Software Deployment

Try logging onto the computer with admin rights. [;)]

If you don't want to do it that way, you could run the MSI install using the 'runas' command.

There's a policy which enables all MSI installs to run "elevated", but it's not a recommended one.

The application is to be deployed to numerous Win2k machines remotely. The problem is that the PC's have been set up over the years with varying admin passwords - the runas command may prove difficult. The elevated rights for the MSI install through a policy sounds good - are the any more details regarding this please?

Search the SDK or the web for "AlwaysInstallElevated".

You can hack the registry to add "MSI" file types to respect the RUN AS option on right-click popups. By default, Windows XP only recognizes EXE files for RUN AS, not MSI files. There's an interesting BLog thread on this at http://blogs.msdn.com/aaron_margosis/archive/2004/06/23/163229.aspx

The registry hack is to add a "runas/command" entry under HKCR as follows...

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Msi.Package\shell\runas\command]
(Default REG_SZ value) ="\"%1\" %*"

Take a look at the entry for HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shell\runas\command. It uses the same value entry.

I should have mentioned that you can add this same key/value set for other filetypes such as VBS, JS and PL script files. It can come in handy to be able to right-click and Run-As other file types.