Such installations are commonly referred as silent installations which uses MSI packages, created using traditional software setup (.exe) files. MSI Packages or so called Microsoft Installer files can only be created using MSI Package builder software which takes traditional setup files as a source and later helps you in customizing, packaging and then delivering it to the targeted machine over network. EMCO MSI Package builder is powerful program serving enterprises for over decades by delivering easy way to deploy almost any number of applications on hundred or thousand of computers without giving any trouble.
About EMCO MSI Package Builder
EMCO MSI Package builder has tons of features and capability to explore. Undoubtedly, you don’t need each of it every time but can surely take benefits from some of its finely refined features to make your overall deployment task smoother and trouble free. This software supports all the latest versions of Windows including Windows 8 and its predecessors.
Features like compatibility testing, monitoring tools, installation wrapping etc. make this software shine bright among the rest software of same niche.
You can download and install this software from its official website (http://emcosoftware.com/msi-package-builder/convert-exe-to-msi) and install on your PC. After successful installation, you’re all set to start converting EXEs into MSI packages.
Before that, you’ll also need to define MSI Package builder storage path. Define path as per your convenience but make it as short as possible.
Live Monitoring technology is incorporated with this software to investigate the file system and registry changes and increases the overall success rate of MSI packaging. Whereas, Installation wrapping can combine or create packages of multiple applications at once and later help you in deploying it altogether.
Newly improved interface in the latest version of EMCO MSI package builder 5.0 offers ever easier navigations and easy to understand wizard that lets you create MSI packages smoothly and in just a matter of time. You can create or convert any traditional setup file to MSI packages in two easy ways: By manually creating a project and configuring the MSI package using its inbuilt visual editor. Or use Live Monitoring technology that automatically generates MSI package for you.
Prerequisites:
- System with administrative rights, running almost any latest copy of Windows such as Windows 8 or earlier.
- .NET Framework 2.0 or latest.
- Standard RAM (of up to 1 GB or higher) and enough disk space.
Self explanatory wizard gives you clear idea about what to do next and so forth. It lets you convert traditional setup files into MSI packages in few handful steps. From the figure above, you’ll see the details about how comfortable you are while creating MSI packages.
Choose any option available on the wizard i.e. ‘Monitor Installation’ to create MSI packages based on the captured file system and registry changes or ‘Wrap Installation’ to wrap any existing installation into MSI packages. Though, make sure that such applications supports silent deployment.
‘Monitor Installation’ option will automate the whole process and without asking that enough.
A warning message will appear and ask you to close any or all the background applications. You’ll also need to disable installed Antivirus applications as it could interfere with the packaging process
Monitoring Mode
It lets you being choosy upon monitoring the applications even after its installations. There are mainly two types of monitoring mode were available: Automated monitoring and advanced monitoring.
This is one of the most amazing options that enable automatic monitoring of file system and registry changes, automatically or in the way you wish.
Rest options include defining the source path of targeted setup files and destination to save the created MSI package. Meanwhile, you’ll get a screen to further customize the MSI package, but that option is strongly recommended to professionals as you’ll get troubled by bunch of errors if the things weren’t going well for you.
Useful Resources
If you like to learn more about the features available in the application, you can refer to the following pages on EMCO website:
- Converting EXE to MSI packages
- Building MSI packages
These pages include videos that should help you to see the application in action.
Final Thoughts: Recommended and must have utility for enterprises
There are two available versions of EMCO MSI Package Builder: Professional and Enterprise. You’ll get fully featured software to explore it out for 30 days after which, choose your preferred version to purchase as your budget allows.
You may have the capability to deploy applications even while sitting anywhere in the office. If at times, you run into difficulties, you can check out the help manual inbuilt with software installations (look into the ‘Help’ section of the software).
Unique capabilities and redefined features make this software winner over competitors, either free or paid. You’ll find thousands of options to customize and advanced tutorial that lets you never run into problem.
Definitely, we’d recommend this software to try first if you’re really looking for solutions to deploy applications remotely.
