Silent Remote Installation and User Level Change
Hey Experts!
This one might be a bit of a doozy, so I apologize in advance. I have about 100 computers that I need to install some software on that are scattered all around the building. I would prefer to do the install remotely and silently (ie, the user is unaware of anything going on). Not trying to sound lazy, but there is only 1 of me and my boss would like this done by next week (in addition to several other projects).
On top of the install, I need to make the users on the PC administrators so they can properly run the software. All of the users are domain accounts and should already be on the machine as Power Users. Each machine has different users though. So the second part of this would be to find out if there is a way to find all of the Power Users on a machine and change them to Administrators. This would preferably also be done silently in the background. If a user was currently logged in, it would either prompt them to log off and back on, or just make the change next time the login.
I hope this all makes sense and if not, please just let me know where I can clarify or expound. Thanks in advance!!
This one might be a bit of a doozy, so I apologize in advance. I have about 100 computers that I need to install some software on that are scattered all around the building. I would prefer to do the install remotely and silently (ie, the user is unaware of anything going on). Not trying to sound lazy, but there is only 1 of me and my boss would like this done by next week (in addition to several other projects).
On top of the install, I need to make the users on the PC administrators so they can properly run the software. All of the users are domain accounts and should already be on the machine as Power Users. Each machine has different users though. So the second part of this would be to find out if there is a way to find all of the Power Users on a machine and change them to Administrators. This would preferably also be done silently in the background. If a user was currently logged in, it would either prompt them to log off and back on, or just make the change next time the login.
I hope this all makes sense and if not, please just let me know where I can clarify or expound. Thanks in advance!!
DO you plan to leave the users as ADmins or change them back ?
Giving Admin rights is not a good idea for the long term.
You can also export lists of users/ groups using hte Ad tools and WIndows resource kit tools, as well as some free tools via
sysinternals.com ( now owned by MS )
I hope this helps !
Giving Admin rights is not a good idea for the long term.
You can also export lists of users/ groups using hte Ad tools and WIndows resource kit tools, as well as some free tools via
sysinternals.com ( now owned by MS )
I hope this helps !
ASKER
Yes we are on a domain. Unfortunately from my experience so far, you have to have admin rights for the software to run properly. The software is a catalog-type software that is poorly written, but requires for us to function right now. I can check to see if it will function as a power user, but my experience so far has been that it wants to be an admin.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
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First, the group problem should be very easy: to add a user to a group using a script, there is the command net localgroup /add. net help localgroup will show the syntax.
A domain startup script could make use of a batch like
if %computername%==xy net localgroup /add administrators xyuser
if %computername%==123 net localgroup /add administrators 123user
...
(of course an ugly solution but a solution ;)
You could of course use
net localgroup /add administrators domain-users
now everyone's admin everywhere (not on the servers of course)
very ugly...
What software would require admin rights to run? Ask the manufacturer for help, the admin thing is the worst that could happen to a managed environment :)
To deploy the software, you could see if the setup has an unattended switch ->documentation or ask the manufacturer how to deploy. If there is no such switch, use wininstall le to create an msi package and deploy it using either a startupscript or domain software deployment through GPOs.