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Patrick Cloutier avatar image
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Patrick Cloutier asked Phil BoBo edited

Any plans for an MSI file that installs FlexSim in user profile?

I'm being asked this by a university teacher:

Any plans for an MSI file that installs FlexSim in user profile without need for admin rights on school computers?

He says it is a big trend that is now possible with Windows 11 and that it is much simpler because anyone can install without going through IT.

He says, the ITs don't like this but they don't have much choice because everyone is doing it.

My feeling is that if every students does that, the computers will never have enough space.

But this is really out of my knowledge area so I just want to inderstand the request to answer correctly.

Thanks a lot,

FlexSim 23.0.4
msi install file
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Logan Gold avatar image Logan Gold ♦♦ commented ·
I think we might need some more information before being able to fully answer. Do you know what it is about Windows 11 that makes it simpler to install without admin rights? And when you talk about an MSI file that installs in user profile, are you saying it's only installed for that user and not somewhere more universal, like "C:/Program Files"? Do you know what other software is already doing this?

I'm going to assume we don't have any plans right now to do this, but I do want to ask the developers once I have a better understanding of what is being asked.

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Patrick Cloutier avatar image Patrick Cloutier Logan Gold ♦♦ commented ·

He says that the software is only accessible to the user who installed it.

And he gave me the example of this software for which you can download a "system installer" or a "user installer":

https://code.visualstudio.com/download

I don't quite see the benefit or the reason to use this.

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Patrick Cloutier avatar image Patrick Cloutier Logan Gold ♦♦ commented ·
It seems THE benefit is to allow users to instantly install a software or its updates without having to wait for IT which can take days or weeks in some organizations.


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1 Answer

Phil BoBo avatar image
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Phil BoBo answered Phil BoBo edited

We already provide an msi installer that can be used to programmatically install FlexSim wherever you want. If you wanted to install it to a user directory, you could.

msiexec /i installer\FlexSim_23.0.5_x64.msi INSTALLDIR=C:\Users\UserName\FlexSim23.0 /passive /norestart

FlexSim still won't install properly without admin privileges though. Our installer installs the FlexNet Licensing Service, and FlexSim does not work without it. You need to have admin privileges to install services in Windows.

An IT department can easily deploy FlexSim to multiple computers using our provided msi file. A university teacher should be working with their IT department for easy FlexSim deployment to computer lab machines rather than trying to avoid their own IT department.

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