After verifying that the workstations we have upgraded to Windows Vista Enterprise took the operating system without errors, we initiated an Office 2007 Professional Plus deployment via their SBS 2008 server.
In this case, we ran into a bit of a struggle with the existing Office 2003 setup.
In this particular network, the client was migrated to SBS 2008 via the Microsoft method about a month ago. The SBS 2003 box has since been repurposed.
For some strange reason, the Office 2007 install routine was not removing Office 2003 which is its default behaviour.
We were able to make sure that our Group Policy deployment was functioning as it should because one of the 9 workstations refused to upgrade to Windows Vista Enterprise (previous blog post) so we fresh installed the machine and it took the Office 2007 deployment without a problem.
When we tried to manually remove the Office 2003 install via Windows Vista’s Programs and Features menu, we were presented with a request for the PRO11.MSI file with the path pointing to \\OLD-SBS\ClientApps\Office2003Pro\PRO11.MSI.
So, out came the handy Windows Installer Clean Up Utility that we used to remove any reference to the Office 2003 install. From there, we removed the shortcuts in the start menu and ran a GPUpdate /force on the workstations.
After a reboot we were in business with the exception of one workstation where the Clean Up utility was run after Office 2007 was installed on it. Outlook was taken out by the utility so we needed to run the Office repair to fix it.
Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book
*All Mac on SBS posts will not be written on a Mac until we replace our now missing iMac! (previous blog post)
Sometimes it helps to reset the installed package to point to a different source location.
ReplyDeleteMSKB 267362 discusses how to do this with Office.
AppDeploy also have a source resiliency tip on how do do this via VBScript.