What are the command-line arguments to perform a silent install of ROBOTC? And the DRIVER?

JUST went through this yesterday and successfully got the install to work. The problem child was the VEX Programming Driver. We are all Windows 7 64-bit. Here is what i did:

1. Downloaded RobotCforCortexPIC_305.exe, VEX Programming Driver Installer 64-bit.exe, and VEXUSBSerialDriver.exe
2. RobotC was easy: "ROBOTCforCortexPIC_305.exe" /s /v/qn
3. VEXUSBSerialDriver.exe was also easy: "VEXUSBSerialDriver.exe" /s
4. For the VEX Programming Driver I had to do the following first....
a. Follow steps 1-3 here. You can also script out the rest and push that out to each machine, OR...
b. Push it out like I did with a GPO, which you can do by following these steps.
c. Once the GPO was in place, i had to restart each machine in my lab.
d. (These steps make it so the publisher of the driver is trusted and will just install and not get hung up on a the message box asking you to click 'allow')
5. Then I could run this script: "VEX Programming Driver Installer 64-bit.exe" /s /v/qn

I'm not getting stuck with an error when opening RobotC. It seems the first time the application is opened, the user needs access to write to a registry key. I haven't figured it out yet, but have a support ticket in as well as a forum question. This will be your next hurdle, unless you just login as an admin and run the program and log back out....

You may need to right-click on the ROBOTC icon and choose to "Run as Admin".

This doesn't work in my environment for some reason. I still get the same errors...

I can, however, sign in as an Administrator, launch RobotC and logout and back in as a normal user and then it works. My problem with that is I don't want to have to touch every machine in my lab....

There's no way around having to open ROBOTC once as an Administrator (in Vista, Win7)... You have to run ROBOTC at least once to without UAC preventing ROBOTC from writing to the registry to embed the licensing information into the workstation. This is usually done by right clicking on the icon and selecting "Run as Administrator".

For normal users, The installer typically does this, as long as the installer is launched without UAC privileges and the base registry information is embedded during install (notice the command line prompt that shows up at the end? That initalizes the license system) for the users with LicenseID/Password.

With building licenses, you have to manually do it since the registry information is stored somewhere else so the base install can't "pre-load". Since most installs are done by doing this on the base image before it is rolled out to the workstations, most people don't have the issue with errors when they try to run since they can run "As Administrator" just once and everything is good.

For situations where you can't touch each workstation, you may have to script out how to disable UAC, launch ROBOTC, reenable UAC. Here's a way to do this:

1. Log into Workstation as admin.
2. Run the following script to disable UAC

3. Reboot (UAC needs a reboot to take effect/change)
4. Log back into workstation as admin.
5. Run ROBOTC - The registry information will be embedded now.
6. Run the following script to enable UAC

7. Reboot (UAC needs a reboot to take effect/change)- ROBOTC should be ready to be opened.

Remember, ROBOTC users do not need administrative privileges... just the application needs it once to load the licensing system.

So what i'm reading is this: Since I have a building license, there's no way around this...

UAC is already turned off in our environment by GPO. We don't create FAT images here with all the software loaded on them. It's too much on our network to do so.

I just can't believe there's no other way to accomplish this other than logging in as an Administrator and running the program once....

Well if you already have UAC disabled, then just make a new user/policy as a GPO that won't prevent writing to the registry and launch ROBOTC. You should be able to automate logging into a workstation and launching an application (even from a bat file) if you have everything setup in a domain.

Out of 1500 PLTW schools using this software, I have to say this is the first time I've heard of this being this severe of an issue. If this was more of a widespread issue, we would devote some development time to it. I just can't commit development time to an issue that is only affecting one user when it isn't a blocking issue.

I think I love you, man. Based on the other posts here I am EXTREMELY happy we are not running win7/vista yet. what a mess. Ya gotta love the "requires a reboot" part of the process.

Note to moderator/admin - this should be in the docs. Not everyone gives local admin rights to users (hopefully the rationale for this is a no-brainer), and not everyone has staff to pay each and every system a social call without impacting the many other systems they are responsible for.

