An administrative installation creates an uncompressed source image for the products contained in an installer.
An administrative installation can be used to make changes to any configuration files, or other items that cannot be set on the command line or by using the installer GUI, before the installer is run. The uncompressed installer can then be run from the uncompressed location and will include the changes made to the source image files.
Administrative installations should not be used unless you fully understand the effect the changes you make will have on the installation. For details on administrative installations, see the Administrative Installation section of the Microsoft Dev Center: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa367541(v=vs.85).aspx.
To perform an administrative installation, execute a command like this example from the command prompt:
msiexec /a "C:\Installer\Installer File.msi" TARGETDIR="C:\Installer\admin" /qb
In this example, the Installer File.msi is uncompressed to the C:\Installer\admin directory.
After modifying the uncompressed files, the installer located at C:\Installer\admin\Installer File.msi must be run, not the original compressed *.msi.
When executing the installer from the command line, any additional options with command-line parameters must still be applied when executing the uncompressed installer. If parameters are not applied, the default options for those parameters are used. See the command-line installation instructions for the specific installer you are running.