What is a "silent installation"?

A silent installation is when an application is installed to a user’s computer without any dialogs or user input. This means that once the installation starts, the user is not offered any options to change or edit the configuration of the installation process. Silent installations are useful for uniformity, as it helps to ensure all users have the same installation configuration.

Prerequisites:

Grab the latest AskiaSuite installer from here: https://installers.askia.com/helpdesk/askiasuite/

"Suite" refers to our Design, Analyse, Tools, Surf, Lister, and Translator applications.

⚠️Please ensure the .exe is "unblocked" prior to running the silent installation:

• .exe > Right-Click > Properties > Unblock > OK

⚠️Please ensure the user you're running the silent installation as has full read/write access on the following directories:

• \%AppData%\Roaming\Askia\

• \%\Program Files%\Askia\

• \%Program Files (x86)%\Askia\

• %\ProgramData%\Askia\

⚠️Please ensure the .bat Command Prompt script is running as an "Administrator".

Silently installing Suite:

Below is a .bat script to silently install Suite using the "Complete" option (which installs Design, Analyse, Tools, Surf, Lister, and Translator):

@ECHO OFF

SET SuiteExe=Setup_AskiaSuite_5.5.0316.exe
SET myDir=C:\Users\%username%\Desktop
CD %myDir%

START /WAIT %SuiteExe% /exenoui /qn /L*V "%myDir%\SuiteInstallLog.txt"

ECHO Installation of AskiaSuite is complete..
ECHO Please refer to the "SuiteInstallLog.txt" for more details..
PAUSE

⚠️Please ensure you're setting the "SuiteExe" and "myDir" parameters correctly.

⚠️If you are going to remove the "/WAIT" and "PAUSE" commands in your scripts, please ensure you're waiting long enough for the installation to finish in the background before you attempt to open any Askia Suite applications. If you do remove the two commands, this will be a fully silent installation - and in that case, there will be no indications if the installation has finished. Instead, if you need to check on the status of the installation, you should open the Windows Task Manager and look for both the "msiexec.exe" and "aipackagechainer.exe" processes -- if either exist and are still active in the Task Manager, it's very likely the silent installation is still running in the background. Both of these processes run in the background during a silent installation -- they are responsible for handling the installation of Suite and all required Microsoft redistributables.

Silently uninstalling AskiaSuite:

@ECHO OFF

SET SuiteExe=Setup_AskiaSuite_5.5.0316.exe
SET myDir=C:\Users\%username%\Desktop
CD %myDir%

START /WAIT %SuiteExe% /exenoui /x /qr REMOVE=ALL /L*V "%myDir%\SuiteUninstallLog.txt"

ECHO Uninstall of AskiaSuite is complete..
ECHO Please refer to the "SuiteUninstallLog.txt" for more details..
PAUSE

More info:

⚠️Our AskiaSuite .exe installers are compiled and packaged using a tool called "Advanced Installer". You can read through their user guide here: https://www.advancedinstaller.com/user-guide/

During Suite installation, the .msi packages are extracted out into the following \AppData\ directory:

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Askia\AskiaSuite #.#.####\install\#######

The redacted "###" directories above are generated based on what version of Suite.exe you're running. The sub-directory under "\install\" is a randomly generated string of 7 upper-case letters and numbers.