Automating installation of exe

[little idol]

Hi there
We are having an exe which we needs to automate it's installation, Since it's an old application doesn't have the silent installation params is there any way to automate it since we need select and update port and other details.also we deploying it with AWS cloud formation with powershell as of now your suggestion will be helpful

[graceful ruin]

there's no magic bullet unfortunately. Depending on what it does, there might be things you can do. Like record the install in procmon and attempt to create what it does (but this can definitely miss things)

[leaden heart]

AutoIT was designed for this sort of thing if you're able to use that
https://www.autoitscript.com/site/

[spring reef]

I’m wondering if it just extracts an msi that you can tap into.

[graceful ruin]

not impossible, but in my experience it's exceedingly rare for something that doesn't have silent install args to be implemented as msi under the covers

[solemn onyx]

Sometimes worth seeing if the exe is really a self-extracting zip.

Sometimes worth hitting it with the strings utility to see if there's undocumented maybe-parameters you can use.

Sometimes worth seeing how complicated the installation really is to see if you can just replicate it. That can quickly get into a tangle though.

Installers are unique and often dirty little snowflakes though. It's up to whoever created it to make useful things.

[graceful ruin]

also if it's C# based you could try loading it as an assembly and calling private methods. Did that one once, very rough

[spring reef]

Wow. An installer that has an embedded dll or actually is a dll.

[graceful ruin]

executables are pretty much just dll's with a specified entry method

[spring reef]

Ah well fair enough. That makes sense.

[spring reef]

Was that during your sys admin days?! 😁

[graceful ruin]

you mean like two years ago? 😛

but yeah I've packaged a lot of garbage apps

[spring reef]

hehe

[high shard]

@graceful ruin did you ever build your own installer to replace a crap one?

[graceful ruin]

not really, too much complexity for others to maintain. Scripts that act sort of like installers for sure, but building an msi didn't seem worth

[proven patio]

You could look at using MSIX? It is like AppV where you build a package by running the installer and other customisation, and put it in a package, and the sign it with a cert to deploy out.