Deploying Office 2007 with Group Policy Startup Scripts

In a previous post I discussed what you need to do to start deploying Office 2007. In that post I referenced a page that Microsoft linked to, but have not actually posted (Use Group Policy to Assign Startup Scripts for 2007 Office Deployment). So in this article I’ll go through a couple of ways you can use Group Policy startup scripts to deploy Office.

Unattended VMware Tools

Here’s how to create an unattended installation of VMware Tools which I’ve aimed specifically at Terminal Servers, however you can apply the same concepts for any Windows server installed under any of the VMware virtualisation products.

Files Not Moved to the Recycle Bin?

On our internal Terminal Servers the CEO has been having an issue whereby files or folders are not sent to the Recycle Bin, rather they are immediately deleted. If you logon with administrative rights on the machine, you can send files to the Recycle Bin. To date, he’d been told that this would be fixed once we move to some new boxes (which I did last week). Unfortunately the problem also exists on the new Terminal Servers which I only found out after the CEO pointed the problem out to me (luckily he’s a pretty understanding guy).

Unattended Presentation Server 4.5

While things haven’t changed much since Presentation Server 4.0, I’ve put together what you’ll need to create an unattended install for Presentation Server 4.5. First up I’ve made a copy of the installation files from the CD and added them to a single folder. This includes a copy of the administration tools in the same folder:

PolicyMaker and Internet Explorer 7

If you are working with PolicyMaker Registry Extension, or any of the other PolicyMaker products, you will find the Microsoft Management Console will crash when you select the User Settings / Registry node when editing the Group Policy on machine that also has Internet Explorer 7 installed. If you look at the crash details you will see that the fault is with MSHTML.DLL.

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