SPJeff

Earlier today I was trying to load Workflow Manager 1.0 to get the new “2013” flavor workflows running on my VM.   The Microsoft download links are tiny files which launch WPI (Web Platform Installer).   That’s fine for a hobby machine or one time install, but I need an offline install for real data centers.   Why?   Two reasons:   they often block internet access for security and I want to install via script (do many machines faster).

I watched Web Platform Installer download and install the various components I wondered where it was keeping all those nice download files.   Not %TEMP% and not C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\.  The obvious locations yielded nothing so I launched SysInternals PROCMON.EXE and watched open file handles for the install window  (click the target icon to select any active window).  That helped me find the right location and now I can copy those MSI files directly for offline installs.

If you need any Web Platform Installer items to run offline, just watch this folder while running on 1 PC and then you can copy to others.

C:\Users\spfarm\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Web Platform Installer\installers\