nightshade Posted April 14, 2009 Share Posted April 14, 2009 Hi folks, I have just managed to deploy Paint.NET 3.36 via Group Policy (GPO). However, there were some obstacles which I had to manage before I succeeded, so I thought you might like to know... First I created the MSI packages using the /createMsi argument (on my local workstation). When I tried to add the msi package to the Group Policy, my Server however came up with an errror "unable to read installation properties from the package, check if this is a valid package..." (roughly translated, as I am using a german server OS). This occured for both the 32 and the 64 bit package... Using the event log, I found out that the error reason thrown by the MsiInstaller was "Invalid drive C:\" (my server has no drive C: due to some installation issues years ago etc. - well this had not been a problem so far). So I started examining the msi package with orca (from the windows server sdk). In the "properties" section I found the "TARGETPATH" variable containing the absolute path "C:\Programme\Paint.NET"... What the...? Well I tried around with the other possible arguments in collaboration with /createMsi, but the variable remained an absolute path. So I tried editing the msi package with orca (%ProgramFiles%\Paint.NET and [ProgramFilesDir]\Paint.NET), but this also lead to a failure. Then I simply deleted the variable (not the value!) and ... it worked! Installation and uninstall via GPO succeeded. So, is it possible to leave this variable out (or set a relative path) in future releases when /createMsi is used? Kind regards... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Brewster Posted April 14, 2009 Share Posted April 14, 2009 So, the TARGETPATH property was evaluated on your workstation, not the server. Just include the TARGETDIR that you want on the command-line when using /createMsi. Not having a C drive is an extremely rare property for a Windows system. GPO deployment is intended for the scenario where distribution is to a large number of homogenous clients. Unless you're doing that, you should just run the setup program as-is, possibly using /auto for automated/unattended installation instead. You didn't specify what systems were hooked up to your group policy, if any. Were you installing Paint.NET on the server ... ? Quote The Paint.NET Blog: https://blog.getpaint.net/ Donations are always appreciated! https://www.getpaint.net/donate.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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