specify temp folder for msi extracted files used for installation

Posted by Binoj Antony on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Binoj Antony
Published on 2010-07-08T08:06:23Z Indexed on 2013/10/29 3:59 UTC
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Filed under:

virtualization

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msi

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windows-installer

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temp-files

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msiexec

I was recently installing Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 to create my build server on a VM (Windows 2003 R2 Std), I was wondering that it would be nice to specify the temporary folder for the files being extracted by MSI for use during the installation.
This should ideally work for any MSIs.

I have some more virtual hard disks I have attached to this VMs, to point the temporary folder for MSI to one of these virtual hard disks would be quite productive since I can remove/discard this virtual hard disk later.

Compacting the C drive VHD is a pain, and does not always reclaim space correctly.

I tried changing the %temp% and tmp environment variable with no effect? Or is there any concrete/alternative solution to this type of problem?

References:
TempFolder Property ??
Windows Installer Wiki

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