WaterCAD Silent install switches not working

Question

Hey there I am trying to deploy WaterCAD, SewerCAD & SewerGEMS silently through PDQ Deploy. 
 However it keeps adding the shortcuts for AutoCAD integration which I do NOT want. 
 Here is a sample of the command I'm running: 
 wtrc10030275en.exe /q INSTALLDIR="C:\Program Files (x86)\Bentley\WaterCAD" ADDLOCAL=ALL REMOVE=SamplesAndLessons,MicroStation,AutoCAD 
 It does install silently and to correct folder but it always puts the AutoCAD integration Desktop shortcuts on the desktop. 
 Any way to prevent this as we don't have the integration piece on our license so its confusing for users.

Jesse Dringoli · Accepted Answer

Anthony, after discussing with our developers, it was found that for WaterCAD, the correct term for preventing AutoCAD integration is actually "AutoCAD _x64 ". "AutoCAD" was just to prevent 32-bit AutoCAD integration, but most versions and users are on 64-bit. I have amended the following related article accordingly: 
 Silent installation for Bentley OpenFlows Products

Jesse Dringoli · Answer

Hi Anthony, I received some feedback from our developers. 
 Currently the OpenFlows products use "Wix" for the installer technology. Wix documentation specifies: success, error, scheduleReboot, forceReboot as possible return codes but it doesn&rsquo;t mention their numerical equivalents. Also the msi part might have its own separate exit codes that mean something else. We believe for the msi part 3010 exit code means Installation Successful. 
 That said, the error code you mentioned "1073741819" could be -1073741819, which translates to 0xc0000005 in hexadecimal which is a generic application error Access Violation. We are not sure why the bundle installer would cause this. Typically any installation error would get logged in the log file but you mentioned it shows 0x0 as the exit code, indicating no error was detected by the Wix bundle installer. It could be something happening still inside the bundle installer after the log file is written to but Bentley would have no control over that anyway. 
 Is this problem happening on just one computer, or multiple? 
 Please check to see if you have any other log files in the Windows Temporary folder that correspond to the date/time of the failed installation. For example you may see these two: 
 WaterCAD CONNECT Edition Update 3_20210222134311_000_WaterCAD_10.3.2.75_en.msi.log 
 WaterCAD CONNECT Edition Update 3_20210222134311.log

Jesse Dringoli · Answer

Adam, We have worked with at least one other user with the same error code using "PDQ". It was found that the CONNECTION Client installation (which is a prerequisite packaged with WaterCAD, StormCAD and the other OpenFlows products) may have been failing, although the product itself was able to proceed. So, the generic failure code was passed to PDQ. 
 First, make note of the case sensitive syntax for skipping platform integration during installation, mentioned in this article . 
 Next, look for the installation log files in the Windows temporary folder, which may contain details to help determine the root cause. Be sure to look at the temp folder within the user account that is deploying the installation (there may be a separate admin account for PDQ). Sort by date and look for two sets of log and ZIP files with file name beginning with the product (like "StormCAD....") as well as a set beginning with "CONNECTIONClient...". See more here . Compress all of the files into an overall ZIP file and provide it to us either by attaching it to your reply on the forum here, or by uploading it to the secure ShareFile location here .

Jesse Dringoli · Answer

Adam, 
 For the first set of logs, the "failed" one for both products seems to indicate the failure was due to a pending reboot. Meaning, the installation could be continue because the operating system was in a state that required a reboot before another installation could occur. This could have been due to other deployments that you had pushed out before. As mentioned in my previous reply, building an initial reboot into the install script may be worth considering. 
 For the second set of logs, I see they are the .msi.log. Did you also see a file ending in just .log? The failure in this case could be related to the CONNECTION Client, which would be detailed in the CONNECTION Client log. You should see a separate log text file in the same Windows temp folder (within the C:\Users\ ... account that PDQ was set to use) beginning with "CONNECTION Client".

Jesse Dringoli · Answer

Adam Koczarski said: Which version of CONNECTION Client is required for these applications? Maybe I should be checking for and updating those first. 
 Generally speaking the OpenFlows product work with the latest version of the CONNECTION Client. You can freely update your CONNECTION Client version irrespective of the OpenFlows product version. When installing an OpenFlows product, if it detects a newer version already installed than is included inside the installer itself, it will skip that part of the installation (keeping your existing version). 
 Adam Koczarski said: Will the install absolutely fail if that flag is set? 
 From what I have seen if there is a pending reboot state, the installer will always fail. The non-silent version of the installer (meaning running the actual installation file) will mention "pending reboot" in an error code that appears when trying to run it during such a state. 
 Adam Koczarski said: A second attempt to install it resulted in a error code 1618. 
 According to a web search, this error typically occurs if another program is already in the process of being installed.

