ajbritton

That nice Mark Russinovich has been busy.... Active Directory Explorer

learn your backup types (normal, incremental, copy, differential)...

Agreed. I migrated from VPC to VMWare server some time ago and have never looked back.

lol! Yep, that's happened to me more than once!

It's a long long long story. I started out on a Commodore PET at school, then got an Ohio Superboard and learned to code in BASIC and 6502 assembler. Moved up the BBC Micro Model B then Atari ST1024 and finally a PC. At the same time I went to Sheffield Uni to study Comp. Science, dropped out and got a job as a school Tech. Next step was schools IT for an LEA and now I'm in IT management for Children's Services.

WMI query for computername does not sound like a good way to go for targeting software installs. 1 - If you are targeting for a single PC it might just about make sense, but if you need to target for more than one, a group would very quickly save you time. 2 - Assuming you decide to roll out several bits of software to ad-hoc collections of PCs, it will be a lot easier to see which PCs should get which software by looking at group memberships rather than digging through WMI queries. 3 - Any changes to group membership are very difficult to get wrong. Any incorrect change to a WMI query could cause the whole WMI query to fail and software to be uninstalled from PCs

Technically or course you cannot link a GPO to a group. What you are doing here is filtering which computer accounts are able to apply the policy.

The irony that I have a qualification in an outdated client OS (XP), an outdated messaging system (Exchange 2003) and a soon to be replaced server OS (2003) is not lost on me. I will have to consider an upgrade when the courses and exams become widely available, but as my job has changed from a technical one to a more managerial one, it may be harder to get my employer to pay for it! It took me just over a year from starting to study (online via Thompson NetG - now Skillsoft, who I have to say that I cannot recommend) to taking the last exam. I know that there are those who place little value on the MS certifications (especially when obtained via a boot camp or as compared to experience) and I can certainly understand that POV as I have come across people with MCSEs who I would not trust to defrag my hard disk. Having said that, I learned quite a lot all in all. When your knowledge is gained by doing, it goes without saying that your knowledge will not really extend beyond what you actually do. Studying for the MS exams has filled in quite a few gaps here and there.

Just passed 70-284 today which means (with the other 6), I'm a Windows 2003 MCSE. I'm looking forward to a nice badge and piece of paper signed by Mr Gates.

I am intrigued by this,. can you explain in more detail AJ. Your quote above seems to be a friar description of a lot of problems i am experiencing. When creating a mandatory or default user profile (which obviously have to be copied from wherever they are created), it is essential that the profiles are NOT copied by dragging/dropping the folder from 'C:\Documents and Settings\username', but instead by doing the following; 1 - Go to the System Properties dialog box 2 - Select the Advanced tab 3 - In the User Profiles section, click Settings 4 - Select the profile you want to copy and click 'Copy To' 5 - Enter or browse to the path you want the profile copied to 6 - Change 'Permitted to use' to Everyone (NB - Location does not matter) 7 - Click OK If you don't do this, the permissions inside the registry (stored in the NTUSER.DAT file) will not allow folder redirection or group policy processing amongst many other things.

@srochford I am aware of all the features you mention for MSIs, but I wonder how much they actually get used. A lot of times, the MSI supplied does not support these features well as whoever authored it did not really understand what they were doing but just ticked the MSI box in their setup authoring package. What really bugs me is that MS could so easily extend GP to enable to deployment of silent .exe based software. I believe it's possible to publish .ZAP wrappers around .exe installers but only for user level installations. What use is that. Instead, as usuall, we have to script our way around things. It's just one more thing that everyone wants to do but MS left out of GP, I suppose in the hope that we would all buy SMS.

This will certainly fail if the registry permissions in the mandatory profile have not been changed. This is the same reason that will also cause GP to not take effect.

EduGeek guide to profiles Mandatory Profiles (inc SuperMandatory)

When the mandatory profile was created, where the permissions on it changed to Everyone using the 'Copy To' utility?

If they are running as limited users then they should not even be able to muck up the computer they are logging on to.

This will work if you change the passwords manually via DSA.MSC, but if you configure the 'force password change' attribute, then the password policy will be applied.

That would be my guess as well. Unless of course they do academic pricing.

Did you find out how much it costs?

Be careful how loud you say that... hang on... what's that noise ... oh no! ... here they come... IT'S THE YOU MUST USE A SINGLE DOMAIN gang.....

By executing a copy of ROBOCOPY, you are not running a command line script. ROBOCOPY is an executable program that does not rely on a command line to host it's output. This won't get around the fact that it has to run in the same security context as the user that is logging on of course any more that the VB script would.

In my experience, copying files from VBS is not that reliable. I've had to build my own recursive file copy function to really do the job well and be able to report reasonably when things go wrong. For file copying, I would be inclined to write a script which called ROBOCOPY to do the actual copying work and then analyse the return code. One of the nice things about ROBOCOPY is that it can keep a local folder in sync with a network folder without re-copying files that are already in both folders and have not changed in either.

I have always wondered if there is an Eclipse plug-in that would allow it to be used as an IDE for scripting languages like VBS and AutoIt...

Sorry for multiple posts. @booman: If you are keen on MSIs because you can use them to deploy software using Group Policy (I think this is about the only reason to like MSIs), then there are alternatives. The one I want to mention is WPKG. It works in a similar manner to GP in that software is assigned to groups of computers, but it is not reliant on MSI technology. If you've got an install that can be 'silenced' then WPKG should be able to install it for you.

What you say is quite right of course, but there is a way around this if using WIWW is the only option; Using AutoIt, create a short script that kicks off the installer and then watches for dialog boxes. AutoIt can them click the buttons for you. Once this is done, create a WIWW MSI wrapper which launches the AutoIt script. It's not 100% foolproof and I would only use it as a final solution but I just thought I'd mention it.

As has been pointed out be others, there are basically 3 options 1 - Author your own MSI. To do this you have to know the names and locations of all the files/registry entries for the application. For some small apps and utilities this is quite possible but for larger apps it would be difficult. This is the only method that would allow you to 'turn an installed program' into an MSI. 2 - Repackage the existing application using the 'snapshot before - install app - snapshot after' process. Although this sounds simple, for many applications this can create an MSI that is full of stuff that needs to be pruned away. If the application installs Flash, for example, this should not be included in the MSI and you will have to manually look at the created MSI and remove any files/registry entries relating to it. 3 - It is possible to 'wrap' a 'silent installer' in an MSI using something like WIWW. This creates an MSI which simply kicks of the original installer with the necessary command line parameters to make sure the installer completes without requesting any user interaction. If you are persistant, you can even get WIWW to uninstall the app when the MSI is removed by launching a silent uninstall command, although in my experience this is less easy.