How To Deploy / Install ManageEngine Desktop Central Agent On Widows 11 Using Microsoft Intune

ManageEngine Desktop Central Agent is required for managing client PC’s from Desktop Central Agent. Its a lightweight software which can be deployed on the client’s PC using different methods.

If you are using On-Premise Active Directory, then you can use GPO and deploy it using a startup script or if you are using Microsoft Intune then an intune package can be created and uploaded to the Microsoft Endpoint Manager admin center and then deploy the package from there.

Third option is to deploy it manually using the setup file in the installation folder. In this blog post, we are going to use Microsoft Intune for Deployment of ManageEngine desktop central agent on Windows 10 and Windows 11 systems.

How to Install ManageEngine Desktop Central Agent Manually on a PC

Download Agent from Desktop Central-->Agent-->Computers-->Download Agent
Select respective office to download the Agent setup.
Extract the zip file, Double click on setup.bat and Select Option 2 to Install WAN Agent on this Computer (As also shown in below screenshot). Ignore the Install.bat file for now as this file is created by me which will look into it later when we are going to create Intune Package.

Install ManageEngine Desktop Central Agent using Microsoft Intune

Download Agent from Desktop Central --> Agent --> Computers --> Download Agent.
Select respective office to download the Agent setup.
Extract the zip file.
Create a File Install.bat in the same folder where all other installation files are (as shown in the screenshot above).

Contents of Install.bat file:

msiexec /i DesktopCentralAgent.msi /qn REBOOT="REALLYSUPPRESS" MSIRESTARTMANAGERCONTROL="Disable" TRANSFORMS=DesktopCentralAgent.mst ENABLESILENT=yes

Download Microsoft Win32 Content Prep Tool
Create an empty folder for example C:\output or anywhere you like.

Use below process to repackage the application / setup files to .intunewin file. Launch command prompt, change the current folder to where Microsoft Win32 Content Prep Tool is downloaded and run below command.

Replace setup_folder with C:\DesktopCentral_Agent (this is where all your setup files are kept)

setup_file with Install.bat

Output_folder with C:\output (this is the folder where .intunewin file will be generated)

IntuneWinAppUtil.exe -c <setup_folder> -s <setup_file> -o <output_folder>

IntuneWinAppUtil Available command line parameters

Example:

.\IntuneWinAppUtil.exe -c C:\DesktopCentral_Agent -s Install.bat -o C:\output

Output Folder:

Now once .intunewin file has been created, we will now upload this file on Endpoint Manager admin center using the following steps:

Login on EndPoint Manager Admin Center.
Click on Apps -> All Apps -> + Add
Select App Type to Windows app (Win32)
Click on Select.
Select app package file and browse to install.intunewin and click Ok.
Enter / Update the Name of the Application and Publisher Information and click Next.

Add App on Microsoft Endpoint Manager Admin Center.

Program Tab

Install Command – Install.bat
Uninstall Command – %SystemRoot%\system32\msiexec.exe /x{6AD2231F-FF48-4D59-AC26-405AFAE23DB7} MSIRESTARTMANAGERCONTROL=Disable REBOOT="ReallySuppress" /qn
Device restart behaviour – No Specific Action
Click Next.