Automate the unattended or quiet installation of an online installer, offline installer, or Package Manager using the command line interface (CLI).

To make the installation process non-interactive, include the --passive option at the command prompt. Unattended mode is not fully quiet. Status dialogs appear during the installation process, but you do not need to interact with the messages. You can use this mode when installing from a script or the command line.

To make the installation process fully quiet, include the --quiet option at the command prompt. This option prevents Package Manager from displaying dialogs or taskbar icons during installation.
Note This process supports installers built using Package Manager 20.7 (released in April 2021) and later. For more information on how to automate Package Manager installation for previous versions, see the article Automating the Unattended Installation of Package Manager.

An online installer is a lightweight executable containing no packages in itself, but installs a product by downloading the necessary packages from the internet. An offline installer bundles a complete set of packages for the product into a one-time download. Offline installers contain the complete contents of software and so take longer to download.

  1. Navigate to ni.com/downloads and search for the product you want to install. If you are installing Package Manager, navigate to the corresponding download page.
  2. Select the product version, edition, and any necessary driver software.
  3. Determine the installer type you need and complete the corresponding steps to download and run the installer.

Selecting an Online Installer Type

Installers of this type always download as an .exe and are typically under 10 MB.
Note This option is not available for all products.
  1. Click Download if an online installer is available.
  2. Ensure the installer is an executable.
  3. Run Command Prompt as an administrator and pass one of the following commands and options:
    • start "" /wait "path of install.exe" --passive --accept-eulas --prevent-reboot
    • For quiet installation, use the --quiet option instead of the --passive option.
      start "" /wait "path of install.exe" --quiet --accept-eulas --prevent-reboot

    The following options are not required when using the --passive option or the --quiet option:

    • To make the installation process skip any license activation, include the --prevent-activation option in the command prompt.
      start "" /wait "path of install.exe" --prevent-activation
      Note You must still perform license activation for any products that require a license.
    • To prevent the installation process from displaying a completion prompt, include the --hide-completion option at the command prompt.
      start "" /wait "path of install.exe" --hide-completion
    • To install Package Manager passively, but require user interaction later in the installation, include the --autoinstall-nipkg option in the command prompt.
      start "" /wait "path of install.exe" --autoinstall-nipkg

Selecting an Offline Installer Type

This type of installer downloads as an .iso file. You must either mount the .iso file or extract all of the files to a local directory before launching the installer. The NI Package Manager offline installer downloads as an .exe file and you can use the same command-line when launching that executable.

  1. Download an offline installer in one of the following ways.
    • Click Individual Offline Installers if available.
      1. Select one of the offline installer options.
        Note Product versions with a higher value in the third field of a version include patch fixes. For example, 23.0.1 has a patch fix for version 23.0.
      2. Click Download.
      3. Wait until the installer finishes downloading before completing the next step.
    • Click the title of the product you are installing.
      1. Ensure that the title represents the latest version of the product.
      2. Click the download link to download your offline installer.
      3. Proceed once the installer has finished downloading.
  2. Run Command Prompt as an administrator.
  3. Change to the directory in which you downloaded your installer using the cd command.
    The following is an example.
    cd "C:\Users\lvadmin\downloads"
  4. Pass one of the following commands and arguments:
    • start "" /wait "path of install.exe" --passive --accept-eulas --prevent-reboot
    • For quiet installation, use the --quiet option instead of the --passive option.
      start "" /wait "path of install.exe" --quiet --accept-eulas --prevent-reboot

    The following options are not required when using the --passive option or the --quiet options.

    • To make the installation process skip any license activation, include the --prevent-activation option in the command prompt.
      start "" /wait "path of install.exe" --prevent-activation
      Note You must still perform license activation for any products that require a license.
    • To prevent the installation process from displaying a completion prompt, include the --hide-completion option at the command prompt.
      start "" /wait "path of install.exe" --hide-completion
    • To install Package Manager passively, but require user interaction later in the installation, include the --autoinstall-nipkg option in the command prompt.
      start "" /wait "path of install.exe" --autoinstall-nipkg

Verifying the Installer

Execute the following command to verify the installation was successful: echo %errorlevel%.
Note
  • A return code of 0 indicates that you successfully installed the software.
  • A return code of -125071 indicates that you successfully installed the software but you must reboot your machine.
  • A return code of -126300 indicates that you only installed Package Manager. You must reboot your machine and then rerun the installer to complete the software installation.

Troubleshooting

For more information about options that the installer supports, run the following command in a Command Prompt:
start "" "path to install.exe" /?