I thought I’d post my experience with the installer, as deployment would be a right pain without an MSI.
I managed to extract an MSI from the temporary folder created, it does take quite a while to generate. The temp folder created with a GUID eventually creates another subfolder with a GUID (including a second one if Visual C++ Runtime are required). Below was the easier way to grab the files, without having to catch them during install running - probably best to do from a VM.
- Uninstall the Visual C++ 2015-2019 runtime from your PC (or just have a version lower than is required, 14.23.27820)
- Run the installer normally (not silent)
- Eventually, once the files have extracted it will first attempt to install the Visual C++ Runtime and halt, prompting for a reboot.
- At this point you can navigate into the %Temp% location and find the folder containing the MSI. I’ve attached a screenshot to show this.
I think two folders are created when the installer is run, one containing just the Install Shield file (i.e. _isB653.exe) and the other containing some of the extracted Install Shield files, plus the subfolder with a GUID containing the MSI.
Of course, if you set this up in SCCM it will still require the Visual C++ Runtime to be added as a Dependency, but having the MSI allows me to have more control on what the install does in terms of rebooting, etc.
I’ve not had any issues with shortcuts, mentioned above. When I run the uninstaller (MsiExec /X “{4c8537c3-c896-1bca-d37f-3a0c4c460134}” /QN /NORESTART - for version 20.0.373) the shortcuts are removed as expected.