Software Deployment

First, make sure you are not "packaging" it. Since Office 2003 is in native .msi (Windows Installer) format, you do not want to package it.

The self healing behavior you see is not an problem. It is by design. Necessary HKEY_CURRENT_USER registry entries are being created during this process, and this should only run once for a first time user/logon. Since HKCU keys are what are being created, other users will not be affected.

Sometimes the original installation source is needed for this process to run successfully, so copy your Office media to a location on the network, and plan to never remove it (even better yet, create and administrative installation point). Having DFS in place can be very helpful here. If you don't use currently use DFS, consider implementing it.

After that, you are just left with publishing your apps.


Craig --<>.

Thanks craig but my problem is a bit different. I need to package this application for the windows server 2003. Now if you want your application to work on a multi-user environment(i.e server) then the applicatioin should not self heal at any time even if the user is logging for the first time.
Can u suggest me a command by which i can ensure that my application when installed does not self heal at all even for the first time. this might be challanging job since the application might contain some user specific entries which we need to remove or make sure they are present for every user.

I was having an issue with the self healing (installer wants to run when user logs in) in Office 2000. Microsoft had a fix for this. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;835220. This is for Office 2000, not sure if it will work for Office 2003 or if they have one for 2003, but this worked well. Basically what was happening is whenever there was a Office patch installed to the servers, Access wanted to self heal. After applying this patch, it no longer did that. Hope this helps.

Also for office deployment use the Microsoft Office 2003 Resource Kit to create your .MST. In order to simplify patching and maintenance later. This tool is downloadable from Microsoft.