Using WinRAR SFX to Create a Silent Install Package

WinRAR is a great compression, and though there are many good free compression applications available, its SFX (Self-Extracting Install) feature make it well worth the $29 USD price tag.

I use it almost daily to create silent install of applications that I need to push out to users on the network

In this guide I will show how to create a simple silent install of the popular FTP program called Filezilla

After you have WinRAR installed right click the filezilla installer package and select WinRAR> Add Archive



In the General pane select Create SFX archive



WinRAR will automatically crate a sfx exe version. Now right click that and select WinRAR > open with WinRAR



WinRAR opens with the filezilla setup program inside of it.  Select the SFX icon and then select advanced SFX options.



In the General Tab we will define the silent switch variable that runs filezilla silently . In this case it is /S so under Run after extraction we type the full filename and the /S switch.



Under modes we make sure it unpacks to a temporary folder and Hides all displays.



Under Update we will select the extract and replace files and the overwrite all files (This is done just in case an earlier version may have been copied at some point)



Finally if we want to customize the icon that the package will use we can add it here.



Select OK



The new filezilla silent install package with its customize icon are now  ready for use.