Edit

Share via

Deploy Visual Studio from a layout onto a client machine

  • Article

📣 We'd love to hear your feedback! Please take a moment to complete this survey and let us know how we can improve the layout experience. Thank you for your support!

In order to deploy a layout to a client machine, you'll need to consider the following topics first:

Install Visual Studio onto a client machine from a layout

Administrators can deploy a Visual Studio layout onto client workstations programmatically as part of an installation script.

Install from a network layout

A user with administrator permissions can install Visual Studio from a network layout in an unattended mode by running the following command. The response.json in the layout provide the default configuration settings for the installation.

\\server\products\VS\vs_enterprise.exe --quiet --wait

If the user ever selects items that aren't available in the layout, then the installer will try to source these additional files from Microsoft hosted servers on the internet. To make sure your installer doesn't try to access the internet when it's installing the product, use the --noweb switch. For example, use this command to run the installation and prevent the client machine from accessing the internet:

\\server\products\VS\vs_enterprise.exe --noWeb --wait --passive --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.ManagedDesktop --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.NetWeb --includeOptional

Note

Be patient. Make sure you --wait for both the installer and the product to finish. When installing or updating a client from a layout, the installer is always the first thing to get installed or updated, and then the Visual Studio product itself will get installed or updated. Both of these processes need to finish in order to be considered a successful update.

When executing the install or update as part of an unattended automated batch file, the --wait option is helpful to ensure that the vs_enterprise.exe process waits until the installation is complete before it returns an exit code. This is useful if an enterprise administrator wants to perform further actions on a completed installation, such as apply a product key to a successful installation. Using the --wait option prevents subsequent operations from kicking off prematurely. If you do not use --wait, the vs_enterprise.exe process can exit before both parts of the installation are complete, and thus will return an inaccurate exit code that doesn't represent the state of the install operation.

Install from an internal intranet location

Some enterprises want to host the layout on an intranet location to better manage geographical performance bottlenecks and take advantage of web caching. In order to deploy an intranet hosted layout onto a client machine, a user with administrator permissions must run an elevated PowerShell script similar to the following to initialize the installation on the client machine.

    #Do the initial installation from the web hosted layout onto the client in an elevated PowerShell script

    #ADMIN CONFIGURATION
    #Enter layout URI here
    $LayoutUri = "http://MyCompanyIntranetSite/VS2022Enterprise/"

    #Enter bootstrapper name which is present in layout.
    $BootstrapperName = "vs_Enterprise.exe"

    #Add any arguments which you intend to send to bootstrapper.
    $Arguments = "--passive --wait"

    #SCRIPT FUNCTIONALITY
    #Forming URI for bootstrapper
    Write-Verbose "LayoutUri: $LayoutUri"
    $BootstrapperUri = "$LayoutUri/$BootstrapperName"
    Write-Verbose "BootstrapperUri: $BootstrapperUri"

    $Arguments += " --layoutUri $LayoutUri"
    Write-Verbose "Arguments: $Arguments"

    #Creating temp folder and download bootstrapper
    $VSLayoutFolderPath = Join-Path -Path $env:TEMP -ChildPath VSLayout
    $BootstrapperFile = Join-Path -Path $VSLayoutFolderPath -ChildPath $BootstrapperName
    Write-Verbose "The bootstrapper path is: $BootstrapperFile"

    if (Test-Path $VSLayoutFolderPath)
    {
    Write-Verbose "The directory exists - $VSLayoutFolderPath"
    if (Test-Path $BootstrapperFile)
    {
    Write-Verbose "Deleting file - $BootstrapperFile"
    Remove-Item $BootstrapperFile
    }
    }
    else
    {
    Write-Verbose "Creating folder - $VSLayoutFolderPath"
    New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path $VSLayoutFolderPath
    }

    Write-Verbose "Downloading bootstrapper from - $BootstrapperUri to $BootstrapperFile"
    Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $BootstrapperUri -OutFile $BootstrapperFile
    
    Write-Verbose "Starting bootstrapper -$BootstrapperFile with arguments $Arguments"
    start-process $BootstrapperFile $Arguments

Prepare the client machines

Permissions

Make sure that either the user or system account that's running the installation has proper access to the network share that contains the layout. For more information, refer to the troubleshoot network-related errors when you install or use Visual Studio page.

Install on a client that doesn't have internet access

You need to make sure that any offline client machines have the right certificates installed.

When you install from a layout, the installer on the client always looks for the Visual Studio packages in the layout's location. However, if the installer tries to install components that are not included in the layout, then it will attempt to acquire the Visual Studio packages from the update source, which administrators often configure to point back to itself.

If you want to explicitly prevent the Visual Studio Installer from attempting to download any missing content from Microsoft hosted servers on the web, you can use the --noWeb parameter. If --noWeb is used and the layout is missing a component that is selected to be installed, then the setup will fail. Also, if --noWeb is used and the layout is hosted on your intranet web servers as opposed to a file network share, then the setup will fail.

Using the --noweb switch often fixes the error message "A product matching the following parameters can't be found".

Machine resources

Make sure that your full installation path is fewer than 80 characters and that your machine has ample storage. A complete installation of Visual Studio requires a minimum of 45 -50 GB of disk space.

Error codes

If you used the --wait parameter, then depending on the result of the operation, the %ERRORLEVEL% environment variable is set to one of the following values:

Value Result
0 Operation completed successfully
740 Elevation required
1001 Visual Studio installer process is running
1003 Visual Studio is in use
1602 Operation was canceled
1618 Another installation running
1641 Operation completed successfully, and reboot was initiated
3010 Operation completed successfully, but install requires reboot before it can be used
5003 Bootstrapper failed to download installer
5004 Operation was canceled
5005 Bootstrapper command-line parse error
5007 Operation was blocked - the computer does not meet the requirements
8001 Arm machine check failure
8002 Background download precheck failure
8003 Out of support selectable failure
8004 Target directory failure
8005 Verifying source payloads failure
8006 Visual Studio processes running
8010 Operating System not supported. Refer to the System Requirements
-1073720687 Connectivity failure
-1073741510 Microsoft Visual Studio Installer was terminated (by the user or external process)
Other
(for example:
-1, 1, 1603)		 Failure condition occurred - check the logs for more information

Get support for deploying your layout

If you experience a problem deploying your layout onto a client machine, we want to know about it. The best way to tell us is by using the Report a Problem tool that appears both in the Visual Studio Installer and in the Visual Studio IDE. If you're an IT Administrator and don't have Visual Studio installed, you can submit IT Admin feedback here. When you use this tool, it would be helpful if you could send the logs by the VS Collect tool, which can help us diagnose and fix the problem.

We also offer an installation chat (English only) support option for installation-related issues.

We have other support options available, too. See our Visual Studio Developer Community.

Related content