294 Booked

[Luddym]

Hey guys,

I've got my 70-294 booked for Friday 4th Jan (to take advantage of the 2nd shot if I fail miserably. And so that it gives me a few weeks for a couple of attempts at my 293 if I do pass the 294) and am feeling relatively confident.

Think I know what I need to about Bridehad servers, GPS, Software installations etc etc. But know nothing about transitive and intrasitive, but theres still time.

At work, I still install all software manually, from network shares or from disk. After learning my stuff about GPO's I want to get a freshly built PC, connect it to my network, log in and have as much of the software auto install as possible. So here what I was thinking :

Create a new OU named 'FRESH INSTALL' or something like it.
Create a user called 'softwareinstaller'
Create a GPO that assigns certain software using MSI and ZIPs when a the softwareinstaller USER logs in, and link it to this OU. (Lotus Notes, Windows Defender, Symantic Antivirus. I know I can't do Microsoft Office easily as we don't have a VLK.)
Then when everything is installed, just get it ready to ship out to the user.

Can anyone see any issues with this?

[wizard]

Good Luck

[zebulebu]

Originally Posted by Luddym

Hey guys,

I've got my 70-294 booked for Friday 4th Jan (to take advantage of the 2nd shot if I fail miserably. And so that it gives me a few weeks for a couple of attempts at my 293 if I do pass the 294) and am feeling relatively confident.

Think I know what I need to about Bridehad servers, GPS, Software installations etc etc. But know nothing about transitive and intrasitive, but theres still time.

At work, I still install all software manually, from network shares or from disk. After learning my stuff about GPO's I want to get a freshly built PC, connect it to my network, log in and have as much of the software auto install as possible. So here what I was thinking :

Create a new OU named 'FRESH INSTALL' or something like it.
Create a user called 'softwareinstaller'
Create a GPO that assigns certain software using MSI and ZIPs when a the softwareinstaller USER logs in, and link it to this OU. (Lotus Notes, Windows Defender, Symantic Antivirus. I know I can't do Microsoft Office easily as we don't have a VLK.)
Then when everything is installed, just get it ready to ship out to the user.

Can anyone see any issues with this?

Potentially loads - but you'll never learn it otherwise!

Most places don't use GPOs to push out software, in my experience if they're big enough to need it, they'll use an image deployment tool or something like SMS. That said, in a small environment, there's nothing wrong with using GPOs - though it can often be more time consuming to set the msi packages & deployment options up and make sure they're maintained properly than just installing the software manually! Pushing out vanilla software is usually pretty simple - the grief often comes when you need to push an update out via GPOs - this can potentially cause problems and confusion for users.

I've got it running via GPOs for my VMs at home - only Office, my AV client and a couple of other things mind - but it works perfectly well. Just bear in mind that if the app you want to deploy doesn't come pre-packaged with an msi file you'll need to create one yourself (I use WinInstall).

[Sparky]

Do you buy a copy of Office with every new PC? You might be able to use Office with a GPO and put in the product key when you launch office for the first time.

Do you use a volume licence for XP? If so making an image of a PC with all the applications installed might be a better option.

[Theprof]

Good luck on the exam.

[tripwire45]

Good luck this coming Friday.

[zimbo]

Good luck mate - would be keen to hear how it went!

[Luddym]

Originally Posted by Sparky

Do you buy a copy of Office with every new PC? You might be able to use Office with a GPO and put in the product key when you launch office for the first time.

Do you use a volume licence for XP? If so making an image of a PC with all the applications installed might be a better option.

Hey Sparks, thanks for the reply.

We buy our PC's with XP licences, and we have all of our Office 2003 (And 2007 packs) with individual licence keys.

Though I like the idea of inputting the Office licence key on first launch, as we could spreadsheet all the keys an keep a better track, than writing the pc on the software and dumping in a cupboard.

We only deal with about 400 - 500 PC's and laptops, but they are over 18 sites so things can get a little unwieldly.

[Luddym]

Thanks for the reply Zeb, and the good luck guys.

[Raffaz]

Good luck!