We’re standardizing Windows app deployments in Hexnode. Simple question: if a vendor gives you both MSI and EXE, which one are you picking? I’m leaning MSI but one of our guys prefers EXE because “it just works.” Curious to know what you guys are doing.
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Replies (5)
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Participant
6 days ago
Feb 23, 2026
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If there’s an MSI, I use the MSI. Silent install behaves the way you expect. When you’re deploying to a few hundred machines, predictable > convenient.
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Participant
5 days ago
Feb 24, 2026
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Same. EXE installers feel like a gamble. You test /S and it works. Deploy it and suddenly it throws a popup because it needed /silent /norestart or something.
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Participant
4 days ago
Feb 24, 2026
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That’s exactly what I’m worried about. We had one EXE that installed fine manually but failed silently through Hexnode because the switch was slightly wrong.
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Participant
4 days ago
Feb 25, 2026
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I’ll defend EXE a little.
Sometimes the EXE bundles dependencies the MSI doesn’t. I’ve seen vendors ship a bare MSI that fails if a runtime isn’t present, but the EXE wrapper handles everything.
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Participant
3 days ago
Feb 25, 2026
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Alright, sounds like MSI wins unless there’s a strong reason not to.
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