SMART Notebook 11.4 - Silent Install without reboot

[Steve21]

I would check with your account manager. We get 5 activation's of the product per smart board. Currently deploy 300 installs of version 18.0 without issue.

 

You might want to double check that It's 5 "user" activations as they changed over to a per user basis from 17, the activations are in regards to a computer/laptop/tablet etc.

 

SMART Learning Suite is a bundle of software including lesson delivery, assessment, student collaboration and game-based learning. It’s available as a single purchase on a per-teacher, per-year subscription basis.

 

A one-year license is available with any SMART interactive display.

 

How many activations do I receive?

A subscription lets you install SMART Notebook and SMART Lesson Activity Builder on up to four computers and gives 30 students and 1 teacher access to SMART amp

 

One license is one user on up to 4 computers.

 

You can buy site licenses still but if you're not paying annually for the license for all staff that's wrong

 

Steve

[mehball]

You might want to double check that It's 5 "user" activations as they changed over to a per user basis from 17, the activations are in regards to a computer/laptop/tablet etc.

 

 

 

 

 

One license is one user on up to 4 computers.

 

You can buy site licenses still but if you're not paying annually for the license for all staff that's wrong

 

Steve

 

Well our SMART account manager took note of our 73 physical SMART screens and simply gave us a licence to ensure we can activate version 18.0 or Notebook on all the devices we require (Currently approx 300)

[CHiLL]

Sorry to bump this thread, but I didn't want to create a new one for the same thing, especially since I'm the OP!

 

So I've been continuing to battle this issue and had given up for a good while, resorting to manual installations where required instead of automated. Now we've been looking at the free version of SMART Notebook 19.0 and found it has the exact same issue that I've been experiencing - a restart prompt when it installs the SMART Product Drivers. If it an automated install by SCCM/GPO, then it will time out and fail the installation. If it's installed (even with a /q command) when a user is logged in, it will provide a popup asking to restart. If the machine is restarted there and then, the installation is cancelled and does not restart. If it is postponed, SMART Notebook will carry on installing and work correctly. I raised this with SMART and they cannot replicate the issue on any version of Windows (I've experienced this on 1709, 1803, 1809 and 1903).

 

So I've taken a vanilla image from VLSC and installed Windows 10 Education 1903 64-bit and copied the SMART installation files to a USB drive. When installed (the exact same command line) on this fresh install of Windows (not joined to the domain)...it installs correctly without a restart prompt!

 

The only variables I can see are the fact that we have three domain level GPOs (including the Default Domain Policy) and the fact that we deploy the OS via MDT/SCCM.

 

The GPO settings mentioned above are:

Name: Default Domain Policy

• Computer Configuration > Policies > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Account Policies > Password Policy
  Enforce password history: 24 passwords remembered
  Maximum password age: 42 days
  Minimum password age: 0 days
  Minimum password length: 6 characters
  Store passwords using reversible encryption: Disabled
  
• Computer Configuration > Policies > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Account Policies > Account Lockout Policy
  Account lockout threshold: 0 invalid logon attempts
  
• Computer Configuration > Policies > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Account Policies > Kerberos Policy
  Enforce user logon restrictions: Enabled
  Maximum lifetime for service ticket: 600 minutes
  Maximum lifetime for user ticket: 10 hours
  Maximum lifetime for user ticket renewal: 7 days
  Maximum tolerance for computer clock syncronisation: 5 minutes
  
• Computer Configuration > Policies > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Local Policies > Security Options > Network Access
  Network access: Allow anonymous SID/Name translation: Disabled
  
• Computer Configuration > Policies > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Local Policies > Security Options > Network Security
  Network security: Do not store LAN Manager hash value on next password change: Enabled
  Network security: Force logoff when logon hours expire: Disabled
  
• Computer Configuration > Policies > Windows Settings > Public Key Policies > Encrypting File System > Certificates
  Issued to Administrator, Issued by: Administrator, Expiration date: 04/07/2115 09:57:15, Intended Purposes: File Recovery
  

