VS.NET 2003 Silent Installation

[bagofbones]

Does VS.NET 2003 have custom installation wizard just as Office has (http://unattended.msfn.org/xp/office2003_advanced.htm)? If VS.NET 2003 does not have such kind of tool, how can I customize my silent installation? Thanks a lot.

[richvz]

Insert cd or dvd

select start run

Type in

\Setup\setup.exe /createunattend c:\vs7_deployment.ini

This will run you threw the deployment setup and allow you to chose what you want installed.

Follow steps found in section 3 creating an administative install found in the admiminreadme.htm file.

I created a network administrative install folder called VisualStudio and 2 sub directoies 1 called vs7 and 1 called pre

I then copied all the files from the Visual studio.net cds to the folder called vs7 and all the files from the prerequisite disk to the pre folder. Copy the vs7deployment.ini file vs7 folder.

Copy or move VisualStudio network administative install folder to you software install folder.

Add one of the following listed below to for an install command.

Runonce commands if run from dvd

REG ADD %KEY%\120 /VE /D "Microsoft Visual Studio .Net" /f

REG ADD %KEY%\120 /V 1 /D "%CDROM%\Software\VisualStudio\vs7\setup\setup.exe /unattendfile \%CDROM%\Software\VisualStudio\vs7\vs7deployment.ini" /f

Runonce commands if run from hard drive using $OEM$ folder to copy all files to hard drive.

REG ADD %KEY%\120 /VE /D "Microsoft Visual Studio .Net" /f

REG ADD %KEY%\120 /V 1 /D "%systemdrive%\Software\VisualStudio\vs7\setup\setup.exe /unattendfile \%systemdrive%\Software\VisualStudio\vs7\vs7deployment.ini" /f

Batch file commands

start /wait %systemdrive%\Software\VisualStudio\vs7\setup\setup.exe /unattendfile %systemdrive%\Software\VisualStudio\vs7\vs7_deployment.ini

Finish the rest of you software installs and burn your dvd

[Dee]

The instructions above are basically what I'm attempting to do as well. Note that for unattended install the Visual Studios unattended ini file hard codes the destination directory. So if you're installing Windows to the D: drive and you want Visual Studios to install on D as well your ini file has to have the proper path hard coded into it. Personally I used a command line search and replace program (called gsar) that replaces "c:\program files" in the ini file with the contents of the "%ProgramFiles%" environment variable prior to running the setup. This ensures that VS is installed to the system partition of the computer.

As an aside I've run into difficulty with the "network install" version of VS running from a DVD. It detects and uses the Preinstall just fine, goes through the standard setup dialogs and begins to copy data to the hard drive, but about a quarter of the way through it stops and asks for Visual Studio disk 1. Running FileMon it looks like the setup program is polling the root of the system drive for something, but a specific filename is not specified. Anyone know how to get around this?