As you might know, msiexec is a command line application that you can use to install an MSI file. As you might know, you can run it in silent or invisible mode.
If the installer requires the user to answer specific questions about what parts to install, is there some way that I can put in the msiexec command line a series of options to do this?
I figure there must be some sort of way of setting the MSI file's default settings to make this happen. How are MSI files made? Are they developed through tools from Microsoft? Can they be opened and edited?
Think of the user interface with MSI as optional. This means no answers should be required as the developer has sensible defaults in place so that things don't break.
We distribute our software in MSI format to corporate customers, I also provide them with documentation on the basics of Orca (orca.msi is distributed with the Windows Installer SDK) and how to customize certain fields we have listed in the Property table for their installation. Such as serial number, registration details and a few other settings.
In response to the original question about msiexec command line options just run MSIEXEC /? to set properties on the command line you would use something like
MSIEXEC /I test.msi SOMEPROPERTY="Some value" PROP2="something else"