Jesse Dringoli · Answer

Adam, 
 The CONNECTION Client may be the source of the confusion, as I have found with other users that any failure can cause PDQ to see a generic error code. A specific version of the CONNECTION Client is included in the installation package for OpenFlows products. If the installation detects that an older version is installed, it will uninstall that first and then install its included version before installing the product. If it detects that no CONNECTION Client is installed, it will install its included version first. If it detects that a newer CONNECTION Client is already installed, it will skip installation of the CONNECTION Client since newer versions will work. 
 Based on our recent experiences with other users, we suspect PDQ may be causing some of these problems, potentially corrupting the installer database or otherwise leaving Windows in bad state. This might be related to interrupting installation process with an abort command. To conclusively determine the cause of the problems you're experience, we would need to examine the install logs (product and CONNECTION Client, for each attempt). 
 I agree that it would be best to include an initial installation of the latest CONNECTION Client (currently 11.00.02.20) as part of your install script, since the OpenFlows product will skip that part if it detects that a newer version is already installed.

Jesse Dringoli · Answer

Hi Adam, our developer who works on the installation packages examined the most recent log files you provided and determined that the failure occurs when the FlowMaster installation detects an older version of FlowMaster (08.11.01.03) is already installed and attempts to uninstall it first before installing the new version. There is either a failure occurring on the uninstallation of the older version, or it is waiting for the uninstall to finish and there are no other log entries after that. 
 This older version of FlowMaster used an older installation technology (Installshield) which needs to be handled a bit differently in this situation, so the following command is used: 
 MsiExec.exe /X{1911CCBB-B90A-49E9-91D9-AC48B40990B0} /q 
 Our suggestion is to programmatically within the scope of PDQ uninstall that older version of FlowMaster first before attempting to install the latest. 
 FlowMaster detects if the older version is present with the query on this registry key: 
 <util:RegistrySearch Root="HKLM" Key="SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\{1911CCBB-B90A-49E9-91D9-AC48B40990B0}" Value="VersionMajor" Variable="versionmajor" /> 
 If the "VersionMajor" is less then 10 it attempts to uninstall it using the syntax further above. 
 Also per my earlier reply, you could also try signing into the PDQservice account if possible and attempt the silent install to see if a particular message or error is appearing during the uninstallation of the older version. These articles might be helpful depending on what (if anything) you see: 
 Unable to uninstall OpenFlows software 
 Error during installation &ndash; Another version of the product is already installed; the installation of this version cannot continue. 
 As a side note, our developer also confirmed that we do not use VB scripts anymore with our installers.

Jesse Dringoli · Answer

Adam Koczarski said: however the Uninstall registry entry above does not exist. 
 Apologies, there was an error in the registry entry path in my previous reply. Because this is a 32-bit install being installed on a 64-bit system, the registry location being checked is actually this: 
 x86 HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\{1911CCBB-B90A-49E9-91D9-AC48B40990B0} 
 x64 HKLM\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\{1911CCBB-B90A-49E9-91D9-AC48B40990B0} 
 The "old" uninstall method previously mentioned applies to older versions of almost all of our applications. Here are the GUIDs (the series of letters and numbers seen at the end of the registry path) for all our applications that have this method of uninstalling their older versions: 
 CivilStorm {640ACA2B-8959-47A9-A293-96D325E3EE03} 
 CulvertMaster {D581CADA-6336-4961-87AC-A8944E4E6A7C} 
 FlowMaster {1911CCBB-B90A-49E9-91D9-AC48B40990B0} 
 HAMMER {138400E8-3D74-470F-83FE-F12BCD7F824D} 
 SewerCAD {78A1B73D-5951-440D-9B91-8CFE4E0F5289} 
 SewerGEMS {85DA45AD-89CB-49C9-9602-8A49C1397D54} 
 StormCAD {59531A5F-531C-4AAE-8810-FD64100607F8} 
 WaterCAD {BE69B1E5-F275-45E5-BF09-D8652446407A} 
 WaterGEMS {BE30126E-C93C-4C98-97EA-3EEBB4F2561F}

WaterCAD Silent install switches not working

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