Page 1 of 1

How to automate an installer?

Posted: 2021-Jul-25, 10:04 am
by MigrationUser
20 Feb 2012 15:34
kevink


The problem I'm trying to solve is that once a month or so, a data update is automatically downloaded to one of my servers.

I'd like to automatically install the update, but it comes with an installer.

The installer was made with Wise, and it can't be run with a silent install option because some of the defaults aren't good for us.

I did write a PowerShell script that runs the GUI -- using SendKeys -- and it was great fun until a colleague pointed out that we would need to have a logged-in session running for my script to work, and we don't want to do that.

Does anyone have an idea of what I can do?

Is there a way to extract the actions the installer takes?

----------------------------

#20 Mar 2012 13:32
kevink


Thanks anyway. After a fair amount of work, It looks like there are some hidden steps, beyond copying files and making registry keys.

I'll try again asking the company, but I may just be out of luck.

----------------------------

#10 Sep 2012 21:20
Misterd


Hi kevink,

As luck would have it I do "Wise" for a living.

Now "wise" as you call it has 2 types of installers: WiseScript and MSI.

-WiseScript is designed to be a black box. (my EXE spill their source .WSE file but I make that happen)
-MSI is silly-putty in its pure form.

If you don't care to play with installers and/or you *must* use the mfr's GUI to DL the files,
then you could use something called WASP (https://github.com/mavaddat/wasp) to *drive* the GUI.
Note: I've never used WASP but it is PowerShell-based.

The best thing to *drive* applications out there is Auto-It. (https://www.autoitscript.com/site/autoit/)
Auto-It can record your actions into a script and play them back.
And you can then edit the script to do just about anything.

Misterd

----------------------------

#11 Sep 2012 13:25
kevink


Thanks for that. I'll look into WASP, since we use PowerShell quite a bit here.