how to deploy software using GPO by COMPUTER?

[juaries]

i.e. once the computer is restarted, the software will auto install ONCE and becomes accessible to ALL users.

I tried doing by selecting 'Computer Configuration' option from 'Group Policy Object Editor' screen but it doesn't work.

It worked when I selected 'User Configuration' though.

Anyone know what went wrong? Or any related sites to recommend?

The environment is MS Windows Server 2003.

Does the new book "Group Policy, Profiles, and IntelliMirror for Windows 2003, Windows 2000, and Windows XP" describe the exact steps?

Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks!!!

[Stock]

I have found that when I Assign software to computers, that it can take as many as 3 reboots for the software to apply. If the policy does apply then you will see "Installing Managed Software XXXXXX" before you get to the "CTL + ALT + Del" screen for logon. Times where it has not worked for me are usually related to the following issues.

1. I am linking a computer based policy to an OU that contains user accounts. Since this is a computer policy it has to be linked to the OU that contains the computer account.

2. I have not applied the proper permissions for the share that the .MSI file is in.

3. During creation of the policy I used a local path to the .MSI file instead of the UNC.

4. I am trying to install software that requires more than just copying an MSI to a shared folder. Microsoft Office for instance requires you to create a software distribution point by doing an administrative install, where something like adminpak.msi just needs the msi file.

If these don't fix it please provide a little more detail about the specific software that you are trying to install.

I hope this helps

[juaries]

Thanks for your reply Stock. :lol:

I can see the “Installing Managed Software” before the logon screen appears but it only appears for a few seconds, not 2 minutes as it should be.

I have created the group policy, ‘officesetup’ at the top most level. In the scope tab under security filtering, I have added the computer name, which in my case is “PC1”.

Under computer configuration, I created a new software package which links to \\192.168.128.179\office2003\std11.msi

In the shared folder, I have given access to the group, domain computers.

The error message shown was “The install of application Microsoft Office Standard Edition 2003 from policy officesetup failed. The error was: The installation source for this product is not available. Verify that the source exists and that you can access it."

Event ID for the above error: 102
Source: Application Management

However, if I were to create a new software package under user configuration and assign it to Users, the installation of Office is successful.

Please advise, thanks.

[Stock]

A few more questions.

Did you do an administrative install of office to create the distribution point?

If you have then that is not the problem. What I would try next is putting the machine in question into its own OU and re-creating the policy without doing any security filtering on the GPO itself. Test it to see if it works.
If that does not work then try to open up the permissions on the shared folder. I would set the share permission to authenticated users FC and the NTFS permission to Auth Users FC. Then test and see if it will work.
This will let you know if the problem is related to the way you created the distribution point or if it is the permissions on the distribution point.
I tested this last night using the settings that you described and the software deployed on the 3rd reboot. In your case we know the policy is being applied because you see the "Managed Software" message and I would think that the distribution point is good because you can deploy to users. This really leads me to believe that it is a permissions issue. Open up the share to see if that is true. If the above does not work then I would delete the policy, kill the distribution point and start from scratch with a New Policy at the OU level.
Let me know how it turns out.

[juaries]

Yeah…I think it works liao…I got to setup a distributed file system, then the computer will be able to access the software setup. :wink: