Running the Silent Installation

InstallShield 12

After you have created the installation and the response file, do the following:

Add the response file (which is located in your Windows folder by default) to the Disk1 folder under Advanced Files in the Support Files/Billboards view.

Build your release. If you are creating a self-extracting executable file for your installation, enter -s for the Setup Command Line property in the General Options panel of the Release Wizard or for the Setup Command Line property in the Releases view.

Now you are ready to run the installation in silent mode using InstallShield Silent. When running an installation in silent mode, be aware that no messages are displayed. Instead, a log file named Setup.log captures installation information, including whether the installation was successful. You can review the log file and determine the result of the installation. (Note that for certain installation initialization errors, the log file may instead be named Setupexe.log and be created in SUPPORTDIR if the installation is run from the Internet or in SRCDIR otherwise.)

To launch InstallShield Silent, run Setup.exe with the -s option. If you created a self-extracting executable file, simply launch it; you included the -s option in step 2 above.

InstallShield also provides the -f1 and -f2 switches so that you can specify the name and location of the response file and the location of the log file. For more information, see Setup.exe and Update.exe Command-Line Parameters.

To verify if a silent installation succeeded, look at the ResultCode value in the [ResponseResult] section of Setup.log. InstallShield writes an appropriate return value after the ResultCode keyname.