Build Disc

Apr 8 2009

The Build Disc – Part 5b (Extras – Office 2003)

Office 2003A fully standardised install only takes us so far.  At some point you have to cater to the stuff that doesn’t fit in with the standardised stuff.  This article is about the extra bits that help Office 2003.

What do I install?  Pretty much just the file format converters to allow Office 2003 to read files created with Office 2007.

(As an aside, the Office viewers normally only open Office 2003 files but if you install them and then install the converter, they will also read Office 2007 files.)

I’ve worked out an unattended install but for only one install it’s not really all that relevant.

For what it’s worth, this is the unattended install command:

Office2003-FileFormatConverters.exe /quiet /passive /norestart

This article is part of a series dealing with my standard system build.  It starts with this article and the post you’re reading now is directly related to this one.

By David • Build Disc, Unattended Installs • • Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Apr 7 2009

The Build Disc – Part 5a (Extras)

copyA standard install is all very well but you reach a point, at least at the home user/small business level, where standardization falls down.  Not every computer is going to have the same version of MS Office installed (or even have Office), some computers will not already have Acrobat Reader (or have an older version pre-installed).

Having already dealt with service packs, Windows/Microsoft Updates and standard utilities, now it’s time to come up with a good way of handling these extra items.  I’ve set this up with our typical customers in mind and it handles the stuff we usually need.  Obviously once you get to this level there is almost infinite scope for how you might handle things.

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By David • Build Disc • • Tags: , , , , , ,

Apr 6 2009

The Build Disc – Part 4b (wrap-up)

Next ButtonOver the past week or so I’ve posted separate articles on each of the standard utilities that comprise the unattended installs portion of my standard build disc. Now I’m going to build on the starting point of unattended installs and talk about how to implement these installs as a component of the overall standard build.

The benefit of using unattended installs is that all of these tools get installed with no interaction required on my part.  Just set it going and come back when its done.  How did I do this?  Largely be combining each silent install into a single batch file that does the whole install process.

Unfortunately, it’s not just a matter of doing a cut and paste on each item.  In order to do this properly I need to work out which operating system I’m dealing with.  For example, there’s no point trying to install Sidebar Gadgets under Windows XP.

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By David • Build Disc, Unattended Installs • • Tags: , , , , , ,

Apr 6 2009

Unattended Installs – Vista Sidebar Gadgets

Vista SidebarVista Sidebar Gadgets

A sidebar gadget lives in it’s own separate directory (that might have sub-directories), all the files needed for that gadget live in that directory.  Vista then stores these gadget directories in a number of places, each offering a different level of visibility on the computer.

Some gadgets are stored in

C:Program FilesWindows SidebarGadgets

These are accessible on all user accounts on the computer.  Unfortunately, I’ve yet to find a reasonably reliable way to work around the various security systems that prevent a batch file from putting data into this directory (UAC and other protections exist for copying data into the Program Files directory in Vista).

Gadgets that are only visible to a particular user of a computer are stored in

%USERPROFILE%AppDataLocalMicrosoftWindows SidebarGadgets

and this directory is far more accessible for a batch file.

While I’d prefer to install my standard gadgets in a globally accessible location, this would require me to have a less automated approach.  The whole idea of an unattended install is to keep it unattended.  Therefore, I’ve chosen, for now, to go with the user profile location for gadgets on the basis that most of the computers we deal with really only have one normal user set up on them anyway.

Microsoft seems to prefer that we don’t download the installers for our sidebar gadgets but, rather, install directly from the web.  This also doesn’t help for a silent install.  While there are undoubtedly other solutions to this problem, in the end I did some experimenting and found that you can just copy the whole directory for an installed gadget to the correct directory on another computer and it will work.

So, I grabbed all my ‘standard’ gadgets out of “%USERPROFILE%AppDataLocalMicrosoftWindows SidebarGadgets” and then use this command to install to a new computer:

@xcopy ".CPUUtilization v1.2.0.2.Gadget" "%USERPROFILE%AppDataLocalMicrosoftWindows SidebarGadgetsCPUUtilization v1.2.0.2.Gadget" /e /i /c /q
@xcopy ".DriveInfoByChris.gadget" "%USERPROFILE%AppDataLocalMicrosoftWindows SidebarGadgetsDriveInfoByChris.gadget" /e /i /c /q
@xcopy ".iWeather.gadget" "%USERPROFILE%AppDataLocalMicrosoftWindows SidebarGadgetsiWeather.gadget" /e /i /c /q
@xcopy ".MemoryMeter.gadget" "%USERPROFILE%AppDataLocalMicrosoftWindows SidebarGadgetsMemoryMeter.gadget" /e /i /c /q
@xcopy ".NeptuneDigitalClock.gadget" "%USERPROFILE%AppDataLocalMicrosoftWindows SidebarGadgetsNeptuneDigitalClock.gadget" /e /i /c /q
@xcopy ".SysShutdown.gadget" "%USERPROFILE%AppDataLocalMicrosoftWindows SidebarGadgetsSysShutdown.gadget" /e /i /c /q

Once copied, these gadgets can be added to the sidebar normally.  I haven’t tried to automate adding them to the sidebar display yet – mostly because the final step on our build process is running through the Control Panel and finalising some other configuration options as well as doing a QA on the build.  It doesn’t add much to this process to manually add the relevant sidebar gadgets.

(This article is part of a series about the build disc I use to standardise system builds. The series starts here and this particular article follows on from this one.)

By David • Unattended Installs • • Tags: , , ,

Apr 6 2009

Unattended Installs – Registry (XP)

ControlRegistry Hacks for XP

Along with the standard utilities I install, there’s also a selection of little registry hacks that I’ve chosen to standardise on.  I should note that this is by no means an exhaustive list of possibilities.  I’d also note that my agenda here is to keep things relatively “normal looking” for the customer.  As a result, I only really do a few small things that, in my opinion, enhance XP rather than substantially alter how it operates.

Integrating registry changes is fairly simple in XP.  First up, you need the changes saved out to a file (e.g. reghacks.reg).  Here is the one I use.

This file has to have a certain format in order for this to work.  This MS knowledge base article provides details about the syntax of a .reg file and also includes details about how to add, modify and delete registry keys.  This KB article was the basis of my implementation:

regedit /s .InstallersXP_Reg_Hacks.reg

There are heaps of sites that offer registry hacks to achieve different results.  As with many things, Google can be your friend in finding the ones you want.

(This article is part of a series about the build disc I use to standardise system builds. The series starts here and this particular article follows on from this one.)

By David • Unattended Installs • • Tags: , , ,

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