HP Connection Manager – Silent Install Nightmare (Solved)

Sometimes, IT people just seems to need to call some bad names to our colleagues.

This happens for example (not with a specific corporation) when you need to to create a new base image for a laptop and there’s always a software that simply cannot install silent, at least in a straight-forward way…

This happened to me this week with an HP EliteBook 2540p.

The software:
HP Connection Manager.

The issue:
No way to install this software silently. There’s just no way to do this without messing around with the MSI file or like this tip, by creating a transforms file (MST).

If using the setup.exe you get all the popups, if you extract the msi file you get the message: “Please install HP Connection Manager by launching from Setup.exe”

The solution:
To be able to install this software silently, first you’ll need to install a software to create the transforms (MST) file.

For this one I normally use Microsoft ORCA software that’s available through Windows SDK Components for Windows Installer Developers, but just google it to find the direct download.

You can get more information about this tool here:
ORCA.EXE

Now…after installing ORCA you need to follow this steps:

.: Launch the default installation

.: When you start to get a message to click Next, go to Start –> Run and type %temp% and click OK

.: Here you’ll get the extracted MSI for installation. It’s generally on a folder like {2241211254ASFAS24Q24}

.: Copy the files inside the directory to another place and after that, cancel the installation

.: Now you’ll have the necessary MSI files to create the MST file

.: Launch ORCA

.: Open the HP Connection Manager.msi

.: Click Transform from the ORCA menu and select New Transform

.: From the left menu, select Property

.: On the right pane change property:
  .: Agree to License to Yes
  .: LAUNCHFROMEXE from to 1
  .: RebootYesNo to No

.: Click Transform from the ORCA menu and select Generate Transform

.: Save the new MST file with a name you want in the same folder where you have the HP Connection Manager.msi

And it’s done…

Now to finally install HP Connection Manager silently run the command for example:
HPConnectionManager.msi /qr /norestart TRANSFORMS=HPCM.mst

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