Mailbag: How to perform a silent install of the Visual C++ 8.0 runtime files (vcredist) packages

Question:

Visual Studio 2005 includes redistributable setup packages to install the Visual C++ 8.0 runtime files such as msvcr80.dll, atl80.dll, etc. I would like to run this setup in fully silent mode, but when I run it normally, it displays a progress page. How can I run this setup package in fully silent mode?

Answer:

The Visual C++ 8.0 redist packages (vcredist_x86.exe, vcredist_x64.exe and vcredist_ia64.exe) support the following command line installation options. The examples below use the file named vcredist_x86.exe, but you can substitute the 64-bit versions of the EXEs with equivalent command lines to achieve the same behavior for them as well.

Unattended install

This option will run setup and display a progress dialog but requires no user interaction.

vcredist_x86.exe /q:a

Unattended install with no cancel button

This option is the same as the previous option, except that the user will not have the option to press cancel during installation.

vcredist_x86.exe /q:a /c:"msiexec /i vcredist.msi /qb! /l*v %temp%\vcredist_x86.log"

Silent install

This option will suppress all UI during installation.

Vcredist_x86.exe /q:a /c:"msiexec /i vcredist.msi /qn /l*v %temp%\vcredist_x86.log"

Note about standalone VC++ redistributable packages

The instructions above apply to the copies of the VC++ redistributable packages that ship with Visual Studio 2005. If you are downloading and trying to install the standalone versions of the VC++ redistributable packages instead of using the copies included with Visual Studio 2005, you will need to use slightly different command line parameters. Please refer to this blog post for information about the command line parameters you will need to use in that case.

<update date="10/16/2009"> Added a link to a separate blog post with command line syntax for the standalone versions of the VC++ 2005 redistributable packages. </update>