Automated install from .bat file not working in domain environment

Question

Hi

We've had Sophos installing automatically on startup using a variation of the example .bat file given, since 2009. At some point ~2 months ago I noticed one or two PCs not installing Sophos on startup - the script would run, detect correctly that Sophos was not installed, but Sophos wouldn't be installed. If I logged on as a network admin I could run the script manually and it worked - I did this for the one or two I found and thought no more of it.

It's gotten worse since though and I have two PCs here which still won't install Sophos. I have some classrooms where every PC is identical, but just one in the room refuses to install. The Sophos install log says that the msi fails with the errorcode 1618. In my experience this means another install is taking place - but the PCs all have the same software applied, etc, and it persists with multiple restarts.

Any suggestions on where to go from here?

Any pointers would be much appreciated. We're using the v10 endpoint software (was 9.5 - I updated to see if it would change anything - nope) on Windows 7 (64-bit), the update manager is running on Windows 2008 R2, nothing else running on there besides Windows.

Cheers

Chris

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jak · Accepted Answer

Hi,

I assume that another install is taking place at startup as you say, it seems quite clear cut from the return code, maybe Windows Update installing updates at startup?

You could check for any MSI logs but MSI doesn't create MSI logs by default, it depends on the application. The Sophos installers do but the other MSI that is running may not but then again it may be a different MSI in each case. You can use the key mentioned here to configure Windows Installer to always create install logs http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314852

I assume the problem must be with the AutoUpdate install, as long as your script installs AutoUpdate even if there are clashes installing the other Sophos Components these will be retried on each update. So the rest of the software should always get installed.

So in your deployment script that runs the Sophos setup.exe, before that I would put a check in to check for the key: 
 SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\InProgress 
 if this is present go into a 1 minute loop (for example), before retrying. This should increase the success rate of the script.

Regards, 
 Jak :25403