HCHTech
Well-Known Member
- Reaction score
- 4,178
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA - USA
I'm planning a project to roll out about 24 new workstations, and I'd like to avoid manually installing all of the LOB software they need to contain. So I either need to image a fully-prepared workstation or somehow automate those installs. It takes about 2 hours to grind through the installs manually, so there is significant but not overwhelming labor to be saved. If it were a 500 workstation rollout, this would be a different conversation. With 24, falling back to manual processes isn't the end of the world, it's just more time-consuming. My "setup" procedure for the manual method has 45 steps.
The LOB software installers live on the network (and are updated monthly) and are dependent on the machine being already joined to the domain, so I think that rules out the sysprep route. The LOB software installers are also executables that can't be run from the command line, require several entries during the installation like network data paths (known in advance, but those paths have to exist at the time of install).
The problem with imaging is of course the SID would need to be changed - I've looked at SIDCHG, but don't have any experience with it, so don't know how risky this would be. MS's only sanctioned route is sysprep, and that doesn't work on domain-joined computers.
I've also looked at AutoIT, but I'm not sure I have the bandwidth to become fluent enough for that to be useful. I seem to remember back a long time ago there was kind of a "screen recording" software that created a script by "recording" a manual process that you could then compile and play back on other computers. I didn't use it, just remember reading about it. From my searching, I don't think such a thing exists now.
Am I missing something obvious? How would you approach this task?
Edit: I did find the Installshield trick of:
setup.exe /r /f1"c:\silent.iss"
which could then be played back on a different computer with:
setup.exe /s /sms /f1"c:\silent.iss" /f1"c:\software.log"
But in my case this didn't work since it appears the installers don't use Installshield. I have queried the vendor about this, we'll see if they respond with anything useful.
The LOB software installers live on the network (and are updated monthly) and are dependent on the machine being already joined to the domain, so I think that rules out the sysprep route. The LOB software installers are also executables that can't be run from the command line, require several entries during the installation like network data paths (known in advance, but those paths have to exist at the time of install).
The problem with imaging is of course the SID would need to be changed - I've looked at SIDCHG, but don't have any experience with it, so don't know how risky this would be. MS's only sanctioned route is sysprep, and that doesn't work on domain-joined computers.
I've also looked at AutoIT, but I'm not sure I have the bandwidth to become fluent enough for that to be useful. I seem to remember back a long time ago there was kind of a "screen recording" software that created a script by "recording" a manual process that you could then compile and play back on other computers. I didn't use it, just remember reading about it. From my searching, I don't think such a thing exists now.
Am I missing something obvious? How would you approach this task?
Edit: I did find the Installshield trick of:
setup.exe /r /f1"c:\silent.iss"
which could then be played back on a different computer with:
setup.exe /s /sms /f1"c:\silent.iss" /f1"c:\software.log"
But in my case this didn't work since it appears the installers don't use Installshield. I have queried the vendor about this, we'll see if they respond with anything useful.
Last edited:
