Installing Red Gate products from the .msi file

Date: 2/3/2011

You might need to install Red Gate products from the Microsoft Installer files, rather than using the Red Gate installer .exe. A typical example of when this might be required is if you are responsible for distributing software over an enterprise network.

This article explains how to install Red Gate products without the installer. You can then use this knowledge to adapt the procedure for your particular networked environment. Red Gate .msi and .mst files are compatible with the use of GPOs to distribute software.

To install an individual Red Gate product

There are three steps:

1. Install prerequisites (required for some products only)
2. Extract the .msi file from the .exe
3. Install the product

1. Install prerequisites

Some Red Gate products have prerequisites, which are not installed automatically when using this method:

• ANTS Memory Profiler and ANTS Performance Profiler require the Visual C++ 2010 redistributable.
• SQL Dependency Tracker requires the Visual J# runtime.

Before you start, ensure that every computer on which you want to install the software has the necessary prerequisites:

• Download the 32-bit version or the 64-bit version of the Visual C++ 2010 redistributable from Microsoft.
• Download the Visual J# redistributable (any bitness).

2. Extract MSI files

The .exe installer provided by Red Gate contains the .msi installation file. To extract the .msi file from the .exe:

1. Create a new directory called Red Gate installers at a location for which you have write permission.

   If you need to install the profiler on several computers, use a network share that is accessible from all of the computers.

2. Start a command prompt.
3. Navigate to the path where the installer .exe file is located.
4. Type installerName.exe extract "drive:\path\to\Red Gate installers", then press Enter.

   Note that you must provide the absolute path of the Red Gate installers directory.

5. Click Next, and then accept the license agreement.
6. Click Extract.

The .msi and .mst files for both 32 and 64-bit systems, and other dependencies, are extracted to the Red Gate installers directory.

3. Install the product

After you have extracted the .msi installation file, you can install the product. To install the product on several computers, it might be easiest to create a batch file to run the following commands:

1. Start a command prompt with administrator privileges.
2. If necessary, map the network share to a spare drive letter.
3. Type msiexec /I "path\to\Red Gate installers\Program Name\Program.msi" TRANSFORMS="path\to\Red gate installers\Program Name\Program.mst", then press Enter.

   Ensure that you use the correct .msi and .mst files for your computer's bitness.

The program is installed.

Note that the installation is not silent, but no user interaction is required.

To install products in a bundle

When you extract the files from the bundle .exe, a separate directory is created for each product in the bundle inside the Red Gate installers directory.

Run msiexec for each product in turn, following the instructions above.