Name: C - Smoothwall Certificate

• Computer Configuration > Policies > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Public Key Policies/Trusted Root Certification Authorities > Certificates
  Issued to: smoothwall.domain.local, Issued by smoothwall.domain.local, Expiration Date: 12/03/2021 10:28:16, Intended Purposes: Client Authentication, Server Authentication, OCSP Signing, Code Signing, Time Stamping
  

Name: C - Deny Interactive Logon For Service Accounts

• Computer Configuration > Policies > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Local Policies > User Rights Assignment
  Deny log on locally: Domain\Service Accounts
  Deny log on through Terminal Services: Domain\Service Accounts
  

 

The only differences are during the deployment. I use MDT within SCCM to create a TS and deploy the OS. There are some customisations/extra steps that SCCM does that aren't part of the default MDT steps, which include;

• CustomSettings.ini [ATTACH]54224[/ATTACH]
  
• Install drivers as driver packages (uses WMI query to determine the make/model and install appropriate drivers)
  
• Install drivers as applications (uses WMI query to determine the make/model and install appropriate drivers)
  
• Configures Windows based on unattend.xml
  
• Unattend.xml [ATTACH]54225[/ATTACH]
  
• Specify the local administrator password
  
• Sets the time zone to London
  
• Joins the domain and moves it to a specific OU named 'Deployment' (which has no GPOs assigned, apart from the three listed above)
  
• Installs essential apps like 7-Zip, Adobe Reader, Office 2016, Impero Client, etc
  
• Disable WinRE
  
• Set Windows 10 default app associations
  
• Enable Windows Photo Viewer
  
• Re-register the Windows 10 AppX Photos package
  
• Disable Windows Updates connecting to the Internet
  
• Add machine AD object to a specific security group
  

 

Sorry for the bombardment of information but I feel that I'm quite close but yet so far.

Edited July 8, 2019 by CHiLL

[CHiLL]

So this morning I installed a vanilla version of Windows 10 Education 1903 64-bit (the same ISO that SCCM is configured with), NOT joined to the domain and copied the install files locally. used MSIEXEC to install the MSI and TRANSFORMS file and it installed correctly, no restart prompt. This rules out the version of Windows being the culprit.

 

I then removed SMART Notebook and rebooted the machine, then joined it to our domain, moved the computer account into our normal teacher PCs OU (to get all of our computer policies). I rebooted the machine several times, to ensure it receives all the policies. I then installed SMART Notebook MSI (with TRANSFORMS) and it installed correctly, no restart prompt.

 

Does this mean my only variable left here is SCCM? I'll next be taking a copy of the TS and disabling all of our drivers installations, software installations, customisations (but I'll not be amending unattend/customsettings ini files).

Edited July 9, 2019 by CHiLL

[CHiLL]

After a lot of testing I have concluded that Visigo is causing these issues. If I remove Visigo from the machine - SMART Notebook installs completely without asking for a restart. If I put Visigo back on the machine, SMART will ask for the restart during the installation.

 

I have raised a ticket with Smoothwall, so I'll see where we go.

 

If anyone else uses SMART Notebook with Visigo, can you please test it for me and let me know your results?

[CHSGM]

Sorry for dredging this one back up, but does anybody have a working install of 11.4 via SCCM? I have been scratching my head trying to get mine to work, but regardless of the different install rules I try, it always fails.

[CHiLL]

Sorry for dredging this one back up, but does anybody have a working install of 11.4 via SCCM? I have been scratching my head trying to get mine to work, but regardless of the different install rules I try, it always fails.

Do you have Visigo installed? If so, then there's no way for it to install via an automated deployment and has to be manually installed on each machine (because Visigo causes SMART to display a restart diagloue box - which when silently deployed or automated - isn't displayed to the user and thus the insaller fails because it times out from no respose to the restart prompt).

 

If you don't have Visigo and aren't prompted with a restart box during a manual installation, then you can deploy 11.4 with SCCM. I used the SMART Install Manager to configure the settings I wanted and it created the appropriate MST. You can then import the MSI into SCCM and amend the installation command to add the MST file.

Edited October 10, 2019 by CHiLL

[CHSGM]

Yep. We don't have Visigo installed and that's exactly how I have been doing it. I have been using SMART Install Manager to create different variations of the MST, removing options more and more for troubleshooting purposes.