Remote software installation on Windows workstations

There are various articles out there about how such things may be done, but here are my collective thoughts on the matter.

Given a collection of machines that are members of an NT domain, and access to a domain user account that has administrative privileges on the workstations (such as a member of Domain Administrators).

Then you need to get hold of the PsTools suite from sysinternals. Just install this on the machine you will be running the installations from.

On the file server, I have a folder called swupdates which contains all the installers. In particular I have Firefox, Thunderbird, Adobe Reader, Flash Player, OpenOffice, Java JRE and RealVNC.

Firefox and Thunderbird need extracting from their original installers using 7-Zip. OpenOffice also needs extracting and this can be done by starting the installer and letting it run through the the extraction of files and then cancel the installation. I make sure that the folder names involved don't include spaces for the sake of simplicity in the scripts.

The installer for Flash Player can be downloaded from http://fpdownload.adobe.com/get/flashplayer/current/install_flash_player.exe to avoid the Adobe Download Manager.

For Thunderbird, I take advantage of this to put the custom Thunderbird customisation that I previously discussed on to the clients.

With OpenOffice I take the opportunity to install an extension that disables the first run wizard.

Configuring RealVNC is done by setting up one machine and then exporting the HLML\Software\RealVNC key to a .reg file which is then imported after the software is installed on the target machine.

Then we require a script to actually do the installations - for the current software collection at the time of writing this is as follows:

swupdate.cmd:

@echo off
echo "checking for installers directory on the target..."
if not exist \\%1\C$\installers mkdir \\%1\C$\installers
if not exist \\%1\C$\installers\Firefox3.6.11 mkdir \\%1\C$\installers\Firefox3.6.11
if not exist \\%1\C$\installers\Thunderbird3.1.5 mkdir \\%1\C$\installers\Thunderbird3.1.5
if not exist \\%1\C$\installers\OOo mkdir \\%1\c$\installers\OOo
echo "copying installers..."
copy \\server\software\swupdates\AdbeRdr940_en_US.exe \\%1\C$\installers\
copy \\server\software\swupdates\install_flash_player.exe \\%1\C$\installers\
xcopy "\\server\software\swupdates\Firefox3.6.11\*" "\\%1\C$\installers\Firefox3.6.11\" /e /y
xcopy "\\server\software\swupdates\Thunderbird3.1.5\*" "\\%1\C$\installers\Thunderbird3.1.5\" /e /y
xcopy "\\server\software\swupdates\OOo\*" "\\%1\C$\installers\OOo\" /e/y
copy \\server\software\swupdates\jre-6u22-windows-i586-s.exe \\%1\C$\installers\
copy \\server\software\swupdates\vnc-4_1_3-x86_win32.exe \\%1\C$\installers\
copy \\server\software\swupdates\realvnc.reg \\%1\C$\installers\
echo "Installing Firefox..."
psexec.exe \\%1 "C:\installers\Firefox3.6.11\setup.exe" -ms
psexec.exe \\%1 "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\uninstall\helper.exe" /SetAsDefaultappGlobal
echo "Installing Thunderbird..."
psexec.exe \\%1 "C:\installers\Thunderbird3.1.5\setup.exe" -ms
copy \\exodus\software\swupdates\custom.cfg "\\%1\C$\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\"
copy \\exodus\software\swupdates\custom.js "\\%1\C$\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\defaults\pref\"
echo "Installing Adobe Reader...."
psexec.exe \\%1 "C:\installers\AdbeRdr940_en_US.exe" /sAll /rs
del "\\%1\C$\Documents and Settings\All Users\desktop\Adobe*.lnk"
echo "Installing Flash Player..."
psexec.exe \\%1 "C:\installers\install_flash_player.exe" -install
echo "Installing OpenOffice..."
psexec.exe \\%1 msiexec /qn /norestart /i C:\installers\OOo\openofficeorg32.msi ADDLOCAL=ALL REMOVE=gm_o_Onlineupdate
copy \\exodus\software\swupdates\DisableFirstStartWzd_ooo321.oxt "\\%1\C$\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program"
psexec.exe \\%1 "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\unopkg" add --shared "C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\program\DisableFirstStartWzd_ooo321.oxt"
echo "Installing Java VM"
psexec.exe \\%1 "C:\installers\jre-6u22-windows-i586-s.exe" /s /v/qn
echo "Installing RealVNC"
psexec.exe \\%1 "C:\installers\vnc-4_1_3-x86_win32.exe" /SP- /VERYSILENT /NORESTART
psexec.exe \\%1 regedit /s c:\installers\realvnc.reg
echo "All done"

Then from a second script you call this first one with the name of each machine:

updatemachine.cmd:

@echo off
call swupdate.cmd machine1
call swupdate.cmd machine2
call swupdate.cmd machine3

Providing each machine has firewall settings set so that File and Print access is allowed in, then this will suitably run the installations on each of the machines.

There are obviously many other variations that could be achieved with this - the key thing is to find the method to silent install each piece of software that you're interested in. A lot of useful info can be found on the AppDeploy site.