there is a folder with some acad files in there, but no msi - acad.mst, but not msi.

also tried the /r - doesn't even recognise the switch.

did give me one idea, did a search for the acad.msi (rather than setup.exe) in the original installation files rather than on my PC. found it, Ran that with the following code - WORKS PERFECTLY.

c:\windows\system32\msiexec.exe /x {5783F2D7-8001-0409-0002-0060B0CE6BBA} /qn

guid from the original uninstall string.

I ran this from the directory where the msi was stored in the original install - x86\acad\acad.msi .

Your clues got me going in the right direction. Thanks for the help.

Excellent news. FWIW, for those set-up stubs which use the '/V' switch to pass arguments to MSIExec, there should be no space between the '/V' and those arguments. Although you said you'd tried all possible combinations, I wonder if this would have worked:C:\Program Files\AutoCAD 2010 en-US\Setup\Setup.exe /V/X {5783F2D7-8001-0409-0002-0060B0CE6BBA}/QN

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. some suggestions from here combined with suggestions from the Autodesk Discussion Groups got me to the solution. Following is the vbscript that worked for me. Quite simple once I got away from trying to use the setup.exe or the autodesk uninstall string from the registry. All you should need to change, maybe, is the location the logfile is written to

Dim WshShell
Dim objFSO
Set WshShell = CreateObject("wscript.shell")
Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
WshShell.Run "c:\windows\system32\msiexec.exe /x {5783F2D7-8001-0409-0002-0060B0CE6BBA} /qn /passive /norestart /l c:\LogFiles\Uninstall_Autocad_2010.log"
WshShell.Run "c:\windows\system32\msiexec.exe /x C:\WINDOWS\Installer\d5360.msi /qb /passive /norestart /l c:\LogFiles\Uninstall_Autocad_2010_language_pack.log"

Using the name of the MSI in the 'Installer' folder is a mistake, as these are randomly generated.

If there's no entry in the 'Uninstall' registry tree (from where you would typically get the ProductCode), get it from the MSI and use that, as you have done for the main product. Also, not that it makes much difference, but it seems more logical to me to remove the language pack first. Lastly, if you're going to log, use the verbose switch: ordinary logs are next to useless in a failure scenario.

hello sir how r u

There isn't a space between the 'x' and the GUID. So it would look like:

msiexec /x{GUID} /qn

The uninstall will fail if you try to uninstall the language pack first, but rather than using whats in the 'Installer' folder i use the following..

msiexec /x {5783F2D7-8004-0409-1002-0060B0CE6BBA} /qn

It's doesn't matter whether you have a space between "/x" and the left curly brace "{". msiexec doesn't care. "/x {" and "/x{" are handled the same.