Making an Offline install of Windows Phone SDK update for Windows Phone 7.8

In my last articles I introduced you to the latest update for Windows Phone SDK to support Windows Phone 7.8. The installer available download from here, the installer package[WPExpress78_update.exe](1.10MB) is an Online/Web Installer – will download the necessary packages on demand at the time of installation, and it would take some time depending on your bandwidth.

I was looking for ways I can have all the packages pre downloaded and available offline for my later installations.I came across some quick tips, and it may useful to you all as well.

We can do it easily using the ‘/Layout’ switch/command line argument available in Setup executable.

Follow the steps below:

1. Open your ‘Command Prompt’ with Administrator privileges (Right click on ‘Command Prompt’ icon and click on ‘Run as Administrator’ from context menu – which will launch ‘Command Prompt’ with Administrator privileges.).

2. Navigate to the command terminal to the folder in which WPExpress78_update.exe is stored. In my case it is ‘C:\Downloads’.

3. Type the following command in the Command Prompt

WPExpress78_update.exe /layout

/layout switch will create a copy of the media in the specified folder.

This will launch  the installer and prompt you for the Download location, to download and store the packages.

4. Specify the  target folder to store the extracted/downloaded package files, and click on ‘Download’ button.

Sit and relax – the setup will start download. It will take a while in acquiring necessary packages.

You can see a ‘Packages’ folder created inside your target folder and a copy of ‘WPExpress78_update.exe’ placed with it.

Packages folder contains only two updates. Windows Phone 7.1.1 update and Windows Phone 7.8 emulator images.

5. Wait for a while and download will complete. Once download is completed you can install the update by Clicking on ‘WPExpress78_update.exe’ from the target folder.

Now you have the complete packages available offline and can install whenever you want. Or keep a backup of the full folder. 

Hope you enjoy reading the article.