Hello all again, I am having a terrible time trying to figure out how to install ms virtual pc. One example is the length of the msi file, and two if i rename it to somethin shorter i get an error saying that it cannot find this file.msi. i know that i posted something similar to this topic a while ago but cant find the topic ne more. has anyone come up with a proper silent fool proof way to install this. Once again thanks for any suggestions that u may offer, peace!

I install both MS VPC 2004 and its Service pack the same way.

RAR up your install files for the original app. SFX it into an exe with the following comment;

;The comment below contains SFX script commands

Path=c:\VPC\
Silent=1
Overwrite=1
Setup=msiexec /i "C:\VPC\Microsoft Virtual PC 2004.msi" /qn pidkey=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx allusers=2 username="YOUR NAME" organization="YOUR ORG" installdir=d:\Coding\VirtualPC2004

This will silently unpack to c:\VPC and install.

You then need to remove C:\VPC - I use a cmd file as I could't get WinRAR to do it (I also could not get the install to work by unpacking to the "Temp" directory hence this method).

You then have MSVPC installed - If you want to install the SP do exactly the same but you MUST use EXACTLY the same comment file.

Note: you need to insert your own PID-without hyphens, username, organisation name and install directory (where you want it to go!)

I did try doing this using 7zip but it just would not work - go figure. I believe it is related to the temp dir problem.

Strangely (or perhaps not for MS) the RAR file for the app comes to around 15M and the SP 25M !!!

Wow, Thanks for great tip!!! I will try this and I will let you know how it turns out. The DVD WINXPSP2 with my various apps is working quite well, except of course the little stumbling block that i encountered with MSVPC. I have one question though, I am using the tradittional DOS Batch script to perform the various unattended installs, well anyways - when i type in the scripting for the MSVPC will it be the same as all the silent install scripts or will it be different?(hope that this makes sense.) Well anyways, thank you very much for your assistance. Have a nice day!

The above will create a self-extracting RAR file (say VPC.EXE - you choose what to call it) that will silently unpack to the temp directory, and then install silently - no user interaction or dialogs at all. You don't need any switches, whatever install method you use (XPlode, RunOnceExe, Batch etc, etc) just call the *.exe.

However, since VPC installs services and system level stuff I've never tried to install it before first logon, if you find that this does work ok at T12 let me know.