No, I am not talking about software such as Updatestar, FileHippo Update Checker, AppSnap, AppFresh, Appget, Update Notifier, Secunia PSI or RadarSync where it scans your computer for installed software, check the versions, then send this information to their server to see if there are any newer releases and download links are displayed in your browser for you to download.

Downloading the latest versions of your favorite programs is a tiring task, especially on a fresh installation of Windows. Navigating through the mess of websites and download links is frustrating, waiting for the installers to download is boring, and running each one separately is annoying. A very popular unattended software installation program called MultiSet is able to do this too but has evolved into a more powerful unattended installation software that includes installing Windows. MultiSet is also a shareware that normally cost a whopping $99.95 per license. Here is an alternative for MultiSet called InstallPad which is FREE and can automatically download and install your favorite latest software so you can go and take care of your other more important things in life.

InstallPad takes a list of your favorite programs and will download and install the ones you pick. It doesn’t need to ask any questions, so you can go do more important things. InstallPad can resume downloads you’ve canceled, and can even try and find the latest version of your program online.

unattended software installation IntallPad

If you administrate or develop for Windows, InstallPad can help you get a machine set up with service packs, applications or development tools without the need for CDs or running lots of scripts. With it you can quickly install a host of programs silently, pass arguments to the installers, and run post-installation scripts.

InstallPad supports silent install which installs the program bypassing all those confirmation message boxes. By default, InstallPad uses the arguments “/S -s”, which work for the majority of installers (InstallShield and the Nullsoft Installer System). Some applications are special cased, like Firefox, which requires -ms for a silent install. If your application requires different arguments to install silently, the built-in Silent Install will not work out of the box. Instead, you should find out what arguments are required to make the install run silent, and provide them via Installer Arguments. Lucky you, I’ve already done the homework months ago on how to find hidden command line silent switches for setup files.

Add unattended software installation

Other than that, InstallPad also supports automatically downloading the latest version of the program that you specified. InstallPad parses the download URL, tries to infer what the program’s version is from the url, and then increments the version (both major and minor numbers), until the server returns file not found. This can only work with URLs that have some version information in them. InstallPad does not maintain a central online database, nor is it omniscient, and cannot therefore find the latest version of a program any other way. This method is not really perfect because there are some software developers may at times jump from version 5.0 to 5.5 to indicate that significant features have been added.

If you’ve already downloaded all the setup files and don’t want InstallPad to redownload again, you can use the file:// command. InstallPad supports HTTP, FTP, and file:// URLs. Here are some examples:

  • To download from HTTP: http://winscp.net/download/winscp381setup.exe
  • To download from FTP: ftp://ftp.icq.com/pub/ICQ_5/icq5_1_setup.exe
  • To install from local setup file: file:///c:/myFolder/myFile.exe
  • To install from network setup file: file://///networkMachine/sharedFolder/file.exe

    • InstallPad requires Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 to run. It didn’t make a lot of sense for InstallPad to run with .NET Framework 2.0 installed because a fresh Windows XP SP2 doesn’t have .NET Framework 2.0 installed by default. So you’ll still need to manually install the .NET Framework 2.0 first before running InstallPad to run an unattended software installation. As for Vista, you don’t have to worry too much because it comes with .NET Framework 3.0. Let’s hope the developer of AkelPad will make it run without any dependencies.

    [ Download InstallPad 0.4 ]

    [tags]installpad, install, download, unattended, software[/tags]