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Windows Media Connect - Unattended


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Has anyone had any luck installing Windows Media Connect unattended?

I have tried from SVCPACK.INF, both before and after installing Windows Media Player 10. Both times an error message about System Restore not being enabled appears. This is the same message WMP 10 displays when the /DisallowSystemRestore switch is not used.

WM Connect is a single MSI file wraped in an IEXPRESS installer. You can extract the MSI using the /C and /T:<path>. Perhaps an MST transform file?

If anyone has any work-arounds, I'm all ears!

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Some brief poking around in the MSI didn't yield anything useful. It's almost certainly a custom action that's invoking this "helpful" system restore prompt. Without some more dedicated MSI debugging, I'd say the simplest way to install this quietly would be to use a script to turn on system restore, install the package, and then turn off system restore. (The last step may or may not be necessary, depending on the initial state of the machine and how fancy you want your script to be.) Here's the scripts I use to control System Restore. Yes, they're blatantly plagiarized from TechNet.

SROff.vbs

Set Args = wscript.Arguments
If Args.Count() > 0 Then
   Drive = Args.item(0)
Else
   Drive = ""
End If

Set obj = GetObject("winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!root/default:SystemRestore")

If (obj.Disable(Drive)) = 0 Then
   wscript.Echo "Success"
Else
   wscript.Echo "Failed"
End If

SROn.vbs

Set Args = wscript.Arguments
If Args.Count() > 0 Then
   Drive = Args.item(0)
Else
   Drive = ""
End If

Set obj = GetObject("winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!root/default:SystemRestore")
If (obj.Enable(Drive)) = 0 Then
   wscript.Echo "Success"
Else
   wscript.Echo "Failed"
End If

Astute observers will note there's extra logic for specifying a particular drive on the command line, some error checking, and verbose results. Feel free to customize to suit your liking.

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My 'start.cmd' entries for a completely silent install without any 'System Restore Warning' Messages. I have System Restore turned off through a registry tweak run via cmdlines.txt

ECHO.
ECHO Installing Windows Media Connect v10
ECHO Please wait...
start /wait %systemdrive%\Install\MediaConnect\wmcsetup.exe /Q:A /R:N /DisallowSystemRestore

PS: Make sure you have this in your 'start.cmd' after 'Windows Media Player 10'. In other words, 'Media Connect' needs to have 'Media Player 10' already installed.

Hmm... I'm confused, adding /DisallowSystemRestore when I run wmcsetup.exe /Q:A /R:N doesnt start the installation at all.

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Something really strange and wierd is going on here. The first time I tried it the install went thru perfectly. But the second time I tried and then numerous times again, it did not work. But then suddenly it worked again. Hmmm straaaange stuff. lol

Sorry for the inconvenience.

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Hmm... I'm confused, adding /DisallowSystemRestore when I run wmcsetup.exe /Q:A /R:N doesnt start the installation at all.

Don't be fooled. The /Q:A switch supresses all UI (except, of course, this nasty System Restore dialog), so there is most likely something going on. It may just notice that it's already installed and not do anything. Try using /Q:U to see some basic, unattended UI or look in your event log for MSI events.

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I finally decided to peek at this media connect for once today. No switches combinations or anything could possibly disable that warning, nor will msi editing help. The problem isn't the installer itself (it doesn't even check), but it's rather windows media runtime files: wmfdist95.exe, that's installed that does it (in C:\Program Files\Windows Media Connect\Redist) We could fix that, re-archive it, and then replace it inside the msi installer.... It's getting to be too much work to bother with it, might be easier to just repackage it (more precisely, it's wmsetsdk.exe inside that that causes the nag)

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Ok, I got a fix for the nag...

in wmsetsdk.exe @1d1d9, change 74 20 for EB 38. No more nags. Now, how about putting the fixed .exe inside wmsetsdk.exe, inside WinRMSrv.msi (no point to put that one back inside wmcsetup.exe... it's alreay packed far too much)

Or perhaps we could keep the extracted packs, and make it do what it should, without all these self extracting .exe's. (although the .msi is rather important, for install/uninstall infos, and some other stuff (10 ComponentIDs), but I suppose that could all be imported to registry by a .reg file, and copy the installed files, then have a fixed wmsetsdk.exe made with whatever sfx) If someone has enough spare time to look at it, I'd be grateful. I wish I had the time, but free time here is VERY lacking :(

(Just a hard coded non-conditionnal jump over the offending MessageBoxW - towards the "yes do install anyways" 2 bytes goes a long way... B) )

(Hopefully it's not too much against the forum rules to post that info; it's not like it'll get a pirated copy of windows onto someone else's system or anything... Just trying to be helpful!)

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After even more poking around, I found out that calling wmsetsdk.exe with /DisallowSystemRestore on the command line (along with /Q:A for silent), then it doesn't nag - so it looks like we wouldn't really need that byte patch anyways. But, that would still need changes in wmsetsdk.exe inside WinRMSrv.msi (not that it's really hard or anything)

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It looks like after extraction, it calls

"wmsetsdk.exe" /WMFDIST /Quiet /R:N

I'll try making a WinRAR SFX that does

"wmsetsdk.exe" /DisallowSystemRestore /WMFDIST /Quiet /R:N

instead, and see what happens. If everything works as it should, I'll replace it inside the msi and see if it installs properly...

[edit] The SFX seems to work fine so far. On my way to edit the msi...

[update] After editing the msi file (just replacing the one repacked exe) I had compilation errors about some unrelated resources with the free masai editor (I get the same errors if i change nothing at all and hit save-weird). I ran it by hand once and it didn't nag about the system restore. I'll try to repackage it with something else, I'm not liking this masai job much...

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