Software Deployment

Is it strange that this program seem to be the one most frequently asked about here? What does that say about this app?

Anyways, anything you could possibly want to know is in the following post.

http://itninja.com/question/how-do-you-roll-out-new-machines?7774

Tell us what you have tried so far.

Have you tried the /QB switch with the MSI?

Have you generated a transform at all?

Hi,

Can you please ellaborate on the problem you are facing? I am sure you have to create a transform and use /qb for silent installation.

I have never worked on Quick time but i can suggest you some simple methods to troubleshoot.

In case the transform installs in UI mode and doesnt install in /qb then I think the problem would lie with one or more CAs in the package.

I suggest you generate a verbose log of the application install in /qb and analyse the log. I am certain you will find the solution to your problem.

Please let me know if this helps

Cheers [8|]

What is so hard with Quicktime, just created a wrapper and run setup.exe /s /v" /qb! and everything works fine. it's already a msi. if you don't deploy with setup.exe just msiexec /i quicktime.msi /qb! and that should work. already deployment 7.2 and 7.3 that way. what is the problem that you run into.

The issue that most packagers face when deploying Quicktime to an organization is that they don't want to deploy with Apples default settings. Things like disabling auto update, the upgrade reminders, and the horrid task icon in the tray, etc. Apple did not make it easy to make those changes by just setting some properties in the property table. If you just want a default install then the setup.exe works great.

I am able to run the install but want to set specific preferences that I can push to each computer. Also, is there a way to make quicktime find a new version and automatically install without user intervention?

Thanks

is there a way to make quicktime find a new version and automatically install without user intervention? Can I be frank? Anybody who lets any vendor - not just Apple - loose willy-nilly on their workstations deserves everything they get. Their track record is not what one would call faultless...

One recent episode comes to mind, where Adobe decided in their wisdom that what their 'cache' folder for Acrobat Pro 8 *really* needed was for a whole new set of permissions to be applied: Administrators: Full Control, Everyone:Read only. "Domain Admins? Nah, you don't need them in there! Power Users? Are you kidding? We know best!" It was a minor irritation but gives you an idea of the mindset of some.

I've been working on this over the last few days. One issue I'm running into is the .qtp file. When I look inside this file it appears that the users profile is hardcoded. Using this file generically seems like a bad idea. It also appears to be written by some custom action near the end of the install, after the installfiles action. Does anyone know which action generates this file, and if using a generic file will cause issues?

Version 7.4 released on the 15/01/08 as a point of note.

It's still riddled with the same issues we've all experienced, you'd think that Apple were making overly complicated MSIs on purpose! ;)

Xythex, I never realised the users profile was hardcoded in the .qtp file. What did you open the file with? notepad?

From personal experience, copying this file manually for several different users has yet to cause me any issues, though this may change with further testing.

Yup, if you open it with notepad you can see the profile path peeking out in the top 1/4 of the file. I've also opened it with a Hex editor and found the bit it changes to set updates on or off. I was thinking along the lines of using a CA with a VBScript to edit the binary file after it is created to set the settings I need. However, this is a significant effort, and I'm not sure it would be worth the hassle, or if just plopping down a generic .qtp is a better way to go.

Okay, so it looks like creating a script to manually propagate the .xml and .qtp files and placing it right before InstallFinalize in the execute deferred sequence works with an active setup. However, pictureviewer.exe is ignoring the "do not check filetypes" checkbox in the quicktime control panel, and asking to restore filetypes whenever it finds changed filetype associations in version 7.4. Has anyone gotten around this yet?

It is unelegant (very 80's), but I've successfully installed (and upgraded) quicktime using this cmd file

Just copy these 4 lines into a cmd file and point the startup scripts section of the machine GPO at it.

if exist %systemroot%\QT74.txt goto end
msiexec /i \\yourserver\yourinstallpoint\apple\quicktime\7.4\QuickTime.msi ISSETUPDRIVEN=1 /QR
echo %errorlevel% >QT74.txt
:end

Okay, so it looks like creating a script to manually propagate the .xml and .qtp files and placing it right before InstallFinalize in the execute deferred sequence works with an active setup. However, pictureviewer.exe is ignoring the "do not check filetypes" checkbox in the quicktime control panel, and asking to restore filetypes whenever it finds changed filetype associations in version 7.4. Has anyone gotten around this yet?

That sounds very much like what we did to get around a number of the issues. We are ok with all of the customizations we need but upon first starting QT we are having a problem with it asking about file type associations. That is where we are stuck now.

Here are the customizations we made using Wise otherwise:

-Added custom exe and .qtp file to install.
-Ran registry branding macro.
-Removed shortcuts.
-Removed "Execute Program From Destination (QTPLUGINOCXFOLDER)QTTask.exe - atboottime Default Directory Program Files\QuickTime (Launch_QTTask)" from Execute Immediate after InstallFinalize.
-Added custom exe to run via Execute Immediate after InstallFinalize.
-Removed "Set_QT_TRAY_ICON" from the CustomAction table.
-Removed HKLM\SOFTWARE\Apple Computer, Inc.\QuickTime\ActiveX\QTTaskRunFlags from the registry.
-Removed HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\Quick Time Task from the registry.
-Removed HKLM\SOFTWARE\Apple Computer, Inc.\QuickTime\ActiveX\QTTask from the registry.

This gives us a quiet install with a custom qtp file, no icons on the desktop, sys tray or task bar, and autoupdate disabled.

Ok, I think I solved the problem.

After fixing every other custom requirement needed for QT 7.4 we were getting the following error message on first launch of the application:

"Some of the file types associated with QuickTime applications are currently associated with other applications. Should I restore these file type associations to QuickTime?"

We fixed this by simply updating the .qtp file so it included the customization to not check for file types. After recompiling a new version of the mst with the new qtp file included we retested and the error message/prompt did not return!

Looks like we have a fully customized and deployable version of QT 7.4.

Keep in mind that the mime filetype warning message is stored in the registry while the standard file associations are stored in the .qtp file. Also it does not appear that you can set the flag with pictureviewer.exe

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Apple Computer, Inc.\QuickTime\ActiveX]
"AlwaysReclaimAssocations"=dword:00000002

Steal back your file associations with Windows Media Player to verify that you are actually suppressing the warning.