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powershellwindows-installer

msiexec not doing the exaction to the provided path

The issue has already been discussed here, but did not end up with any clear answer, so it is raised again.

I am trying to extract the contents of an .msi file as follows:

function script:Export-MsiContents
{
[CmdletBinding()]
param
(
    [Parameter(Mandatory = $true, Position = 0)]
    [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
    [ValidateScript({Test-Path $_})]
    [ValidateScript({$_.EndsWith(".msi")})]
    [String] $MsiPath,

    [Parameter(Mandatory=$false, Position = 1)]
    [String] $TargetDirectory
)

if(-not($TargetDirectory))
{
    $currentDir = [System.IO.Path]::GetDirectoryName($MsiPath)
    Write-Warning "A target directory is not specified. The contents of the MSI will be extracted to the location, $currentDir\Temp"

    $TargetDirectory = Join-Path $currentDir "Temp"
}

$MsiPath = Resolve-Path $MsiPath

Write-Verbose "Extracting the contents of $MsiPath to $TargetDirectory"
Start-Process "MSIEXEC" -ArgumentList "/a $MsiPath /qn TARGETDIR=$TargetDirectory" -Wait -NoNewWindow
}

Once called I get the window pop up . Please take a look at the attached screenshotenter image description here

And there is no extraction of the .msi file.

Solution

  • 1. Escaping: The escape character in PowerShell is the grave-accent: ` (ASCII: 96, Unicode: U+0060 - I think). Grave accent use in programming. Try to escape as follows:

    Start-Process "MSIEXEC" -ArgumentList "/a `"C:\my setup.msi`" /qn TARGETDIR=`"C:\Extract here`"" -Wait -NoNewWindow

    2. "Stop Parsing": PSv3+ offers --%, the stop-parsing symbol (more from ss64.com). It passes the rest of the command line as-is to the external utility, save for potential expansion of %...%-style environment variables:

    # Everything after --% is passed as-is.
msiexec --% /a "C:\my setup.msi" /qn TARGETDIR="C:\Extract here"

    I am not a Powershell expert. The above based on:

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