Deploying Office 2000 AND 2003 via GPO

B

Bryan Linton

I'm trying to deploy Office 2003 via GPO, and then deploy Office 2000 AFTER
2003 has been installed. Here's why:

We want to use Microsoft Photo Editor instead of Microsoft Office Picture
Manager. I have successfully deployed Office 2003 via GPO, and then
manually installed MS Photo Editor from an Office 2000 Administrative
Installation Point. It works great. Picture Manager and Photo Editor
coexist peacefully, and Photo Editor is the default App, which is what we
want. So I created an MST for the Office 2000 AIP that ONLY installs Photo
Editor, and tried to push both packages out via GPO. The problem is, I
can't find a way to force the Office 2003 package to always install BEFORE
the Office 2000 package. On the test I just tried, on a machine freshly
imaged with a clean image, Office 2000 installed FIRST. The result was the
following: not only did Office 2003 remove Photo Editor when it installed
Picture Manager...it apparently ONLY installed Picture Manager. None of the
other Office 2003 apps had a shortcut in the start menu. No Outlook, Word,
Excel...nada. I suspect the applications are actually there because I
watched the machine install "managed software Microsoft Office 2003", and it
took quite a while. But this will not work as a deployment scenario.

Interestingly, I did the same test on a not-so-pristine image yesterday with
different results. Both Office 2003 and Photo Editor had been deployed and
uninstalled several times on this machine; both products were not currently
installed at the time of the test. On that test, Office 2003 installed
first (and VERY quickly, since it had lived there before), followed by
Office 2000 (Photo Editor). The result was perfect, just what I wanted: A
full install of Office 2003 that included Microsoft Photo Editor as Windows'
default photo-editing application.

After all this explaination, my question is the following: is there a way I
can force the installation of a particular software package before another?
Can I make the installation of one conditional upon the presence of another?
Do I have any way to control the order of installation of software packages?

Thanks in advance,

Bryan
 
G

Gadi

Hi Bryan.

The deployment of packages via GPO was done in randomized order, you cannot
configure what package will intalled first.
 
G

Gadi

Hi Bryan.

The deployment of packages via GPO was done in randomized order, you cannot
configure what package will intalled first.
 
G

Gadi

Hi Bryan.

The deployment of packages via GPO was done in randomized order, you cannot
configure what package will intalled first.
 
G

Gadi

Hi Bryan.

The deployment of packages via GPO was done in randomized order, you cannot
configure what package will intalled first.
 
G

Gadi

Hi Bryan.

The deployment of packages via GPO was done in randomized order, you cannot
configure what package will intalled first.
 
G

Gadi

Hi Bryan.

The deployment of packages via GPO was done in randomized order, you cannot
configure what package will intalled first.
 
G

Gadi

Hi Bryan.

The deployment of packages via GPO was done in randomized order, you cannot
configure what package will intalled first.
 
G

Gadi

Hi Bryan.

The deployment of packages via GPO was done in randomized order, you cannot
configure what package will intalled first.
 
G

Gadi

Hi Bryan.

The deployment of packages via GPO was done in randomized order, you cannot
configure what package will intalled first.
 
B

Bryan Linton

Thanks Neo. Looks like I'll have to find another solution; this excerpt
from your linked article sums it up:

"Using Group Policy software installation
"Group Policy software installation works directly with the MSI file and
bypasses Office 2003 Setup and the Setup.ini file when assigning or
publishing packages. For this reason, you cannot use Setup.exe to chain
Office 2003 installations when you assign or publish packages. Instead,
Microsoft Windows deploys Office 2003, the Office 2003 Multilingual User
Interface Pack, and other Office-related packages separately and in random
order. Because Office 2003 must be installed first, before a MUI Pack
installation can succeed, you cannot use chaining with Group Policy software
installation to combine these installations."

Thanks for the good resource.

Bryan
 

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