See http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1921361 (A Plea from Sysadmins to Software Developers)

Be good to the sysadmins of the world. As one panelist said, "The inability to rapidly deploy your product affects my ability to rapidly purchase your products."

Most winderz software fails miserably in this regard. ESPECIALLY curriculum software.

Also, how can one silently activate/install the license?

1. The drivers are included with ROBOTC. You just need to run the silent ROBOTC installation with the "ROBOTCforCortexPIC_305.exe /s /v/qn" flags. This will install the drivers in addition to ROBOTC. If this is too much hassle, then there's nothing I can do for you.

2. We have no control over the policy requirement that you need to setup for hardware. If you have a complaint about how the VEX Cortex connects to the PC and the modifications that requires to your policy, please let VEX Robotics know.

3. If you're running Windows XP, all you have to do is drop the license file into the ROBOTC application folder and the software runs without issue. We can't do much with Windows VISTA/7's UAC policy that prevents applications from writing to the registry in a non-user space (otherwise we'd get the complain that every use who logs into the application has to go through the whole licensing problems). It's either we write to the registry or we write to the license file itself, which we opens up a whole other can of worms with dealing with allowing student accounts to read/write in the /Program Files/ directory.


I hear gloves can cut down on noise or typing slower/softly... - But joking aside, you are giving a .zip file with an encrypted license file when you order the license. This ".lf" file has to be placed in the same directory as ROBOTC application. You can do this however you wish to push out files to a workstation.

If you don't have a building license, right now you'll have to manually hit each workstation to activate the license under (Help - Manage Licenses). In the near future, you'll be able to do this from a command line.

Why don't you shoot me an e-mail to tfriez@robotc.net and we'll see what we can do to help your situation without getting into massive specifics on a public forum.

Our main goal is to help you the customer, so if you have a certain configuration we might be able to put a fix in our roadmap for next school year's update - but to do this I need to better understand your situation.

I haven't done it in a while, but when I was doing it tools like this were very helpful;

http://www.elcomsoft.com/art.html

Figured out the registry issue late yesterday... So the above process i described for the install works, but below is what i did for the registry issue:

Installing RobotC silently and remotely works, but upon first launch it wants to write to the registry (evidently only an issue with Vista/Win7, and we have Win7). I used a program called RegSnap to compare the differences between registries and create a reg file based on those differences

1. I silently pushed out the RobotC install to a machine then went to that machine and logged as an Administrator (local or domain shouldn't make a difference, i used a domain admin acct).
2. Open regedit
3. Navigate to the HKLM\Software\Classes Key. Right click it and choose export. Save this file somewhere you'll find it later (I named it 'before.reg')
4. Open up RobotC (remember, you should be logged in as an Admin right now)... it should open up just fine, then close out of the application.
5. Go back to regedit, F5 to refresh if it's still open.
6. Navigate to the same location as before and export that same key as before, again, saving somewhere you'll find it later (I named this one 'after.reg')
7. Copy both reg files to a location you can access from your PC and log off that computer.
8. Went back to my PC and ran RegSnap. Imported both registry files (should show as two different tabs at the bottom), then chose compare. Selected to option to create a reg file based off the differences.
9. There's not much that changed maybe 15 entries or so, and not sure if they ALL are needed or not, but i then pushed these settings out via a script (regedit /s pathtoregfile) and it worked on all other installs.

Now i don't have to touch each machine.... Funny thing is.. this seems simple enough. You'd think this is some info that could've just been told to me, but instead i had to waste 2 days of my life figuring out this entire install.... WAY too long to install an application silently. Either way, it's done now, and at least i don't have to go around touching each machine at the next time i reimage or push out this software.

Oh, and if you need to uninstall silently:

MsiExec.exe /X {6F315849-1531-475E-8D7C-82FE65B646A8} /QN (as the SYSTEM user)

This thread is closed. It's turning into an off-topic flame fest.

- Xander