ActiveX Controls & GPO

[RedTech]

Here's yet another one that has me irritated at Microsoft. If anyone can give light on the situation I would be extremely grateful. Here's the thing:

Since the upgrade to Exchange 2k we have also implemented it's IM and added the Conferencing Server. It works very well provided the user that tries to join a conference via the web is an admin of their workstation. Well thats just not going to happen. So I went into investigation mode and discovered that the reason for the admin privs is because the web browser needs to download 2 ActiveX controls, ExConf Class and NMClient Class.

I did find a document that told me there is a way to "package" these ActiveX controls and push them via a GPO. So why am I asking for help? Because the MS documents state I need to have visual studio and an add-on called visual installer then jump through hoops. I’m not about to purchase said package for a one-use thing. There has to be another option!

Has anyone else been through this before and/or offer some kind of guidance?

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[mmv]

In order to distribute these packages with a GPO you must wrap them into an msi.
Basically you create an msi which contains a custom action that installs your update. You do however need a tool to create the msi. Like Wise for Windows Installer, Installshield or WinInstall.
The Visual Installer can do the same.

On the 2000 server CD theres a WinInstall Light Edition which can be used to make basic snapshot repackaging. I do not know, whether you can create a custom action in this product, but you could have a look.

 

[RedTech]

I was originally using WinInstall LE but I wasn't getting the results I needed, similiar to the Acrobat reader 6 hehe

Finally I got it working.. Using WinInstall LE I simply captured the 4 files that are involved in the setup. Then after clicking on every possible option in wininstall I found a little option called Auto-Register... So I chose to Auto-Register the 2 dll files and viola.

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[RedTech]

Oh I forgot to add. HAHAHAH

I was refunded my $245 from MS when I told them that the published article was incomplete, and they told me that they couldnt help me any further then KB article. *sigh*

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"Hi, I'm a sig virus. Please add me to the end of your sig and help me take over the world."

 

[mmv]

What was that refund all about ? What article ?

Also with wininstall LE you can of course take a snapshot of copying the files to a directory and the, as you say, either autoregister the files or create a custom action doing it for you.
Its just, Wininstll LE is not really more than just a very light edition, so I would never recommend using it for anything. Onco you start fooling around with MSI you need a proper tool.