WF4 & WF5 Silent Install

[dgschaefer]

Hello,

I'd like to automate rolling out WF4, WF5 & Creo 2 (we have clients using them all) to all the workstations in our office and I'm wondering if anyone has a good way to automate it.  We do local installs because we have a significant number of laptops.  Creo 2 makes this easy, but WF4 and WF5 are not.  We are all Windows 7, 64 bit.

In WF4 & WF5 I can copy the install folder, but it is painfully slow over the network, taking longer than running the install program.  Additionally I get this error in WF5 (WF4 works fine):

[cid:image001.png@01CEDA18.30BD5DB0]

"Install later" dismisses the dialog, only to return the next time.  "Install now" results in this error, and the dialog returns next time as well:

[cid:image002.png@01CEDA18.30BD5DB0]

The only fix is to navigate to the bin folder of the install and run ptcsetup.bat.

I really do not want to associate the file extensions to WF5.  Because we use different versions for different clients, I'd rather not have any associations, but if I have to I'd prefer it associated with Creo2.

Anyone successfully do automated/silent installs of WF4 & WF5?

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[lhughes]

To avoid the "install addon" prompt for "Productview Express" (WF4/5) and the Thumbnail Viewer, delete the "add on" folder located in the "%proeloadpoint%\install" folder.

After deleting use 7zip or WinRAR to create a self extraction package ".exe" (I suggest password protecting to avoid people from extracting wherever they please) and robocopy to push the package out to the computers.

Psexec can execute the package remotely (there are switches you can use to determine locations to place the extracted files in the right place).

Be careful if you use Windchill as each newer version will upgrade the cache files making them inaccessible to previous versions.

I submitted a whitepaper for PlanetPTC on deployments such as these.

Hope it helps and feel free to contact me if you have any questions, concerns or comments.

Lee Hughes
Global CAD/PLM Admin
Engineering Systems Services
Kohler Company

[pperry]

I agree with Lee we have started creating a zip file of the install and copying that using robocopy to the deisred location. We have not gone yet to the self-extracting file although not sure how much that would improve our distribution. One issue I have had and it is interrmitent is with WF4 on some computers I have to run ptcsetup to get Pro/E to open properly. It will open but none of the graphics are shown (e.g. the toolbar menus). Take the five minutes and run ptcsetup (clicking next 38 times) and all works fine. Not sure what has changed (I was not the one to create teh install directory this time).

[mensoheij]

Hi Doug,

I am installing Wildfire 4 and 5 silent using a setup trail file (as explained in the installation manual). First do a manual installation but add -uilog as argument to the setup.exe command. This will generate a ps_trl.txt.1 file. Rename this file whatever you want and remove .1.
Now, for the silent install you run setup -uitrail <trailfile> and it will run automated. Works flawless for me. In fact, it is my opinion the silent install works much better with pre-Creo 2 than it does with Creo 2. I had to do a lot of customization in the xml files to make them more generally useable (independent of local profile paths etc.) and the script I ended up with is hugh compared to the one line above.
If you install WF5 this way the addons get installed automatically (another difference compared to Creo 2).

Best regards,
Menso