Basic Information
Are you trying to install Smokeball using their thin installer located on the website but are running into issues? These installation issues usually occur on physical and virtual Windows Servers. Below you will find the links to Smokeball offline installer MSI packages as well as the necessary installation commands to deploy the software. I've had this issue before and spent countless hours with Smokeball Support on the phone, now I just do all this myself before ever contacting them.
Offline Installation Links
Offline installers can be found on Smokeball's Amazon S3 bucket and are usually formatted in the following way:
X.X.XXX.X represents the version number you are trying to install. For example, in order to download version 6.0.106.1 of the offline installer for Smokeball you would go to:
Once you have downloaded the version you need, you will need to run the following command in cmd.exe to install the software:
msiexec.exe /i "C:\PathToFolder\SmokeballOfficeInstaller-x64.msi" /l*v "%Temp%\SmokeballOfficeInstallation-Manual.log" REINSTALLMODE=emus
We specify the second %Temp% path here to ensure that in the event that the installation fails, you can go to that %Temp% directory and review the log for the installation.
Reasoning and Conclusion
The reasoning behind a manual installation of Smokeball is simple, they don't truly support Windows Servers and will tell you as much when trying to resolve any issues you may run into. You can look at software requirements by clicking anywhere in this sentence. They will usually be able to resolve the issue at hand for you if you call the support line, but will warn you that Server versions of Windows may not be supported at all by them in the future. However, a lot of clients utilize Terminal and Hosted Desktop versions of Windows and would like to use Smokeball within those environments.
If you attempt to run the regular installation of Smokeball from their website, you will usually run into issues with the installer even launching in the first place. The manual installation of Smokeball will allow you to install and use the software on machines that aren't quite supported by Smokeball.