Install a msi at system startup time

Question

I have a bootable disk from a machine which is mounted on another machine. I need to make the bootable disk ready so that when i create a machine using that mounted bootable disk some of the msi's are installed.

What is the best way to run the msi's at system startup without knowing the instance credentials?

Note : I have tried using RunOnce and AutoAdminLogon, it works but i need to know the credentials for this method.

Also, since i have only the bootable disk i need to use methods which can be performed by making changes in registry hive.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

Answer 1

I finally got the answer to my question, there are many other methods but i have tested the following two methods.

Method 1 - We can write a bat file to install the msi or any other operation and place it as the startup script. For making it as the startup script, we need to make following entries :

1. Copy the bat file to the location : %boot_drive_name%\Windows\System32\GroupPolicy\Machine\Scripts\Startup
2. Load the registry in the boot_drive in registry hive.
3. Create the registry key and include your bat file name : HKLM\%reg_hive_name%\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\GroupPolicy\Scripts\Startup\0\0 HKLM\%reg_hive_name%\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\GroupPolicy\State\Machine\Scripts\Startup\0\0

Method 2 - We can install services with path to srvany.exe before removing the bootable disk then we can use registry hive and change the parameters for the srvany service to run msi's or any other windows application at windows startup.

Method 1 is better if we do not want to change anything on the source machine. We can do everything by using registry to trigger the startup script.