This is a little program that can automatically determine which silent switches can be used with a setup file.

It uses PEiD which can be found here.

Put the PEiD.exe in same folder as USSF.exe

Start USSF.exe and select the setup exe file.

Hopefully it will tell you which switches to use


-17.02.05 small update since helper.bin download didn't work anymore-

Nice work, ZoSTeR.

It took you much to accomplish, I think.

It should provide beginners with more handy help. No web search for switches anymore.

Inquiry: There's a small screen that flashes before the final screen appears. It looks like it has some information, which makes one curious. Could it be pinned, somewhat?

Thanks.

The small flashing screen is just a "Please wait..." screen.

And yes the program is mainly intended for beginners cause the pros can tell the switches by just looking at the installer icon

yes....yes we can

Then there are some where there just aren't switches....those are a pain.

Go ahead.

It shows the most needed switches. You may account for more in future releases.

Well done.

Simple & Well done

Why not adding a text box with the prog name (between quotes) followed by all the available switches; it will be easer to copy/paste in a batch installation file. E.g. for InnoSetup:

Another suggestion for future enhancement is to integrate it to Explorer shell, so it executes from anywhere.

is it a internal database? or does it check the .exe own swith??

He is testing the content of the EXE

This spalsh screen is the screen from PEiD v0.92.

burning snow

Thanks for the info. I should check that soon.

Congrats burning snow. I was wondering who would see it first
(But the flashing screen is really a "Scanning..." please wait message)

USSF basically calls PEiD (Helper.bin) to identify the installer type and reports available switches accordingly. So no l33t programming skillz on my side.

Later today i will update USSF to support handling files via commandline. So you can call it from batch files or the context menu.

OK :-)

It is a very simple technique which is used, and I hope I'll implement it in the Unattended Builder as soon as possible.

I think it will be out at the end of the month.

I'm going to give this a try tonight, will be extremely helpful for me (already made a few Unattendeds but only using switches i've found here and there's a few [Tiny Personal Firewall to name one] i'd like to find out and will give this a go! ) , thank's ZoSTeR!

Hi ZoSTeR,

Universal Silent Switch Finder is really handy. It's not always easy to find information on installers. Your program has been great.

Are you planning to further develop USSF?

Is there some place to download updated USSF.exe and Helper.bin files?

If anyone is interested and it is O.K. with ZoSTeR, I have created an InstallShield Universal Silent Switch Finder.msi.

Thanks ZoSTeR

There is a new build of PEiD (rename the exe to Helper.bin). But no new installers are being identified as far as I know.

Selfextracting CABs could be added to the identification strings.

Anyway here's the AutoIt source (behold the sophisticated code ) :

Nice work. Well done mate

ZoSTeR

Have you integrated it to Explorer shell, yet?

Cheers this will save me a lot of time...

To add PEiD to your context menu for exe files use this:



PEiD Command line Options
--------------------
peid -time // Show statistic before quitting
peid -r // Recurse through subdirectories
peid -nr // Dont scan subdirectories even if its set
peid -hard // Scan files in Hardcore Mode
peid -deep // Scan files in Deep Mode
peid -norm // Scan files in Normal Mode
peid -ext // Scan files with external signatures only

peid <file1> <file2> <dir1> <dir2>

You can combine one or more of the parameters.

For example.

peid -hard -time -r c:\windows\system32
peid -time -deep c:\windows\system32\*.dll

Thanks for your quick reply.

This is great!

it didnt even recognize a .msi

May I ask why you would need to know what the switch's are when you already know its a MSI file?

If it's an msi, you don't have to use USSF because you already know the switches of an msi. If you need to know more switches that your msi supports, you should use an msi editor and browse/edit the properties in the property table.

indeed. You already know that it's an MSI, why would you need a switch finder to tell you?

This program's purpose is for foreign installers or non-normal ones. MSI is definately not in that category.

muiz -

Not to get down on you...just you phrased your statement wrongly...in which you kind of knock the project...and also expect things beyond what the project was meant for.

Yes it would be nice by all means if it reported MSI files, and maybe I or some one else will alter the source code to reflect that...since it is public.

Any ways refer to the Unattended Guide for the bulk of information about switchs.

If you need at the drop of a hat information dealing with MSI's just open up the console '{WIN+R}cmd{ENTER}msiexec /?{ENTER}' and full details will be listed.

I agree MSI are too easy to spot and is not a foreign installer. Actually its native. Anyway I think it is not necessary to modify the app NoLogic but do what u will.

