Re: Updating Users' Software

Tech-Archive recommends: Fix windows errors by optimizing your registry

If you are prepared to do the work then Group Policy or startup scripts can do most of this for you. If you need a more flexible or varied way to do it, then look at the many commercial products.
To give one example: installing Office 2007
- Can only be installed with Group Policy if you use the default installation - no transform - but it is possible
- Using Group Policy, will only be installed at Startup - no scheduling, so a delay in the morning.
Most of the work goes into finding the silent installation method with the customisations you want. You have to do this whatever method you use to push it out. But sometimes the commercial product gives you more options:
- scheduling
- bandwidth control, local caching
- run an exe when there is no msi (mainly old products now, but if you have just one you still need to install it)
- tweaking file permissions, registry settings, ini files and shortcuts (but Group Policy Preferences is a big improvement here)
- run as administrator but with visible dialogue so user can fill in a value
- run a sequence of steps as a job: e.g install a product then overwrite the registry keys
Hope that helps,
Anthony
http://www.airdesk.com



"Tom Lake" <toml_12953@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:7294430A-603D-4FBC-B7D1-4B29FFAEF05E@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
When I only had a few people on the network, going around to
the different machines to do administrative functions such as installing
updates was no problem. Now our network is growing rapidly and
I spend most of my time updating users' computers. For obvious reasons I don't want to give them administrative privileges but I can't
be running around to their desks every time software such as Adobe Reader and Norman Anti-Virus needs an update (which is almost every day) I know WSUS can be used for Windows
Updates but how about third-party software? Is there a standardized
way of pushing updates to users?

How can I solve this dilemma?

Thanks for any advice
Tom Lake


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Relevant Pages

  • SUS is not updating clients/servers
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    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.configuration_manage)
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