Smart Board 9.5 Via Group Policy

[robbie-w]

Hello,

Im trying to roll out Smart Board using Group Policy->Software Installation and the smart board 9.5 MSI.

 

Normally an MSI install this way is very straight forward however there are problems

 

1) on each machine in the organisation there could be up to 4 or 5 different versions of the smart board software. I got round this by finding the MSI for each and adding a custom action to the msi to remove the version using MSIExec -x(this only works on a manual install by the looks of it)

 

2) Installing through Group Policy Managed Software Installation, the installation just hangs and doesnt seem to do anything like its stuck on the menu prompts

 

Any ideas?

 

Robbie

[robbie-w]

Actually it appears to be just the existence of a previous version causing the hang. I cant think of a way to uninstall other than modifying the MSI which ive already done without any luck. That only seems to work on a non silent install

 

Robbie

[SimpleSi]

SMART installs are a nightmare - they can hang on lots of small pretexts and then you have to go to town on the computer and run their utility to try and remove any previous installs.

 

And the utility has to be run for all previous versions.

 

And then, you have sometimes go through registry by hand afterwards anyway.

 

Good luck with your quest

 

regards

 

Simon

[robbie-w]

When you have 500 computers its not really an option

 

Robbie

[tarquel]

just a wild thought here but couldn't u invoke a uninstall through the startup script?

 

Not 100% sure on the syntax but using some sort of msiexec command i.e. msiexec /u

 

Its just a thought mind you.

 

BTW Do you have 500 Smartboards?! lol or is the licensing similar to ActivStudio [promethean activboard's] where it grants you a certain amount on licenses per board which u can use?

 

But with that amount of installs, you really [as im sure u know now lol] need to keep the same version on all.

 

Regards

Nath

[eean]

BTW Do you have 500 Smartboards?! lol or is the licensing similar to ActivStudio [promethean activboard's] where it grants you a certain amount on licenses per board which u can use?

You basically get a site licence if you own one smartboard - so long as you don't use it on a competetor's product!

 

I deploy it by group policy and it's fine. Used Wise Installtailor (free) to choose setup options and made a MST using the instructions on the edugeek wiki to disable autoupdate. I've also heard bad things about smart installs, I've never had too much trouble. I just wish they would make it easier to upgrade, without having to reinstall the entire product.

[robbie-w]

I could do it that way as a startup script and remove then reinstall but for two things

 

msiexec /x halts half way through with a dll error

 

The software would then have to be immediately reinstalled so I wouldnt be able to do a managed software installation

 

Robbie

[Guest frances]

I installed smartboard 9.5 on a machine. The smartboard stopped working. I cannot get the previous version smartboard 8.? to work or to uninstall. Can you recommend a good programme for cleaning up the registry? I have found a link with instructions how to do it manually, but I am a little nervious.