Remote Install of 3rd party hotfix

[Chris]

Good day,

It has been years since I have attempted to automate an install, so I am
looking for some help please.

Running in a Windows NT domain (so no Group Policy), with XP Pro clients.
Users do not have administrative privileges.

I have a simple 3rd party hotfix to install on numerous machines, and I
would like to run the install via a logon script without user intervention.

How should I go about doing this? In the past, I remember using before/after
snapshots, then pushing out the differences, but I don't remember much else.

Thanks for any help.

 

[Anteaus]

To make a snapshot, try InstallRite from http://epsilonsquared.com

There are also more modern msi-based snapshot tools around but I still find
this one the best.

Either that or if you know the files and settings required, use Inno Setup
to build a (silent) package.

To roll-out the snapshot your main hurdle is that users are limited so it's
unlikely the install will work under their accounts. Microsoft's answer is to
'push' the install as a policy. This relies on the C$ share and remote
registry on computers. As you say not available from an NT server, though.

An alternative is to use the RunAs command in AutoIt to launch the process
as the local Administrator from the logon script, with the password hardcoded
into the (compiled and encrypted) autoit executable. (Windows' own RunAs
isn't suitable since it nags for a password each time)

http://autoitscript.com

Note that the latest 3.3x AutoIt doesn't support NT. That doesn't matter
though as a logon script is run by the client, not the server. If you want to
run scripts on the server, get the 3.2.12.1 version.

 

[Anteaus]

One other point, on switching to Administrator the network mapping will be
lost. So, you need make the script copy the patch over locally (to a folder
the user has write-permissions to) then change account and run it.