Enterprise Deployment

This is a note for all others searching for a XMind - Mind Mapping version that can be deployed in Enterprise via Active Directory. I'm not a developer of XMind, but I've created a full-fledged per Machine MSI setup for the XMind Team to make XMind deployable via Active Directory. If you'd like to push it out to your users desktops - it's available now. No need to wrap suxxx NSIS installer into an MSI any longer.

It has been deployed to ~50 machines without any issues. I have not received any feedback from the XMind guys yet, but hope it will see the public light soon.

These are the setup features that have been implemented and can be enabled/disabled via transforms:

This is a note for all others searching for a Notepad++ version that can be deployed in Enterprise via Active Directory. I'm not a developer of Notepad++, but I've created a full-fledged per Machine MSI setup for the Notepad++ Team to make Notepad++ deployable via Active Directory. If you'd like to push it out to your users desktops - it's available now. No need to wrap suxxx NSIS installer into an MSI any longer.

These are the setup features that have been implemented and can be enabled/disabled via transforms:

If you'd like to add more languages or all languages to your Windows 7 deployment image this can be done by hand or with below script. This script requires some path configurations only and integrates all lp.cab files from the Microsoft Language Pack DVD.

Required:

• Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK)
• Microsoft Windows 7 Enterprise DVD
• Microsoft Windows 7 Language Pack DVD

Steps:

1. Copy install.wim from Windows 7 DVD \sources\install.wim to local disk
2. Configure path to language packs. This is folder named langpacks with subfolders named "ar-sa", "de-de" and so on.
3. Configure all other paths
4. Run the batch file to integrate all Language Packs (may take some hours/one day).
5. Add this WMI file to your Windows Deployment Server (WDS).

Script:

This is a note for all others searching for a PDFsam version that can be deployed in Enterprise via Active Directory. I'm not a member of the PDFsam team, but I've created a full-fledged per Machine MSI setup for them to make PDFsam deployable via Active Directory. If you'd like to push it out to your users desktops - it's available now. No need to wrap suxxx NSIS installer into an MSI any longer.

I have received feedback from the main developer that we will look into it for the next official version. He took over and you can download the latest MSI version of PDFsam Basic from the project homepage.

These are the setup features that have been implemented and can be enabled/disabled via transforms:

This is a note for all others searching for a FastStone Capture version that can be deployed in Enterprise via Active Directory. I'm not an employee of FastStone Soft, but I've created a full-fledged per Machine MSI setup for them to make FastStone Capture deployable via Active Directory. If you'd like to push it out to your users desktops - it's available now. No need to wrap suxxx NSIS installer into an MSI any longer.

It was me a pleasure to help these guys and they are currently doing their in-house testing, but as these guys have been proven to be are really open minded and thankful - I'm sure they are able to provide you the new MSI setup before it get's published on their site in future. I cannot publish the setup here as this is not Open Source.

Like me you may need to deploy Fonts in your Enterpise network via Active Directory.

In past we have seen some tools on the net that made this Font installation an easy task, but all of them have faded away or have been commerialized with questionable feature lists in basic payed version. It took me an unacceptable hard time to find the way to go as the search results give tons of bad results and none of these tools around is really easy to use. I wished I would have found a GUI tool that works like drag and drop, browse registry and other stuff to create at least easy type setups, but this seems only to be a very big wish. After some weeks with MSI and WiX I understand more and more that such a tool cannot be easy - except it would be very limited in functionality and what is more worse than using 5 tools in a long term view? In a small world you may only need a Font installer, but later you need much more and it's better to learn MSI and WiX the hard way. You cannot get around if you need to deploy software in daily business.