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My application has several settings that can be chosen by the user when it's first installed, including the Destination folder and a few optional settings. I am using the update functionality, which works well, but when the application is updated, I want to simply use the settings chosen during the initial install rather than give the user the opportunity to change them. I have a mechanism worked out that does this by recording the install settings in an INI file and having the updater run the install "silently," supplying the install settings on the command line.

However, while I want to suppress most of the dialogs, I want to keep the Progress dialog, so the user will see that something is happening after they choose to install an update. At first I tried to use CreateInstall's standard -silent mechanism. While that suppressed the dialogs I wanted to remain hidden, including Welcome, Setup Path, Settings and Finish, it also kept the Progress dialog hidden, which I didn't want. My solution was to implement my own -auto command line switch that sets a custom variable, "autoinstall", to 1. I then use this variable to control whether dialogs are shown, rather than the predefined "silent" variable. I leave the If Condition for the Progress dialog empty, which makes it appear no matter what kind of install I'm doing (except a true silent install, which I don't use).

The only thing missing from CreateInstall that would make this method handling auto-installing cleaner is adding the If Condition to more dialogs, specifically the Finish dialog. Since that dialog doesn't support an If Condition that would let me hide it for an autoinstall, and dialogs cannot be put in an If statement, I ended up having to add an If statement before the Finish dialog to test if an autoinstall is being done, and do an Exit if that's the case.

If you want to hide Dialog - Finish when 'autoinstall' equals 1 then insert the following variable into Additional settings of Dialog - Finish.

Variable Name: Dif
Value: !autoinstall

The variable Dif in Additional Settings of dialogs is like If Condition parameter.