10338uk Activ Software Network Installation Guide

Applicable to:

Activstudio 3
Activprimary 3

Activ Software Network Installation Guide

This document is meant as a guide to installing Activ Software onto a Network in preparation for Deployment within MSI capable environments.

 

This guide assumes you are knowledgeable in your particular Network environment and the distribution mechanism employed therein.

 

For the purpose of this guide we will be using the standard Activstudio v3 CD/DVD as an example and using Microsoft Windows XP® as our operating system.  However all examples should be valid for any current Activ Software distributed media.  All our Windows based software products are created with 100% MSI installers and the objective of this document is to guide you as to how to extract these installs onto your network for distribution.

 

STEP 1

 

First of all insert the media into any machine connected to your network and if it ‘Auto Runs’ let the install get to the ‘Activsoftware Language Selection Dialog’ and then click the ‘X’ to quit out of it as shown below –

 

 

 

STEP 2

 

Next open an explorer window of the disc contents.  This can be achieved by clicking ‘Start’ – ‘My Computer’ from the Windows Desktop Start Menu.

Then ‘right click’ the optical drive which contains the media disc and select ‘Explore’ from the menu that appears.

 

Below is a screenshot of the standard file/folder layout on the root of the Activstudio v3.7 CD as you would see it with the ‘Details View’ option of the explorer window –

 

 

As you can see the names of the folders are self explanatory as to which installers are contained within.  So from here you can now navigate to find any particular installer you may require. 

 

STEP 3

 

For this example we will open the ‘ASPE’ folder which contains the main Activstudio application installer.  As you can see from the screenshot below there are many files here that make up the default installer (there are actually many more files in here than are shown), but the particular file we are interested in is the ‘ActivstudioPE3.msi’ file as highlighted –

 

 

STEP 4

 

Next you need to open the ‘Run’ dialog by clicking ‘Start’ – “Run…’ from the Windows Desktop Start Menu. 

 

In the ‘Open:’ box type: msiexec /a

 

And then click and drag the ‘ActivstudioPE3.msi’ file from your explorer window into the Run box so it should now look similar to this –

 

 

Then click the ‘OK’ button to continue…

 

STEP 5

 

This will now have launched the installer in ‘administrative’ installation mode.

 

For further Msiexec command-line options and general information see either –

 

Microsoft TechNet Library:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc759262.aspx

 

Or

 

InstallShield Documentation:

http://documentation.installshield.com/robo/projects/helplibdevstudio9/IHelpCmdLineMSI.htm

 

What you should see now is the ‘Welcome’ dialog to the administrative installer –

 

 

Click ‘Next >’ to continue…

 

STEP 6

 

You will then see the ‘Specify a Network Location’ dialog –

 

 

Here you can select any Network Location to copy the Installer files to in readiness for deployment.

 

In the example above we have selected a drive on our Server and the folder location as follows ‘F:\Distribution Point\Activstudio v3.7’.

 

Click ‘Install’ to continue when you have chosen your location.

 

The next dialog you see is the ‘Installing’ files dialog –

 

 

Let this complete and once the install has finished successfully you will see the ‘Completed’ dialog –

 

 

Click ‘Finish’ to end the installer routine.

STEP 7

 

Now the files are copied onto your network you can navigate to the folder the installer just created. 

 

In our example it looks like this –

 

 

This is now the fully uncompressed installer package.

 

However for both the Activstudio and Activprimary installers there are a couple of extra steps we need to perform before these are ready for deployment.

 

You can skip the following STEP 8 for all other Activ Software installers unless you need to create a Transform for modifying them.

 
STEP 8

 

First of all you need to download the ‘ASTransGen.exe’ and also a .PDF document you may find useful for overriding default program behaviour from here:

 

(NB Once downloaded, you will need to extract the contents)
 

Once you have these files copy them to the distribution location so it now looks like this in our example –

 

 

 

Then execute the ‘ASTransGen’ utility by double clicking it.

ASTransGen.exe is launched to create a transform (*.mst) file which is used by the installer during the deployment of the application.  This is to enable the customisation of the main software installation to fit your requirements.  In the case of Activstudio and Activprimary this allows the User Name, Organization and Serial Number to be automatically registered on each client machine during the installation process.  This must be carried out in order for the software to deploy correctly and for it to appear registered to the end user.

