Pushing a CD Key with a Windows Installer Installation
WiseUser
March 3rd, 2008
You don't have to be an application packager for long before you're asked to create an application that installs silently or, at least, installs without prompting the user for a CD key. Here's one way to pull it off.
As a first step, create an administrative installation with the CD key using the following command line parameters:
Msiexec.exe /a {MSI Path} .msi PIDKEY="[CD-Key]"
In addition to these parameters, we can also add the following parameters to the msiexec command:
USERNAME=[Username] COMPANYNAME=[company name] USERINITIALS=[user initials]
This Prevents users from being prompted for the CD key.
Cheers
depends on property in Property table.
Pushing a CD Key with above method won't be sucessful for every installation. Above method will be useful for most of MS office packages, as by default they come with Property PIDKEY listed in property table, which is associated to CD key.
For every vendor MSI, this won't be applicable.
First find out property which is associated with CD key and then use the above method. May be it will help.
Use dialog table to identify the CD key property and other properties associated with licensing of product.
Regards
Harsh
Works only for certain products which follows packaging standard
Yes exactly , this property is not generic , this property is used only for the Packages which follows the packaging standards .
For Vendor apps we need to find out the property using the installation logs if available . If it is msi then we can edit the msi using orca and find out the appropriate property which sets the serial key .
Sorry I forgot to mention in the first place ..
Wiseuser
Altiris Certified Professional
Wiseuser
Altiris Certified Professional
Various types of licensing
Agree that packaging standards defines PIDKEY for standardization of Product ID.
More information available on
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa370826(VS.85).aspx
But we need to keep in mind that there are various types of licensing. PIDKEY/or property associated with CD key won't always help to disable dialog box asking user to enter the license key.
One need to understand the type of license. Example, some time License information get store in .lic file with the user input of CD key. This .lic file can be generated at the time of installation and copied to the required folder.
Cheerz
Harsh
Property: License key
Very true harsh.
The licenses are always stored either in a .lic, xml, ini or in a registry file. Some files like .lic and .xml needs to installed along with the captured MSI.
Regarding the license key, I reckon no products follow a standard key word for Public licence key. Eg: in adobe products, Distiller was having the lcense key name SERIAL_KEY and Acrobat Standard was having the property name IMX_LICENCENUMBER.
Hence, even I do agree that its always better to check for the property name using dialogs or just use Install Tailor to create MSTs.
Cheers'
Vijay Raj
Microsoft MVP [Setup-Deploy]
Weblog: www.msigeek.com
What about multiple CD Keys
I have been tasked with packaging multiple applications where we have multiple single licenses(each install has a unique CD Key). I think volume licensing is the way to go but we have a tons of software that has already been purchased as a single license and have this information stored in Remedy (our asset tracking application). I want to be able to pull the cd key from Remedy. Have Remedy decrement the number of available licenses and assign the license to an asset. Then deploy the package plus serial number to desktop via Active Directory and SMS. Is this at all possible? Any thoughts?
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