Unattended XP with a “Default User” profile How-To

[GreenMachine]

... OFFICE 2000 is one of those programs that gets all fubared no matter how you install it... and by all means never remove the profile that you installed it on... cause all the links are gone,,, I have played... Been there done that.. Running the repair will fix it,, but then all the links are to the profile that you run the repair on! a never ending circle..  ...

There are other ways around it as well. I use Office 2003 now, but I believe they behave about the same. First, those shortcuts are not real shortcuts at all, but so called "advertisements", part of the MSI install method. I instruct Office not to install any of the standard "shortcuts" (advertisements), and then instruct it to add real shortcuts to the following applications (you guessed it:Word,Excel, etc). These shortcuts are placed in the AllUsers profile. I also instruct it to either run a program from the disk, or make it unavailable. Thus it never asks for the CD, as the allowed applications are already on the hard disk. Finally, I disallow it to create the huge MSI cache that it likes to put on a second disk. I install upon first logon from the Administrators profile, as I have not managed to install it before setup completes, e.g. CMDLINES.TXT or SVCPACK (actually, I never tried CMDLINES.TXT, just SVCPACK.INF). I have deleted the Adminstrators profile many times, and never had an issue with Office. As for Users profiles, a single profile is not an acceptable answer in my case. I use Roaming Profiles: the only way to go in a corporate environment.

In the end, it has proved to be a satisfactory method for this picky S.O.B., and that is not something easily earned. But, as always, a succesfull installation is one that get used, and provides the end user with the tools needed to do his "real" job.

Just the GreenMachine take ...