REM State

Yet another one of the little niceties, Acrobat Reader is very convenient to have around. The default download is a self-extracting executable that wraps an MSI; providing a /? switch indicates that /msi allows you to pass command-line arguments to msiexec, but I was unable to get that to work properly. I was also unable to extract the files using 7-Zip. However, running the installer will unpack the files into %HOMEPATH%\Local Settings\Temp\Adobe Reader 8 — just double-click the installer, and grab these files while it sits on the first installation screen.

Once you have the files, it’s simply a matter of knowing the magic word to get the installer to put Adobe where you want it. INSTALLDIR will work halfway, but for the 8.1.2 version of the package at least, will still install some files to %ProgramFiles%. In order to get everything installed onto the drive/path of your choice, issue the following:

msiexec /qn /i AcroRead.msi ADOBE="D:\Program Files\Adobe"

Easy as that, and now we have a respectable set of tools for surfing the web and viewing the most prominent types of files found thereon. :)