Microsoft Quick Assist installation on OS older than 21H2

The Quick Assist tool came in the past as a default executable which was located into the system32 folder of Windows. Starting with Windows 10 21H2, Microsoft decided to move Quick Assist into the Microsoft Store. The first issue we see is that Quick Assist was only placed in system32 as an executable and it was never an app to begin with. If you search through the Add/Remove Programs or try to find it with the PowerShell commmands, you will see that nothing is found.

One additional issue is that Quick Assist requires administrative rights to be installed. As you might imagine, this brought a bit of unsatisfactory feelings for the IT Pros, as most of the users you are trying to provide support to are not having admin rights.

Going via SCCM (MECM) with per-machine deployments of the APPXBUNDLE (which actually contains the proper x86/x64 MSIX versions of Quick Assist) is apparently not fixing the admin rights issue, and apart from that, the shortcut to the old Quick Assist still remains on the system (because the MSIX package is not upgrading something on the system).

So how can you fix this issue?

Actually it is quite simple, all you need to do is make a simple script to:

• Delete the old Quick Assist shortcut
• Provision Quick Assist per-machine
• Place registry for detection via SCCM

The script for this is:

########################################################

###Global Variables#####

########################################################




$nl = [System.Environment]::NewLine

$Global:ret=$false

$ScriptPath = $MyInvocation.MyCommand.Path

$Global:ScriptDir = split-path -parent $ScriptPath

$InstallFile = "MicrosoftCorporationII.QuickAssist_2022.509.2259.0_neutral_~_8wekyb3d8bbwe.appxbundle"

$BlockMap = "MicrosoftCorporationII.QuickAssist_2022.509.2259.0_neutral_~_8wekyb3d8bbwe.BlockMap"

$AppxPathToInstall=$Global:ScriptDir + "\" + $InstallFile

$BlockMapToCopy=$Global:ScriptDir + "\" + $BlockMap

$ShortcutPath = $env:ProgramData + "\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Accessories\" + "Quick Assist.lnk"

$CopyPath = $env:SystemDrive + "\" + "temp"

$AppxNewInstallPath = $CopyPath + "\MicrosoftCorporationII.QuickAssist_2022.509.2259.0_neutral_~_8wekyb3d8bbwe.appxbundle"







########################################################

###Copy Installer#####

########################################################




Copy-Item $AppxPathToInstall -Destination $CopyPath

Copy-Item $BlockMapToCopy -Destination $CopyPath




########################################################

###Delete Shortcut for Original Quick Assists#####

########################################################







Remove-Item -Path "$ShortcutPath" -Force




########################################################

###Install Store Quick Assist#####

########################################################




Add-AppProvisionedPackage -online -packagepath $AppxNewInstallPath-skiplicens







########################################################

###Create detection method#####

########################################################




$ExecutedValue = "1"

$RegistryPath = "HKLM:\Software\QuickAssist"

$Executed = "Installed"







IF(!(Test-Path $RegistryPath)){




            New-Item -Path $RegistryPath -Force | Out-Null




            New-ItemProperty -Path $RegistryPath -Name $Executed -Value $ExecutedValue




            }

         ELSE {

                set-itemproperty -Path $RegistryPath -Name $Executed -Value $ExecutedValue

            }