Systems Deployment

primags,

The behavior of the Windows Installer kicking off when a newly logged on user starts an Office app for the first time is known as 'self repair' or 'self healing'.

If the install of Office was done from an administrative installation point, the situations in which you will be prompted for the disc will be minimized. This is because the .msi from the original installation is cached at "C:\winnt\installer" - or "C:\windows\installer" if you are on XP - and the registry knows to check there for the .msi and tables.

If you just do a regular install from an Office 2000 disc - or from a disc just copied to network location, the .msi is not cached in this location in the same manner. This is key to understand.

How do you create an administrative installation point of an .msi? Put the CD in, go to the command prompt, change drive letters to you CD ROM drive, and use the following context: "setup.exe /a"

msiexec.exe /a "path_to_your_software.msi" will also perform an administrative install. For example, Microsoft Office might look like "msiexec.exe /a data1.msi"

The admin installation will look the same as any other installation at first, but then it will ask you where you want to "copy" the files, instead of where you want to "install" them. It will also ask you for the product key. When you do the "program" install from the admin point, it will not ask you for the key.

There are limitations to how much an msi style app that is installed from an administrative installation point can self repair from the cache at C:\winnt\cache:
If just HKEY_CURRENT_USER keys (or possibly other registry keys) need to be created so that the software will run, Windows will just use the cached .msi at C:\winnt\installer. This is what Office is doing for a new user - it is creating the necessary registry keys at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\

If a file, executable, etc, is missing from the computer or is damaged, Windows installer will ask for the path of the original administrative installation point, whether that be a mapped drive, UNC path, or disc.

If the install was done just from an ordinary disc or files just COPIED to a network folder, it will ALWAYS as you for the disc - not matter WHAT is missing or damaged.

Craig --<>.

Thanks Craig!

I made the install - now on to testing. I'll let you know how it goes.

Glenn

Also if you use SMS you you can create a package/program and use the MSI Source Agent to automatically point your MSI sourcelist to the nearest DP. Or you can use the WindowsInstaller object to add a source list manually.


In vbscript that looks something like: ( doing this off the top of my head not testing it )

set oWindowsInstaller = CreateObject("WindowsInstaller.Installer")
oWindowsInstaller.AddSource "{PRODUCTGUID}", "", "C:\SOMEPATH"
set oWindowsInstaller = Nothing

place the office 2000 bits on the path and use this to add it. Then store your RIS image and when the image is restored you basically have something like MSOCache in Office 2003.

What we do is put Office on a network share. Then from the local pc, connect to the network share and run the setup from the network share

So whenever a new user launches Outlook, Word, etc, it'll go thru the motions w/ the server where the data is kept and we don't have to worry about inserting the disc.