Automated actions in another program

[UG Guru]

This is a bit of a longshot but there may be a way.
I'm investigating creating msi installations for some software we have that doesn't already have an msi file.
The aim is to have silent installs for all of the programs we have.
I was wondering if instead of creating an msi file why can't I just create a program that waits for prompts to appear and auto fills them or hits ok or whatever.
I guess the hardest parts would be to identify what action to do and when from the forms that appear during the setup process. If these had something unique that I can read and then react to I could possibly do this.
The other stummbling block would be performing the action on the other program(the installation package). Could this be as simple as getting the location of the active form and knowing the form layout "simulating" a mouse click on the relevant part of the screen (eg a button)?
Not sure if any of this is do-able.
Some advice on this would be great.

Cheers,

 

[Denaes]

I made an app that scanned the proccesses running and brought windows up and sent keystrokes. Instead of a mouse click at (54, 305) I would tab 4 times and hit "space".

My app was primarily for backups on enterprise level software where the people were dumb enough to require you to stop using the database for a few minutes, and didn't include a way to configure options. It would just ask you with each backup. They used to have to pay someone to come in an hour early to do the backup prior to the days transactions starting because of that.

Honestly if you want to use VB to learn it, do it. If you want to get the job done right and fast, go to www.autohotkey.com. You'll reduce a weeks worth of programming into about 10-20 minutes time. It's a keyboard mapping & scripting app written in C(++?) that basically wraps a whole bunch of windows functions and things for you to easily write a script or remap a key (my internet "homepage" key maximizes my VB code window now).

You also have a wizard that will record your keystrokes, so you can go through the installation process with the keyboard & mouse (I advise against the mouse) and when it's over, you'll have a script for it that you can modify. Make that script run the setup file and wait for the forms to pop up and you're gold. It's not "silent", but it's automated. Export it to .exe and people can run that file instead to install the application.

I'm not saying that it's better or does more than .Net, but it's Fast and easy to learn. It's by far the single most useful app to get windows things automated... especially being free. I've used it in data entry jobs, to create templates for code, remap keys, batch rename files in a directory, etc.