 

  

The Transform utility opens the following dialog –

Below are listed all the options that are available for the Transform utility:

MSI Location:

This specifies the location of the MSI file to be used for the Transform. Use the Browse button to locate it in the software distribution location.

In this example above we have selected the ‘ActivstudioPE3.msi’ file.

 

User Name, Organization and Serial Number:

These specify your installer registration details.  The Serial Number should have been provided with your Media or separate license agreement.

For software that does not require a Serial Number leave this entry blank.  (The serial number option is currently for Activstudio and Activprimary only)

Enable Changing Application Install Path:

Click this option to make changes to the default Application Installation path.

Enable Changing Shared Resources Install Path:

Click this option to make changes to the default Shared Resources Installation path.  This is only used for applications that need the Shared Resources folder structure.

Note that changing this option will require the equivalent option set for Shared Resources in the Admin.ini file otherwise the application will still point at the default location.

Enable Changing ALLUSERS Property:

Click this to select one of the options for installing the software as a “Per-User Installation” or “Per-Machine Installation”.   

Enable Changing REBOOT Property:

Click this to select one of the options for either Forcing a Reboot or Suppressing any Reboots.

For further details regarding these property options and others available to the MSI installer, please refer to the Microsoft MSDN and Windows Installer Guide here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa370905(VS.85).aspx

Note that if unsure about any of these options, then leave them disabled and the application installer will use its default values.

Add Transform Setting to the RM Community Connect 3 ini file:

This is only required for RM Community Connect 3 networks and if selected will add the necessary Transform setting entry to the RM ini file.  This ini file is something that you as the RM network administrator need to create and add to the root of the folder along with the ASTransGen.exe utility.

N.B If you are experiencing problems with creating the RM Community Connect 3 ini file, as this is not an Activsoftware file, please contact RM for advice.

 

Admin.ini:

The Admin.ini button launches the Admin.ini file configuration dialog – 

Selecting anyone of the check boxes will enable that key entry and allow you to either enter the necessary details manually or use the ‘Browse’ button to navigate for the required data.

  

Below are listed all the options that are available for the Admin utility:

Key 0: User Profile Path:

Sets the users profile path. 

Key 1: Layout Filename:

The layout filename to be used by the program.

Key 2: Settings Filename:

The settings filename to be used by the program.

Key 3: Shared Resources Path:

The path where shared resources can be opened from and saved to.

Key 4: Personal Resources Path:

The path where personal resources can be opened from and saved to.

Key 8: Shared Resources Path:

The initial path for opening and saving shared resources for new users only.

Key 9: Personal Resources Path:

The initial path for opening and saving personal resources for new users only.

Key 10: Common Application Data Path:

The path where the program will look for application data which is common to all users.

Note these settings should only be used when overriding any of the corresponding application defaults.

Note the folder paths entered in any of the above options must be the paths as seen by the Client Machine, these can however be UNC paths.

Help:

Launches the ‘Admin ini.pdf’ document if it was downloaded and placed in the folder as in our example.

 

 

Clicking ‘OK’ will commit any key entries to the ‘Admin.ini’ file which will be created in the root of the software distribution location.

This file is used to override certain default program behaviour on the client machines and is deployed along with the main application into its app path –

e.g. C:\Program Files\Activ Software\ActivstudioPE3

After clicking ‘OK’ you will be taken back to the Main Transform Generator Dialog.

Generate Transform:

Click this button to actually generate the transform file. A dialog box will be displayed to allow for changing the location and filename of the transform if required.

A message box will appear when the process has completed, click ‘OK’ on this and ASTransGen.exe application will automatically close down.

Important Note:

Please be aware that if there already exists a license file (*.dat) on the target client machines from a previous Activprimary or Activstudio installation, the license information held in this file will be used instead which will override the transform file data.  Therefore if you wish to use the transform to register your v3 software please make sure you delete any license files from your target machines.  Valid license files will be named either ‘ap2.dat’ or ‘as2pe.dat’ and can be found in –

 e.g. C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Activ Software.

STEP 9