I asked this question of Stack Overflow 9 months ago but no-one has been able to help. Perhaps someone here can?
I have been using SQL2005 Express packaged with our .NET app for a number of years, and I had a command-line setup that installed SQL silently (dialogs shown, bot no modals to acknowledge) but did alert the user if there was an error (e.g. a missing prerequisite). SQL 2012 Express has a very different set of command-line parameters and I am struggling to find a set (either on the commmand line or using a config file) that will give me what I need, which I would have thought is pretty commonplace.
Setting the /QS parameter installs silently but just closes abruptly, without warning, if there is an error. I know an error log is produced but to find and extract text from that programmatically is going to be a pain.
Using UIMODE="AutoAdvance" instead is not silent enough; it stops at dialogs (e.g. 'Feature Selection') which ask the user for an input they probably won't understand. I don't understand why it stops here for features that have already been specified in the config file
We now need SQL2012 for installing on Windows8 machines. The command line install I am trying is below. Thanks in advance for any help!
SQLEXPR_x64_ENU.exe /ACTION=Install /UpdateEnabled=False /QS /INSTANCENAME=MyInstance /FEATURES=SQLEngine /TCPENABLED=1 /SECURITYMODE=SQL /SAPWD="Pa55w0rd" /SQLSYSADMINACCOUNTS="Builtin\Administrators" /SQLSVCACCOUNT="NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE" /IAcceptSQLServerLicenseTerms