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rpartingtonFlag for United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

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Software required to convert .exe to .msi for group policy install

Does anyone know of any Free software that actually works when it claims to convert/package exe files into msi files that can be pushed across the network and install via GPO.
I know there paid for tools that do this but before we purchase a paid for solution I would like to know if anyone has any recommendations of Free packages that do this and when you push the software out for install via GPO it actually installs as I have read of plenty of people who have gone down the free route,
its packaged the exe into an msi,
but when its pushed out for install via gpo it just fails.
So anyone that can recommend one thats free that they have actually used successfully please.
If not I will have to purchase one, but free is always preferred to paid :)
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Scott Gorcester
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lamaslany
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Avatar of Antoine Van Duivenvoorde
Antoine Van Duivenvoorde

You can create a .zap file to deploy an exe with gpo.
See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/231747
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZAP_File
As an alternative, can I suggest using WSUS to distribute your apps instead of GPO.

The standard Microsoft WSUS (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/bb332157) allows you to control what Windows updates get installed and when, and provides reporting of how many machines have installed the updates, which are having errors, etc.  Also, since the WSUS server downloads the updates once, and all domain clients get their updates from your WSUS server, internet bandwidth usage is reduced.

However, WSUS (which is free) also allows what it calls "Local" updates, by which it means updates defined by admins.  MS doesn't provide a UI for creating or managing local updates, but one is available (also for free) at http://localupdatepubl.sourceforge.net/.
Meant to add, local updates can be MSI, MSP or EXE.
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ASKER

Apologies for the delay
Thank you everyone.

My main concern was third party updates and new software installs. We have many programs that use setup.exe and we have to manually install them. we would like to use GPO to do them but GPO needs MSIs.