Silent Install QuickBooks

I am going to walk through on how to silently remote install QuickBooks. As of this writing I am using QuickBooks 2021 Enterprise. (Someone has emailed me to confirm this method does work for 2022 as well. Read on for setting related to your target version.)

• First Download Quickbooks 2021 from here
• Once downloaded right click the file and check the box that says unblock and click OK

• Next download 7zip from here and install
• Right click the QuickBooks file from earlier and select 7zip>Extract to “QuickBooksEnterprise21”

• Next we need to download and install Orca
• You can download the Windows SDK and then install orca from C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0\bin
• For simplicity here is the install file for just Orca if you don’t want to go through that
• Open Orca and browse the extracted folder and select QuickBooks.Msi from QuickBooksEnterprise21\QBooks\ location
• You may be able to use my transform file: QuickbooksNoLicense (license info has been removed)
• Unzip the file then in Orca after opening the msi file click Transform>Apply Transform and in green you should see what has been added
• Be sure for QB_LICENSENUM and QB_PRODUCTNUM you enter your license information
• If my file does not work then you will need to manually create the transform file from the menu up top click Transform>New Transform (Click here to skip below if the provided transform file worked)
• Change or add a new row accordingly:

(Click here for a Version Reference)

• Next on the far left select LaunchCondition
• Delete the one that says:
  • (PARENTAPP=”INSTALLMANAGER”) OR (QB_MORPH=1) OR (ADDREMOVE) OR (REMOVE=”ALL”) OR (PARENTAPP=”QBPatch”) OR (Installed AND (REMOVE<>”ALL”))

• Click Transfrom>Generate Transform and save that file somewhere memerable
• Run the following command to perform a silent install (be sure your paths are correct)
  • msiexec /i “QuickBooks.msi” TRANSFORMS=”Quickbooks.mst” /q
• I have not found a way to automatically select the edition of QuickBooks so if anyone has any information on that it would be helpful so when first opening you will have this:

• After selection though you can change it by opening Quickbooks and clicking Help>Mange My License>Change to a Different Industry Edition

• I wanted to note that after selecting contractor edition the following registry key is created:
  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Intuit\QuickBooks\31.0\belcontractor
• Also the following file is created (probably other files as well but did not investigate yet)
  • C:\Program Files (x86)\Intuit\QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 21.0\QBW32EnterpriseContractor.exe
• Next task is finding out how to centrally manage pushing release updates. I will create a new post when that is figured out.

Version Reference:

QuickBooks 2022

QuickBooks 2021

QuickBooks 2020

Hopefully you can see the pattern above for any versions below 2020.

References:

https://qtechbabble.wordpress.com/2020/09/17/sliently-install-quickbooks-accountant-2019/
https://quickbooks.intuit.com/learn-support/en-us/install-new-products/toggle-to-another-quickbooks-edition/00/232377