Where does Windows Platform Installer (WPI) save the downloaded files in my computer?

Question

I have a network with one server that is connected to the internet and some clients that are not. I want to download and install Microsoft products on my server first and let the client computers download the installer later from the server.

The questions are

1. where does the WPI save the downloaded files?
2. is it possible to run WPI and force it to install the Microsoft products from the already downloaded files rather than downloading again from Microsoft's server.

Note: Assume there is no license issue, hopely :-)

Answer 1

It will be cached under %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Web Platform Installer\installers if you are on Vista or above, or in the equivalent location on XP (there is no %LocalAppData% environment variable in XP).

If the products are downloaded, they will be installed again from the cached location, unless they were updated, which would change their hash and force Web PI to download them again. Moreover, you can copy the cache folder from one computer to another to the same location and Web PI will pick it up automatically and install products from cached installers.

Answer 2

Microsoft has released a tool called Web Platform Installer v4 Command Line which has a switch to prepare an offline installation. Quote from the page above:

Creates an offline cached copy of a specified set of products and applications so you can install while offline

Example:

Ex: >WebPICMD.exe /Offline /Products:WebMatrix,SQLExpress /Path:c:\OfflineCache 

The above will create an offline cache at c:\offlineCache that contains WebMatrix and all it's possible dependencies!

Update 2017

The link above is no longer valid (404). The page i found is Web Platform Installer v5 Command Line (WebPICMD.exe) - RTW release

WebPI Command line

The Web Platform Installer v5 (WebPI) command line tool is now available as part of the WebPI MSI! We've added a bunch of new features and fix several issues, and now it's ready for it's full release

On the page are two links

• WebPI v5 x86.msi

• WebPI v4 x64.msi

Answer 3

Microsoft has released a beta tool that will do this.

Answer 4

In windows 8 I found it here

%AppData%\Local\Microsoft\Web Platform Installer\installers