Reference: http://windowsdevcenter.com/pub/a/windows/2005/03/22/deploying_office.html
One simple way of deploying Office to your client machines is to copy the entire contents of the Office CD to a shared folder on your file server. For example, you might copy the CD files to the folder C:\Office on server TEST220 and then share this folder as Office. Now if you wanted to deploy Office to all the client computers in the Sales organizational unit (OU), you could create a new GPO called Install Office and link the GPO to the Sales OU. Then to deploy Office to computers in the Sales department, you would do the following:
- Open the Install Office GPO, right-click on Computer Configuration\Software Settings\Software Installation, and select New -> Package.
- Specify the UNC path to the .msi file for installing Office; for example, \\test220\office\pro11.msi for installing Office 2003 Professional.
- Choose Assigned as the deployment method.
If the package that you are trying to install contains a serial number you can prepare the install file by running the setup.exe file with a "/a" command.
Example: Start -> run -> CMD or Start then type CMD in the search bar then when you see "cmd" right click and "run as administrator". Navigate to the directory the CD is copied to or type something like this: (D being the shared drive name) "D:\LOCATION\SOFTWARE\VISIO\Setup.exe" /a
You should then be prompted with the location to store the MSI package that GPO needs to install the product.
Troubleshooting:
"No package in the software installation data in the Active Directory meets this criteria"
The added package initially does not appear, but will eventually show up after an F5 refresh or after exiting/re-editing the GPO -- however the package will never install on client machines. The only cure here that I found is to recreate the GPO from scratch; even exporting and importing settings into a new GPO does not work.
Special thanks: http://www.questconsultantsllc.com/blog/gpo-software-distribution
"There is no software installation data object in Active Directory"
1) you have check the permission on the file to allow full access to the file
2) "authenticated" users have full control over the location of the .msi file both with share permissions and NTFS permissions.
3) check in your domain controller security policy if there are any policies defined that state that you cannot install .msi files across the network
Special Thanks: http://www.experts-exchange.com/OS/Miscellaneous/Q_21998415.html