How to deploy PDFCreator 1.0 by GPO

HI,

In order to deploy PDFCreator using GPO's, you have to create a MSI for PDFCreator. I used Installer2GO 4.4 to create my MSI. 

Here is what I did to create my PDFCreator MSI.

1- Create a folder name "PDF" at the root of your C: Drive and download the latest PDF Creator Setup.

2-  Run the setup using the "/SAVEINF=" parameter to create an inf file wich will contain the installation settings. I called my inf file "deploy.inf" and saved it in C:\\PDF folder where my PDFCreator setup was downloaded.

eg: C:\\PDF\\PDFCreator-1_0_0_setup.exe /SAVEINF="C:\\PDF\\deploy.inf"

3- Open Installer2Go and create a new project using the Project Wizard.

4- At the wizard welcome screen click NEXT.

5- At the Product Details screen of the wizard, change the Product Name to "PDF Creator Installer for GPO" and click NEXT (you can change the other fields to suit your needs. I left it as is). 

6- At the Product General info screen of the wizard, change the Title to "PDF Creator Installer for GPO" and click NEXT.

7- At the Product Support info screen of the wizard, click NEXT. (Again you can change the fields to suit your needs. I left it as is).

8- At the Locate Files screen of the wizard, browse to the C:\\PDF folder, where you PDFCreator setup and inf files are located and click OK. Make sure to leave the check mark for "include files in subdirectories", then click NEXT.

9-At the end of the wizard, click FINISH.

10-Go to the Custom Actions tab, then right-click in the blank area to add RUN EXE -> Installed with Product.

11- At the Custom Action Properties screen, click browse and select the PDFCreator-1_0_0_setup.exe from the Application folder and click OK.

12-Still in the Custom Action Properties screen, add the following command line: /LOADINF=%AppDir%\\deploy.inf /SP- /VERYSILENT . Leave all the other fields as they are and click OK.

13- Go to the Create Setup tab. By default the Output Folder will be C:\\BuilderProjects, you can leave it as it is. Change the Setup Filename to "PDFCreator Installer.msi" (you can name it what ever you want). Remove the check mark for Creating self-extracting Executable, since we only want the MSI. Then click on Build.

14- Close the Build status windows.

Your PDFCreator MSI is in the C:\\BuilderProjects folder. You can copy it to a network share and deploy it using GPO's as you would with a normal MSI.

After deploy this MSI you will notice in the add/remove program from windows there will be a entry for both "PDF Creator Installer for GPO" and "PDFCreator". The reason is that Installer2GO is actualy just incapsulation the PDFCreator exe setup and runs it in silent mode with the installation settings from the inf file. The same goes if you browse the C:\\Program files\\ folder, you will find a "PDF Creator Installer for GPO" and "PDFCreator" folder. 

The only draw back from this procedure is that you wont be able to uninstall the application if you unassign a computer from the GPO.

I have deploy this MSI with a GPO to most of the computers running windows 7 Interprise on my network and it works fine. None of my users have admin rights on their computers. The only thing I haven't test is deploying it at the user level with the GPO. I only deploy at the computer level.

Hope this info will help a few out there.

 

 

Hi,

I have a problem with your method...

When I try to install the MSI using a GPO, it never goes to the end.

When I try to install the same MSI manually on the computer, I get the foloowing error messages :

- Thanks to restart your system before continuing the installation. (OK box)

Then :

- There is a problem with this Windows Installer package. A program run as part of the setup did not finish as expected. Contact your support personnel or package vendor.

Of course, I'm local admin of the Windows XP computer and when I restart it, the software is not installed.

Thanks for your help if possible

 I know this is quiet old, however I just wanted to share how I have set this up so that it will also uninstall PDFCreator when you uninstall the MSI.

All you need to do is include the following in a VBS script with your MSI package and set it up to execute the uninstall function before uninstalling the MSI package:

 

function uninstall

set objSH =createobject("wscript.shell")

objSH.run "C:\\PDFCreator\\unins000.exe /VERYSILENT"

objSH.quit

end function

Obviously you will need to substitue C:\\PDFCreator\\ with the path of your PDFCreator installation.

 

Now when the MSI is uninstalled it will also silently uninstall PDFCreator.