Schmagagled

There is not a current Office 2007 UL (I looked last night). But there is something even easier from MS. While trying to download and extract all the updates since SP2 I came across the instructions entitled "Testing and verifying the Windows Installer patch (.msp) files" from this page http://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/library/cc178995(office.12).aspx. Basically what you do is install Office 2007 and go through all the pain of doing your updates the hard way using Windows Update. If you have a machine that is already patched current just use that one. Once your installation is completely patched and up to date you copy the script provided on the above page into a new text file and save it as “CollectUpdates.vbs” . Run the script (Right click and select "Open"), a dialog pops up and tells you it's collecting the MSPs and will open explorer to the folder when completed. When it's finished (takes seconds) and the folder appears, simply select all the MSPs in the folder and drag them over to your "Updates" folder on your Office 2007 distro. Select "Copy and Replace" to overwrite the dupes you may already have in there. Next time you run the install it will include all the patches automagically. Works great! S.

mara- Had a look at the office2003[English].reg file and noticed that the only thing it was adding was the Outlook Junk update (KB942571). Shouldn't it also include the SP3 update so WU doesn't think it's not installed? Or is this not necessary? I found the info in the registry for the SP3 update and added it to my copy of the reg file and have attached it here for you to have a look. S. office2003_English_.txt

mara- DL'd and installed 1.3b2 and ran the process a couple of times. I have a couple of questions. I clicked on "Help" from the menu and it couldn't locate the CHM, so I went to the install folder and opened it from there. I'm using an enterprise version of O2K3 (one disk) with all the Setup.exe's named separately (i.e. SETUPPRO.EXE). Because I tried the other "beefstew" method last year and never got it to work I had been just putting the various hotfixes in a Patches folder and used ohotfix to install them (chained) after the program installed. I had customized the install a bit to add shortcuts to quicklaunch and other minor tweaks using the ORK2003 by creating a SETUPPRO.MST. The first time I ran the slipstreamer it created the admin point using the MST I created but when I tried to install from the resultant CD I created from the files I got an error I've never seen before. If I ran the "Setup_H" I got a Windows dialog box that said to install components using the Control Panel" and that was it. When I ran SETUPPRO.EXE from the same disk the install proceeded normally until it asked for the "interop.trust.dll" like others have gotten. And when (or where) in the process does the Outlook Junk mail Filter file get processed or does it at all? Should the process be: 1) Slipstream SP3 into original distribution media files (no customizations, no MSTs at this point). 2) Add the frequently updated Outlook Junk Filter as a chained patch using ohotfix. 3) And then create a MST for customizations? Thanks for all the hard work! S.

I had problems downloading from both mirrors so when I finally did get the file I re-uploaded (V1.3b2) to MegaShares. Link is: http://d01.megashares.com/?d01=aac9d0d Select the "Click Here to Download" blue text within 5 mins of arriving at the site. Been waiting for somebody a lot smarter than me to put together an app like this. Thanks! S.

I know you probably already thought of this but are you using the OEM version of XP that came on the machine? Sysprep will not work (well it does partially) as expected on OEM versions of XP. It's designed for VL versions. We have a fleet of 254 Lattitude D620's that we had to image using the VL version to get Sysprep to do what we wanted. Just so you know... S.

Nilfred; Thanks for the quick response, I did check out the thread you referenced yesterday and downloaded the file but I'm not sure it's what I need or I don't understand what it's doing. I don't want to appear dense (or as thick as two short planks as they say in the UK) but here's where I'm having difficulty... I have a VL version of Acrobat 7 Pro. I have the original media (7.0.0). So ever since we bought it to distribute (7.0.3 update was already available by that time) it has been my goal to 'slipstream' all the patches into the original acropro.msi/data1.cab structure and not have to expand it to an 'admin install point'. The original data1.cab is around 199mb and the original disk is around 240mb. Once I expand it out to an admin install point and patch it to 7.0.9 the whole thing balloons up to around 530mb. How do I take the original and the 7.0.5/7.0.7/7.0.8/7.0.9 patches, apply them, and put all the files back into a data1.cab and acropro.msi instead of having an admin point? There must be a way to programmatically do this. Can Orca be used to generate the file necessary to re-cab the data1.cab by somehow reading the file manifest of the acropro.msi and using that to tell makecab how to recab the files? Thanks! Mike

I wanted to bump this back up to see if there had been any progress on automating the re-cab process (in this case recabbing Acrobat 7 Pro VL with all patches up to 7.0.9). Seems like the holy grail (at least for me). I've created an admin point and patched it etc. but I wanted to see if I could get the genie back into the data1.cab using makecab and cabarc. Right now the admin point is 500+mb and I'd like to recompress it all back again. I'm sure it can be done, just don't know how. Anybody? Thanks for your time.. Mike