AppDeploy – New Website Added to BlogRoll

I’ve added a new website to my BlogRoll list.

The website is AppDeploy.com and its something like an excellent database with thousands of switches for installing applications silently or unattended and also as an interesting forum where you can talk with other people and try to find information for you specific application.

Hope you enjoy it!

Microsoft Office 2007 unattended install prompts for product selection

I was creating a new MS Office 2007 unattended installation when I’ve been showed off with a prompt for selecting the product to install.

There was some options like:
- Microsoft Office Professional 2007
- Microsoft Office Professional 2007 – Portuguese Language Pack
- Microsoft Office Project 2007

This happened because Project 2007 installed first then Office 2007. So, for pass this through you need to specify the XML and admin file on Office 2007 silent install command line, for example:

C:\MSOffice2007\setup.exe /Config ProPlus.WW\config.xml /adminfile updates\setup.msp

You also need to make sure that in your config.xml file, the tag

<Configuration Product=”ProPlus”> it’s not commented like this <!–<Configuration Product=”ProPlus”> –>

Vista Unattended – KB929399-v2 Deployment Issues

At my job, we should start to deploy Windows Vista to agencies and central branchs next year, and a lot of work must be done.
The redesigned BDD (now known as Microsoft Depoloyment), the redesigned RIS (now known as Windows Deployment Services(WDS)) and Windows Automatic Installation Kit (WAIK), give a lot of new tools and deployment methods that need some comprehensive reading.

So…last week I started to take a more deep look at the Windows Vista Deployment.
After creating a simple answer file, that by the way has changed name and type (unattend.txt/Unattended.xml), I started looking to the new feature that makes possible to install OS hotfixes (system updates and security updates) in a very simple way.
After making some tests with just a couple of hotifxes, I’ve run Windows Update and Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer 2.1 on a reference machine and downloaded all the updates. I’ve then applied the hotfixes via Deployment Workbench (WAIK) and started deploying the image using WDS.

On the Install Update Passe I found an error that was killing the unattended installation:

Setup failed applying image \\S-W2K8WDS-V01\Distribution$\OperationSystems\Windows Vista Ent\Sources\install.wim, rc = 31
ZTI ERROR – Non-zero return code by LTIApply, rc = 31
Non-zero return code executing command “X:\Deploy\Tools\X86\TsmBootstrap.exe” /env:SAStartm, rc = -2147467259

This is a very very generic error, with no reference about what has failed in all log files you can fin, and after a while you will feel lost!
In  my case I had applied 39 hotfixes…
So to understand where the error was, I had to start deploying the hotfixes almost one-by-one to figure out where the bad file was.

After a lot of time I’ve found that the hotfix giving the problem was WindowsMedia11-KB929399-v2-x86-INTL.exe(a Windows Media Player 11 SDK Update).

I’ve Googled a little and found this:
http://www.myitforum.com/forums/m_166236/mpage_1/tm.htm#167364

I’ve not tested it yet!