Greetings from a long-time AutoIt user but new MSFN Forum member:

I've attached a script with the following modifications:

• Hides the PEiD window a bit better by setting the StayOnTop registry value. (I thought about enhancing the SplashText window, but ended up just commenting that out.)
• Displays information for MSI files If StringRight($FileName, 4) = ".msi" Then Run("msiexec /?", "")
• Optionally takes a command line paramter. If you use AutoIt to compile the script into an EXE, you can can simply drag-and-drop the installer on top of the EXE to get the information.

CyberSlug -

Thanks for the update to the code & good to see you visiting.

Hello CyberSlug.

Nice update. Does this work with the latest version of PEiD? Honestly, I don't use this because PEiD is more than enough for me. But it's still good to have this for educational purposes.

thanks a ton for all the contribution, I have used it and its fabulous

helper.bin download attachment dead.

Very minor update changed USSF to use latest build of PEiD v0.93. (simple find and replace in script)

[PEiD]

For those that do not know the Helper.bin is just the exe of PEiD renamed.

I tried using the latest version of PEiD for this, but it didn't work.

Confirmed as working here. Got PEid from working link here.
Rename PEid to helper.bin, and have it in the same directory as the script.

I'm sorry guys. I wasn't clear on my earlier post. I was talking about the very first version of USSF (by Zoster). That doesn't work for the latest version of PEiD. I haven't seen Nologic's update when I posted that.

Hmmm, now it looks I got a problem - downloaded PEid, extracted peid.exe, renamed to Helper.bin, compiled script2exe, copied to same location.

But when I inserted name of the file, I still received message Sorry, unknown installer

Updated the first post with a quick fix

I made an installer for this wonderfull tool.

Just use the /VERYSILENT switch for silent install.

PEID 9.3 is included.

Link deleted see post below.

Thank you

You are very welcome.

Great NEWS I made the **** thing recognize .msi files also and now and it works great!!!!!!!!!!!! (Fixed a couple of spelling errors also.)


USSF.exe

I hope it was no too presumptious but after all of the testing and code re-writes that ZoSTeR and CyberSlug have done and now that it has it's own installer I dubbed it version 1.

thanks. works good for me. a real time saver.

Here is a sfx archive of just the files for those who do not want an installer.

Universal Silent Switch Finder

Hi all,

I'm using USSF since while... very good tool
When i have any problem with swithes, I test my known silent switches setup.exe as for "Symantec Client Security v2.0.3" and "Symantec Antivirus Corporate 9.0.3.1000" which gave me the setup.exe /S /v/qn swithes...

Since yesterday I get "Sorry, unknown installer." message error with the most setup tested, even with the Symantec's setup.exe above.
I tried with the new USSF version and the kelsenellenelvian's version... same error message

Anybody could help???

Regards
coucou

was this before or after install symantec AV and CS? Features like script blocking and having AV scan levels too high may be blocking you from running ussf. (Solution : ditch Symantec and get similar products that don't cause more problems than they are supposed to fix)

Hi LiquidSage,

May be my post wasn't clear enough or you misunderstood me. I got symantec AV + NIS allways installed (before and after).

I try expressing myself again, i have symantec AV + NIS installed since few years.
I start using USSF 6 months ago... working fine. At that time i tested USSF on Symantec's setup.exe files, it gave me a result of /S /v/qn switches.

Since 3/4 days i used USSF to find sitches, it gave me "Sorry, unknown installer." error message very often.
As i know that USSF had success to find swiches on Symantec's setup.exe, i tested it again on those Symantec's files. This time i got "Sorry, unknown installer" error message. Moreover I get this error message even my NIS disabled.

Regards
coucou

Interesting...

I'm using all those Symantec products and never had a problem. Did you change the default settings of either program? Also I disagree with the "solution" proposed above. Symantec products are some of the best out there--as big as they are and as successful as they've been they couldn't be "causing more problems than they are supposed to fix"--but like any program, if you don't install it properly it'll have problems.

If you didn't really mess around w/the settings in the Symantec programs, I would think that the problem lies elsewhere than Symantec.

The new version of USSF is really great! It's analyzing at least 60% more setups than before. I've had no problem w/it at all on any system--running either Symantec or NAI products.
It's kinda' hard to T/S without knowing all the details and the sequence. Think about/check out the following questions. Maybe one of your answers will give you the clue you need to figure out what's going on.

• What other changes have you made to your system?
• If you did, can you temporarily remove or disable them and see if it's back to normal?
• Is your disk NTFS and have you changed any permissions?
• Are you an "Administrator" on your system?
• Did you completely delete the old program before you installed the new one?
• Did you use the installer or just unpack the files?
• In your USSF folder (or whatever you called it) are there only 2 items, "PEiD.exe" dated 30 Jan 05 and "Universal Silent Switch Finder.exe" dated 22 Mar 05 & v3.1.0.15?

Hope that helps you...

Thank man, this program is awesome it is help a lot
^_^

Cheers
coucou