Deploying Visual Studio 2008 Express via Microsoft Deployment
So, you want to deploy VS2008 Express? - I did (We use it in our testing VMs).
1: Download the offline installer
First things first, get the offline installer for Visual Studio 2008 Express.
2: Extract the files from the ISO
Grab whichever edition you want to deploy from the ISO you’ve just downloaded (i’m just interested in c#). Setup a a new Application in the Deployment Workbench with these files, using the following for you Quiet install command:
ixpvcs.exe /q:a /c:”msiexec /i vs_setup.msi VSEXTUI=1 ADDLOCAL=ALL REBOOT=ReallySuppress /qn”
3: Dependancies
You’ll need to add in dependancies for Windows Installer 3.1 and the .net 2.0 framework. See this article for information on how to do just that.
Just like to say thanks to Aaron Stebner who provided the basis for this on his blog. All i’ve just is update the patch for vs2008 rather than 2005.
February 11th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Hi
I’ve tried following your command line suggestion with the Visual Basic Express ixpvb.exe file but, after extracting some files, a message comes up saying that it has to be installed using the setup file.
Can you suggest anything else I could try.
Roger
March 5th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Hi Dave,
nice, but command doesn’t work with Visual Studio Express 2008 (newest download).
It worked on VSE 2005.
Using setup.exe is required!
Manfred
March 5th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Hi Manfred,
What I ended up doing was extracting setup (/x or /e - I can’t remember) and then doing the following:
msiexec /i vs_setup.msi VSEXTUI=1 ADDLOCAL=ALL REBOOT=ReallySuppress
Let me know how you get on!
Dave
March 6th, 2008 at 9:22 am
Hi Dave,
Sorry, but none of the IExpress extracting parameters (/x /e /extract) work with this type of setup.exe. The parameters are ignored, real setup is started.
The parameters you spectified (msiexec /i ….) don’t work even if you take the files out of the temporary folder that is created when setup.exe starts.
Manfred
Manfred
March 6th, 2008 at 10:31 am
How bizare, I managed to get it working an am using the above command just fine.
Drop me an e-mail (dave at dave hope dot co dot uk) and I’ll see If I can just zip up my application distribution folder and put it somewhere for you.
Dave