We are packaging Bitwarden for enterprise deployment and have observed inconsistent behavior with the /D install directory parameter.
The issue is specifically related to using quotes around the install path.
Examples:
Works in some scenarios:
Bitwarden-Installer-2026.5.0.exe /allusers /S /D=“C:\temp\t 2”
Works in other scenarios:
Bitwarden-Installer-2026.5.0.exe /allusers /S /D=C:\temp\t 2
What we are seeing is that a command using quotes may work during an initial installation, but later fail during an upgrade or reinstall. In some cases, the same installer version on the same machine behaves differently after uninstalling and reinstalling.
Questions:
- Is the Bitwarden installer expected to support quoted paths with
/D? - Has the handling of
/Dchanged between Bitwarden versions? - Does Bitwarden store the previous installation directory anywhere (registry, updater metadata, configuration files, etc.) and reuse it during upgrades or reinstalls?
- If a custom install path was previously used, can that affect how
/Dis parsed during future installations? - Are there any known issues with paths containing spaces when using
/D?
We are trying to determine whether this is expected NSIS behavior, a Bitwarden installer change, or whether installation state from a previous install is influencing subsequent installs.