Software Deployment

Greetings All,

I wasn't sure if this was a deployment topic, or package development topic, or both. So here it is...

We are in the midst of packaging (packaging loosely used as it’s just a script and source files). We have the source that lives on all DFS shares, and our scripts call the respective components from the network (just a brief background detail).

We are using the pre-cache the local installation source method, whereby, we can "stage" the installation to the local machine prior to the actual installation, and reduce the load on the network during the actual installation. This is simply a script that runs the following: \\DFSHARE\Office12\setup.exe /config \\DFSHARE\Office12\config.xml. The XML file here is configured to "CacheOnly."

We then run a script that actually executes the setup.exe from the local drive, including the customization file (MSP) and the configuration file (XML). This is a seperate XML with different configuration settings than the "CacheOnly" XML. Simply scripted, C:\MSOCache\All Users\{DownloadCode}-C\Setup.exe /adminfile \\DFSSHARE\Office12\Outlook.WW\Outlook2007.msp /config \DFSSHARE\Office12\Outlook.WW\Config.xml

All works very nice, except that when we purposely power off the machine (for distribution testing purposes), boot the machine and restart the install, the installation will fail with the following error: "The /adminfile command-line option can only be used during initial installation of the product." It seems the first install (prior to failure), attempted to apply the customization file (MSP), and once applied, can not be re-used for incomplete installations. At this point, we have no contingency plan for this issue.

Main concerns:
User pulls their machine off the network mid-install
Power failure
Loss of network connectivity

Has anyone seen this issue, or know the resolution? I can't imagine MS built the new 2007 installation architecture without this in mind :-)

Thanks for your time,
Vincent