Windows Live Messenger 8.5 unattended installation

[an3k]

If you download the current release of Windows Live Messenger - which is 8.5.1302.1018 - you get the awesome Windows Live installer (an installer which installs itself) and Windows Live login assistent. Additionally, the Installer downloads the Windows Live Messenger Setup.

The /silent switch works with that installer but it still need to download files and installs itself including windows live login assistent - annoying.

Here i describe how you get the WLM installer, only!

1. download the official WLM setup from http://im.live.com/Messenger/im/Join/ (USA) and run the setup at least of WLM itself. For sure you can select a different official download source like the german website.

2. After the whole installation is done, move to C:\Program Files\Common Files\WindowsLiveInstaller\MsiSources\ and save the file Install_{2B091530-69AA-442E-AB09-39ED06B58220}.msi - this is the WLM only installer which you can run fully unattended without the need of downloading anything. also, neither the windows live installer nor the windows live login assistent is getting installed and the windows installer does not save a copy of this 16 MB package somewhere like the windows live installer would do.

There are more sources on your local pc after installation but this was the only file which contains a working WLM setup. The other files had nearly the same size but setup didn't worked.

Edited December 15, 2008 by an3k