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Deploy Serv Pack with Grp Policy

Mikdilly

Trying to install serv pack 3 to a xp serv pack 2 pc through grp policy, it's an exercise on page 9-39 of mspress book, if i'm writing this it must mean it's not working as expected, the service pack is not installing onto the xp machine. Re-checked the steps in the exercise and everything looks to be setup correctly, do a resultant set of policy and it shows the software installation package pointing to the shared folder holding the extracted service pack files. Deployment state says assigned, xp machine is in the OU that has the created and linked group policy, xp machine is logged onto domain. Update is not running in task mgr on xp machine. Anyone ever get this to work?
At the last step it mentions xp being configured to optimize logon and it might take two restarts before the serv pack is applied, does this mean I have to reboot it couple of times before update.msi will kick in or is this referring to reboots after the service pack is installed?

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Comments

royal

Windows XP and above use asyncronous group policy application. This means that winlogon will present you with the logon screen and let you log on which cached credentials before the network is even really up. Because of this, the group policy computer settings will not always be able to apply because a lot of them will only apply prior to a user being logged on. Because of that, even if you reboot a computer once, and after you logon, after the network is really up, the computer configuration will be noticed but not really applied until you do a reboot. So even if you rebooted once, you will still have to reboot again before it begins to install.

Make sense?

Mikdilly

So I should just continue to reboot the machine until the update kicks in? It's a vm if that makes a difference.

royal

Should only have to do it one more time. And make sure that you specified the software installation package using a UNC path and not a local path.

Mikdilly

After at least 3 reboots of the vm it still will not run the update, i can connect to the service pack shared folder thru \\server_name\servpack and drill down to the update folder.
The installation package is using a unc path.

somedudefromthenet

Mikdilly wrote:

After at least 3 reboots of the vm it still will not run the update, i can connect to the service pack shared folder thru \\server_name\servpack and drill down to the update folder.
The installation package is using a unc path.

Can you connect from the client computer you wish to install the service pack to the UNC path of all the installation files? Try checking the NTFS permissions on the shared folder for the service pack and all child objects.

If the NTFS permissions on the shared folder for the service pack is too restrictive the installation would not go through. You will just see a brief message about the service pack installation right before you reach the login menu on the computer you are try to install to.

Mikdilly

Yes, can connect from the XP machine that should be running the update and use the unc path to the shared folder and get to update.msi or update.exe, can run update.exe and start the update.
It seems as though there's something wrong in the setup of the group policy, the computer object of the xp machine is in the desktops ou which is where the group policy is setup but it's not seeing or pushing the update to the machine. Does event viewer track anything having to do with group policy?