Visual Studio 2010 Silent Install

Needed to script out installing VS2010, wanted to throw a couple of the gotchas out into the interwebs for others. Basically, I wrote three batch files that used .reg files to queue each other up and used the setup's native unattend capability to install on the D:\ drive and only install selected components (we didn't install SQL or Sharepoint components).

Notes on my implementation:
- The setup run via silent install and automatic reboots.

- It uses the registry to queue up more installs after each reboot, so you can just sit back.

- The setup uses an unattend setup.ini file to only install the components required by our development teams per their recommendation.

- The install.bat warns that several reboots are required and pauses to let the user quit, as well as sets a timer on the first reboot. After that, the script just runs.

- The c:\admin\ path is vital, so be sure to extract it there.

- About a 35 minute install, it puts 2GB on the D:\ drive and 4GB on the C:\ drive.

- The initial zip file is 2.4GB, and unzipped it’s still 2.4GB.

Make sure you have 10GB or so free on C:\ before you start this process.

You can get away with 8GB free on C:\ if you delete the .zip file after you extract it.

- Security scanning only picked up 1-2 vulnerabilities after install, but that may change over time so I recommend scanning it post-install.

- This DOES install .NET 4.0.


Scripts below:

Install.bat
echo "This install requires a reboot. Please press enter if you'd like to continue, else quit."
pause
regedit /s install.reg
VS2010setup.exe /q /norestart /unattendfile setup.ini
echo "Complete. If you don't want to reboot the server, use shutdown -a"
pause
shutdown -r -t 60 -c "The server is restarting per Visual Studio 2010 Install requirements."

Install.reg
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce\]
"VS2010" = "C:\\admin\\vs_2010\\Setup\\install_stage_2.bat"

Install_Stage_2.bat
regedit /s install2.reg
c:\admin\vs_2010\setup\VS2010setup.exe /q /norestart /unattendfile c:\admin\vs_2010\setup\setup.ini
echo "Complete. Rebooting"
shutdown -r -t 10 -c "The server is restarting a second time per Visual Studio 2010 Install requirements."


Install2.reg
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce\]
"VS2010" = "C:\\admin\\vs_2010\\Setup\\install_stage_3.bat"

Install_Stage_3.bat
c:\admin\vs_2010\setup\VS2010setup.exe /q /norestart /unattendfile c:\admin\vs_2010\setup\setup.ini
echo "Complete. Rebooting"
shutdown -r -t 10 -c "The server is restarting the last time per Visual Studio 2010 Install requirements."


Gotchas:
- The slash is an escape character when you are working in quotes, so double slash it.
- Watch out using setup.exe as the runonce target. I renamed the setup file to avoid a possible issue with a native Windows file named setup.exe.
- The setup.exe in the \setup\ folder is the only one with unattend functionality. Don't confuse it with the setup.exe in the root folder.
- Whatever happens during manual install is not necessarily what you'll see once you automate it. I was able to install in it only one reboot manually, but was unable to automate it without two reboots. Three is ideal.

- SP2 is required for server 2003 installs.



Sources:
http://aka-community.symantec.com/connect/forums/installingscripting-out-visual-studio-pro-2008-visual-studio-pro-2010 - Other people's scripting


http://techsupt.winbatch.com/TS/T000001029F22.html - Runonce discussion


http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa376977(VS.85).aspx - Official MS run once documentation