Deploying Office 2003 over 4 workgroups

[Vanilla_Ice]

Hi,

I have been offered the opportunity to deploy Office 2003 onto 75 PC's, which are split up into 4 workgroups – no server as such. Don't ask!

I will be purchasing a Volume license from Microsoft and I am now trying to work out the most efficient way of actually deploying the software to the desktops.

I have just had a quick Google for ideas, but haven't really found what I am looking for as all I have found appears to be geared towards domains.

Has anyone done anything similar before? Any pointers?

I really don’t want to manually install 75 copies of Office!

With Office 2003 OEM I use the d:\setup.exe /p OEM=1 command to install it "silently", is there anything similar that could be used to run the install across the network?


Thanks in advance,

ICE

 

[Vanilla_Ice]

Thanks for all the replies.

I will look into the Samba server route a bit more, but I have no expereince of setting one up etc.

I was thinking more along the lines of going in with a image of the CD stored on a laptop/workstation and running the install across the LAN from that.

I dont mind initiating the installation on each PC. I just want the install to be silent. Any more ideas?

Thanks,

ICE

 

[Vanilla_Ice]

i would just use the CIW (custom installattion wizard, in the resoucre kit), stick this on a share and a pen drive / cd.

Run from a share, if any pc's give you trouble just do it from the cd / pen drive instead of faffing about.

If it was me and possible i would want to do it when no one was there. Start at 6pm on a friday night if things go well will be home for 9pm

That sounds more like it!

Have you had experience with this yourself?

Does anyone know if the 2003 installation will automatically remove previous versions of office? e.g 97/2000/xp?


Cheers,

ICE