Another application that is common in almost all environments is Silverlight, so in this post I will show you how to install Silverlight silently in three ways.
The first thing we need is the exe for Silverlight that can be found here:
http://www.microsoft.com/getsilverlight/Get-Started/Install/Default.aspx
Note: If you are running a 64-bit OS, the file will be the one for 64-bit. If you need the 32-bit exe, you need to download it from a computer running a 32-bit OS.
The first way
The most common way, and the easiest way is to use the *.exe file directly. I would recommend using this method when the application is installed with a TS through SCCM since applications has a tendency to fail for no apparent reason.
In this case the complete install string would be:
silverlight_x64.exe /q
The second way
The second way is to use the *.msi file and the *.msp file that is included in the downloaded *.exe file.
The first thing is to extract the content of the *.exe file. To do this, run the following command in a elevated command prompt:
silverlight_x64.exe /extract
The following files will be extracted:
The *.msp file is located in the “silverlight.7z” file, so go ahead and extract the file to same folder as the other files. When done, you can delete all files except the *.msi and *.msp file.
Before we can do a silent installation of Silverlight, we need to uninstall the old version that is installed on the client. The command that should be used is the following:
msiexec.exe /X{89F4137D-6C26-4A84-BDB8-2E5A4BB71E00} /qn
Then we can install the new version by running the following command:
msiexec /i silverlight.msi /update Silverlight.msp ALLUSERS=2 /qn /LiV %temp%\Silverlight5.log
The third way
Well, to be honest, this isn’t really a third way to install. But this paragraph will tell you something that you need to know if you don’t want your users to manually update Silverlight. We need to add/update two registry values to disable this feature.
The two items are located in the following key:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Silverlight]
And are named:
- UpdateConsentMode
- UpdateMode
Give these a value of “0” to completely disable the automatic update of Silverlight.
If they are not present, you can just create them as a new “DWORD”.
Happy deployment!
