Uncheck “Install new versions automatically” in Internet Explorer 10 during deployment

IF you during deployment you want to easily uncheck “Install new versions automatically” feature, there is a registry setting you can configure prior to actual IE setup.exe or msi, whatever you use.

clip_image002

Copy the following text to a notepad and save it as a REG file. Then use REG IMPORT “Disable_AutoUpdate.reg” before you deploy your IE and that’s all.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main]
"EnableAutoUpgrade"=dword:00000000

For example, here’s our script to deploy IE and disable auto update:

: - - - - - - Uncheck "Install new versions automatically" - - - - - - -
REG IMPORT "Disable_AutoUpdate.reg"
: - - - - - - Install Application - - - - - - -
MSIExec /i "IE10-Setup-Full.msi" /qn /norestart /l*v C:\Windows\Temp\Microsoft_IE10_x64_ENG_R1_Install.log
EXIT

Deploy Office 2007 with custom Quick Access Toolbar commands

Receiving some complaints that users can’t find the Open, New etc. commands in the new Office 2007 interface, I had a task to customize Quick Access Toolbar so that all users can have these commands installed by default.

Office 2007 applications (Access, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Word) use a Quick Access Toolbar setting file (.qat). Every application has its own .qat file (Access.qat, Excel,qat, Outlook.qat, PowerPoint.qat and Word.qat). In order to customize and deploy these files using Office Customization Tool, we must add a registry entry to enable roaming user profiles to access the .qat file during deployment. This is because, by default, qat files are not saved in a roaming location.

I did this using the OCT:

  1. Open or create a new setup customization file (.msp) for Microsoft Office 2007.
  2. Under Additional content, select Add registry entries and click Add.
  3. Select HKEY_CURRENT_USER in the “Root” select box.
  4. Select REG_DWORD in the “Data type” select box.
  5. Enter Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\Toolbars in the “Key” input box.
  6. Enter QuickAccessToolbarRoaming as a “Value name”.
  7. Enter 1 as a “Value data”.
    Add/Modify Registry Entry
  8. Click OK.

After this, the default folder for .qat files will be: %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Office.

Now log in to any computer that has this modification and customize the Quick Access Toolbar for every Office 2007 application as you want. When you’re done, navigate to “%appdata%\Microsoft\Office” folder and copy all .qat files from there to a USB media for example.

QAT files

Now you have two methods of distributing these files: copy these files to all computers manually/using a script or use OCT. It depends on your needs… I will use OCT to have these files copied during the installation of Office 2007.

To do this, open the same office customization file (.msp) as earlier and do the following modifications:

  1. Under Additional content, select Add files and click Add.
  2. In the Add Files to MSP File dialog box, open the folder that contains your *.qat files, select the Excel.qat file (for example) and then click Add.
  3. In the File Destination Path dialog box, select the path [AppDataFolder]\Microsoft\Office for the “Destination path on the user’s computer”.
    File Destination Path
  4. Click OK.

Next time when you will install Office 2007, Quick Access Toolbar in every application will have the commands you set. In my case, Excel’s Quick Access Toolbar looks like this:

Quick Access Toolbar commands

Update proxy settings used by Software Updates role in SCCM 2007

Few months  ago I had an interesting problem at a client site that took me a while to resolve. So I want to post it here, maybe it will help others…

After a successful upgrade from SMS 2003 to SCCM 2007 SP1, I configured software update point, synchronized with Microsoft update to get the list of updates for products I needed and created a new list with updates required by clients. When I tried to deploy software updates it should download the updates to my SCCM server. Well, this step failed. PatchDownloader.log reported the following:
Trying to connect to the root\SMS namespace on the XYZ-SCCM machine
Connected to \\XYZ-SCCM\root\SMS
Trying to connect to the \\XYZ-SCCM\root\sms\site_XYZ namespace on the machine
Connected to \\XYZ-SCCM\root\sms\site_XYZ
Download destination = \\XYZ-SCCM\WsusContent\08123a3c-c7fd-43a4-a4ce-80089b1267df.1\WindowsXP-KB938828-x86-ENU.exe
Contentsource = http://www.download.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/v3-19990518/cabpool/windowsxp-kb938828-x86-enu_ba3f0cbe4ba5736d4254732e41fe058697b76ebc.exe
Downloading content for ContentID = 8170, FileName = WindowsXP-KB938828-x86-ENU.exe
Try username DOMAIN\USERNAME from the registry
Proxy enabled proxy server ISAserver:8080
HttpSendRequest failed 12007
Download http://www.download.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/v3-19990518/cabpool/windowsxp-kb938828-x86-enu_ba3f0cbe4ba5736d4254732e41fe058697b76ebc.exe to C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1.LAB\LOCALS~1\Temp\2\CAB3B.tmp returns 12007
ERROR: DownloadContentFiles() failed with hr=0x80072ee7

First I thought it was a stupid error, as I set (and checked twice) all correct information. Looks like proxy information was old and not updating with what I have set later in SCCM. So I needed to remove old information and set the new ones again.

I have checked the registry and I couldn’t do much as username and password was encrypted. Well, I used upddwnldcfg.exe (from <ConfigMgrInstallationFolder>\bin\i386\00000409 folder on a x86 machine) to delete all proxy information stored in the registry and added the new username, password and server’s IP address. After this, downloading updates worked perfectly. More information about configuring proxy settings using upddwnldcfg.exe, you can find here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb892795.aspx