Admin Arsenal Blog

A common question we hear at Brisworks is about hanging installations. Someone goes to install a product using Admin Arsenal and the installation never returns. The most common cause of this is an installer waiting for input from the user on the target system. Since the GUI for the installer isn’t visible, it’s not possible to supply a response.

The way to avoid this problem is to find out the silent options for the install, and to verify them. An installer with a silent option will not have a GUI (or will have a GUI which doesn’t wait for input) and will be able to finish without any user interaction. It’s best to test an installer’s silent options on a system manually, first, to ensure that the install is truly silent. You can find the silent option in the documentation for the product, or by querying the install parameters. Most installers will include some assistance by using a special option like /q or /?:

setup.exe /?

A little experimentation may also help. Silent options are sometimes /s or /q or /quiet or something else along those lines.

Not all installers are created equal. Some installers, particularly for free software, don’t have silent options. These types of installers cannot be used for remote installation. The only option with these is to repackage them inside another installer, or to create a script which duplicates what the installer does. There are commercial repackaging programs on the market and Admin Arsenal can remotely install the output from virtually all of them.

For more information on software distribution, you can read our white paper on the topic.

Smart Cards are popping up just about everywhere. It probably helped that the U.S. Department of Defense was an early adopter of these cards (for the DoD these are called Common Access Cards, or CACs).

In addition to having yet more plastic into put in your wallet, Smart Cards require that hardware and software be installed onto each workstation and laptop. If your organization is or will be using Smart Cards, then here are some gotcha’s that you’ll want to look out for.

• Installing the software (including future upgrades) is serious business. Problems installing can lead to the inability to log on (very few things in life will prove to be more career limiting that preventing your entire organization from logging on).
• Some upgrades require installation when the user is logged off, and a reboot is sometimes forced (i.e. you cannot defer the reboot to another time).
• Smart Card software operates at a very low level to Windows, which is another way of saying “tread lightly."

If you encounter an Error 1603, you may be pushing the software to a system that already has the installation, or more likely, has a partial installation. In this case you’ll want to try uninstalling the software and reinstalling. Be sure to install with the appropriate computer (or domain) credentials and don’t forget the reboot.

There are a lot of resources for Smart Card issues. Rest assured that with millions of DoD Smart Cards in circulation (yes, I said millions) there has been a lot of activity on message boards and KB’s for the Smart Card vendors. Chances are very good that someone has felt the very pain that you may be feeling with your software deployment.

Question: How do you condense 35 years of Windows system administration experience into 2-6 paragraphs?

Answer: The Admin Arsenal Blog.

Will it be technical? Yes.

Will it be simple? Hell no.

Will it be dripping with sarcasm? If there’s a god.

Will it be funny? Just look at Adam’s haircut (circa 1986).

We know the frustrations that System Admins endure. 2 AM calls from a frantic Help Desk Agent. Users (bless their hearts) whose computer savvy can only be described as “lacking”. Expanding IT expectations accompanied with shrinking IT budgets. Managers who get it (revel in this!), accompanied by managers who don’t.

Like you we’re IT admins. We get the good with the bad and that’s what we get paid for. Admins provide solutions, excuses come from the other team.

We’ve gleaned the IT world for answers over the years, and now we’re sharing what we’ve learned.

Here is some of what you can expect to see:

• The nuts and bolts of Software Deployment and Hardware & Software Inventory collection
• What to (and often as important, what NOT to) Monitor
  
• How utilizing Remote Management via Remote Assist and Remote Desktop can save you hours of your valuable time
• Admin Solutions – with solutions specific to Windows systems management
• News You Can Use – where we summarize and comment on other relevant blog posts

Welcome to the Admin Arsenal Blog.

The Admin Arsenal Team (If you would like to see more current pictures of us, click here.) 

Shawn Anderson

Adam Ruth

Shane Corellian

Gwen Hilyard