Software Deployment

There are several ways to do it, some of them are not very good in the long term.

The BEST thing to do is familiarize yourself with the right way of applying Small Updates, Minor Updates, and Major Updates by properly using Product Version, Product Codes and Upgrade Codes within MSI and MSP files. That will allow you to do some pretty slick things well beyond the scope of your current issue.

Here's the whitepaper, it's for Windows Installer 3.0, but most of it still applies to 2.0: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=AD7AC91E-2493-4549-AE6F-BF5E007C12A3&displaylang=en

A big factor in the decision is your deployment method. Are you using an Administrative Install Point and is that location always available to the clients as Read-Only? Do you have a method of easily launching MSIEXEC on the clients outside of Group Policy? That opens an option of fixing your admin install point and launching a self-repair on the clients. Note that this quick & dirty method should only be used with VERY minor updates, such as your addition of a single registry entry. Anything remotely complicated should go through the whole patch process outlined in the white paper above.

I agree with VikingLoki that you should become familiar with the Upgrade method but if you need to do this quickly then change your original msi and redeploy it. Just don't change the Package GUID or your shortcuts may have problems.

Removing the app and redeploying is the best option in my opinion in most cases.....so at least you have full control of the environment. and can be sure of what is actually on the workstations.

That's probably where I was heading on this one, but I couldn't resist getting on my Upgrade Path soapbox. I think that's the weakest area in the entire repackging industry, SO many don't use it properly. When considering the remove / fix / reinstall path, size & number of installations becomes a factor. I'd hate to uninstall & reinstall Office 2003 across 2000 machines just to add 1 registry key to the installation. Talk about killing a fly with a nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile!

Of course, don't think I wouldn't jump at the chance to kill a fly that way... [:D]

I've run into this situation before and created an .msp patch to distribute with SMS to update any existing installed instances, but there was no way that SMS would push it. Even with the exact product id and GUID, the .msp just kept failing on distribute, i'm not sure if the command line for the sms job was erroneous or not, but patching has me fairly perplexed.

Why not change the current package and send it out again with msiexec /i "abc123.msi" REINSTALL=ALL REINSTALLMODE=VOMUS ???

//Göran