Performing an unattended or silent installation of a application that doesn’t come packaged in an MSI or executable installation program can be real pain, which was precicely the case with Macromedia AuthorWare Web Player. The Internet Explorer plug-in automatically downloads and installs into the user’s browser when a site requests it provided the user has sufficient rights to install browser plug-ins. Of course if manage a network with any amount of proficiency you’re probably not letting your users install their own software.  Silently installing AuthorWare Web Player for Internet Explorer is a three-step process:

1. Download and extract the AuthorWare plug-in’s CAB file from Adobe. Most compression utilities (Winzip, Winrar, etc.) will extract CAB files.
2. Install the INF included in theAuthorWare package:

   rundll32 setupapi.dll,InstallHinfSection DefaultInstall 0 %BASE_PATH%\awswax.inf

3. Register the AuthorWare ActiveX control:

   regsvr32 /s %SystemRoot%\system32\Macromed\AUTHORWA\awswax.ocx

I have provided a batch file which automatically performs steps two and three via the rundll32 and regsvr32 commands.  In order to use the batch file, you must edit the file and specify the location of the AuthorWare source by changing the value of the variable BASE_PATH.

Download Macromedia Authorware Silent Installation Script

I have provided two sample batch files for silently installing QuickBooks 2008.  In order to determine the variable names and values for a QuickBooks 2008 installation I used Microsoft’s Orca tool which comes with the Windows SDK Components for Windows Installer Developers kit. The first batch file called install.bat installs QuickBooks 2008 on the local machine.  You will have to edit this file to provide your own License and Products numbers for the installation.  The second file is called deploy.exe and it uses psexec.exe to deploy the application to a remote machine on your network.  If you want to do remote deployments, you will have to edit this file to provide your own network credentials.

Download the Unattended Installation Script for QuickBooks 2008

Download Remote deployment script for QuickBooks 2008

Since I was first exposed to the Internet back in 1995, people have erroneously had a tendency to use the terms Internet and World Wide Web interchangeably. It may take the mind of a true geek to really care about the difference, but the World Wide Web is actually only a small fraction of the Internet.

This article is the first in a series meant to supplement the web design course that I’m currently teaching at SUN Area Career & Technology Center. I will define the Internet and the World Wide Web, talk briefly about their history, and discuss a few of the web’s defining features.

Just last week I began teaching a class on web design for my primary employer, SUN Area Career & Technology Center based on the Thompson Course Technology Dreamweaver MX 2004 Basic textbook.  Though the book and the accompanying PowerPoint presentations are sufficient for the lessons taught in class, I’ve decided to write a series of articles and tutorials to that add to my in-class lessons that expand on the topics that we will discuss.   I’m going to begin with some basics regarding the World Wide Web and the the languages and protocols that make it work.  If you are taking my class or just find web design and development interesting, I hope you’ll stop by often to read this series of articles.

This problem has been making my life a living hell since we deployed Windows Vista to a handful of workstations several months ago. According to Microsoft, “Network discovery is a network setting that affects whether your computer can see (find) other computers and devices on the network and whether other computers on the network can see your computer.” What this means to a network administrator is that, even with correct firewall rules in place, communication between your Vista workstations and 2000/2003/XP workstations and servers will basically cease to function. Apparently Windows Server 2008 has a GPO policy that resolves this, but the fact that it hasn’t been released to the public yet tends to keep up from upgrading. In the meantime you can solve this problem by applying a couple of registry entries to your workstations.

[Update]: For those of you fortunate enough to be using Server 2008, check out this page over at the MSDN Blogs about turning on Network Discovery via Server 2008 Group Policy.

I’m going to begin teaching a night class on web page design using Macromedia Studio MX 2004. It will be held at SUN Area Career & Technology Center starting Wednesday February 13, 2008.  It will be four three hour sessions.  Contact the school to sign up! Their number is (570) 966-1031.

This problem is related to the previous article I wrote about loading text-mode drivers into a Windows XP installation source added to a Windows Deployment Toolkit (formerly called BDD) distribution share.  Because of an incompatibility between Windows XP and the way that Windows PE formats the hard drive by default, many users will find that, after the PE portion of the installation completes, the operating system will fail to load off the hard drive. Johan Arwidmark over at deployvista.com has written a fantastic tutorial with a simple solution to the problem, which can be overcome without changing anything on the target PC.

I’m sure someone else has run into this problem: while using Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (formerly known as Business Deployment Desktop) to deploy Windows XP, everything seems to be working just fine until Windows PE finishes it’s portion of the setup wherein it copies the Windows XP setup files to your hard drive; then when the XP text-mode setup begins, it fails to recognize the drive. This most commonly occurs on systems with SATA drives or a RAID configuration. The solution is to load the text-mode drivers for the device as you would during an individual install of the operating system. You might be thrown off by the fact that the text-mode setup started by the Deployment Toolkit never prompts for additional drivers. How do you get around this? Integrate the drivers directly into your operating system source using a tool called nLite.

My friend Dan over at Outsmart Technology wrote a fantastic article about choosing the right antivirus package. As a followup to Dan’s article and my own article yesterday explaining what a virus is and how your computer actually becomes infected, I wanted to voice my opinion about so-called “total protection” packages being sold by the top names in personal computer security. That opinion is, stated bluntly, that their software is bloated, junky, and not worth your money.

It happens at least once a week: a client, friend, or relative calls me in a panic and proceeds to explain, often in colorful terms, that their computer is acting strangely and they’re afraid that they’ve caught a virus. I listen calmly, then make a trip to their home or business to diagnose the problem for myself. In my experience one, maybe two of these calls out of ten actually result in the discovery of a real virus. Admittedly that’s only part of the story, so before you start thinking that viruses aren’t a threat to your PC, let me explain.