Instructions

To perform a silent install of Adobe Acrobat Reader 9.0, follow these steps:

1. Download the install file from Adobe here .

2. Run the installer, and wait until the setup dialog appears asking you for a destination folder to install to.

3. Leave that dialog open, and in Windows Explorer navigate to C:\Documents and Settings\usernamel\Local Settings\Application Data\Adobe\Reader 9.0\Setup Files\READER9 .  This contains the extracted setup files you will need for silent installs.

4. Copy the files to another location, and cancel the open dialog box.

5. Now to perform a silent install using whatever deployment tool you wish (eg GPO, SMS, SCCM, SCE) you simply execute the MSI with the usual “quiet” switches, eg…

msiexec /qb /i AcroRead.msi

ADM Template for Acrobat Reader 9

If you’re performing a deployment to a business network you might find this ADM handy.  It lets you control three behaviours of Reader 9 for which I find the default settings annoying:

• automatic updates
• EULA on first run
• browser integration

Download it here: Adobe Acrobat Reader 9 ADM Template (322 downloads)


Do the people at Microsoft realise that Google is better for finding stuff on the Microsoft website than their own search engine?  Google, first result is spot on.  Live Search, a whole bunch of crap.

A lot has been said in the Exchange community about the decision by Microsoft to remove (or not provide) Exchange Server 2007 awareness from the built-in backup utility shipped with Windows Server 2007.  The MS Exchange Team blog explains that a little here :

About 2 years ago, when the Exchange team started testing Exchange 2007 on Windows 2008, we found that the built-in backup application had changed dramatically. Decisions that drove that change by the Windows team are not the subject of this post, but it is fair to say that the Windows team did not make the decision lightly.

When we evaluated the features of Windows Server Backup, it was clear that the backup and restore experience on Windows 2008 would not be the experience that existing Exchange customers have been used to for so long. Because we had feedback from several customers who told us they would rather get a more full-featured backup solution for their Exchange servers, a decision was made not to provide an Exchange-aware backup solution for Windows 2008 in Exchange 2007 Service Pack 1.

This week they announced the following:

Although we can’t share all of the details now, we thought that this issue was important enough to announce a decision we recently made. We have decided to develop and release a VSS-based plug-in for Windows Server Backup that will enable you to properly backup and restore Exchange 2007 with a built-in Windows 2008 backup application.

This is good news for Exchange customers looking for inexpensive backup solutions.  I’m a bit curious though about this statement:

While you will be able to backup and restore Exchange 2007 on Windows 2008, you should not expect feature parity with the Windows 2003 NTBackup experience. There will not be the same level granularity and control that NTBackup provides and backups will be limited to the local server only.

NT Backup was about as featureless as you could get when it comes to Exchange backups, so I don’t quite understand how you can take a step backward from that.  It will be interesting to see the result when it ships thats for sure.

Windows Server 2007 supports out of the box most of the pre-requisites for SQL Server 2005 with the exception of the IIS components required for some SQL Server 2005 features.  To install the IIS 7.0 pre-requisite components to be able to perform a complete installation of SQL Server 2005 on Windows Server 2008 you can run the following ServerManagerCmd.exe command:

C:\>ServerManagerCmd.exe -i Web-Server Web-Asp-Net Web-Http-Redirect Web-Windows
-Auth Web-Metabase Web-WMI
............................................

Start Installation...
[Installation] Succeeded: [Web Server (IIS)] Management Tools.
[Installation] Succeeded: [Web Server (IIS)] Web Server.
[Installation] Succeeded: [Web Server (IIS)] Performance.
[Installation] Succeeded: [Web Server (IIS)] IIS 6 Management Compatibility.
[Installation] Succeeded: [Web Server (IIS)] Security.
[Installation] Succeeded: [Web Server (IIS)] Application Development.
[Installation] Succeeded: [Web Server (IIS)] Common HTTP Features.
[Installation] Succeeded: [Web Server (IIS)] Health and Diagnostics.
[Installation] Succeeded: [Web Server (IIS)] IIS 6 Metabase Compatibility.
[Installation] Succeeded: [Web Server (IIS)] IIS 6 WMI Compatibility.
[Installation] Succeeded: [Web Server (IIS)] IIS Management Console.
[Installation] Succeeded: [Web Server (IIS)] Directory Browsing.
[Installation] Succeeded: [Web Server (IIS)] Static Content.
[Installation] Succeeded: [Web Server (IIS)] Default Document.
[Installation] Succeeded: [Web Server (IIS)] ISAPI Filters.
[Installation] Succeeded: [Web Server (IIS)] HTTP Errors.
[Installation] Succeeded: [Web Server (IIS)] HTTP Logging.
[Installation] Succeeded: [Web Server (IIS)] HTTP Redirection.
[Installation] Succeeded: [Web Server (IIS)] ISAPI Extensions.
[Installation] Succeeded: [Web Server (IIS)] Request Filtering.
[Installation] Succeeded: [Web Server (IIS)] Static Content Compression.
[Installation] Succeeded: [Web Server (IIS)] Request Monitor.
[Installation] Succeeded: [Web Server (IIS)] Windows Authentication.
[Installation] Succeeded: [Web Server (IIS)] .NET Extensibility.
[Installation] Succeeded: [Web Server (IIS)] ASP.NET.
<100/100>

Success: Installation succeeded.

The components included in the command line are:

• Web-Server
• Web-Asp-Net
• Web-Http-Redirect
• Web-Windows-Auth
• Web-Metabase
• Web-WMI

SQL Server 2005 setup will now pass all pre-requisite checks when installing on Windows Server 2008.

Microsoft Technet has an excellent resource page for the Windows Server 2008 Server Manager (ServerManagerCMD.exe) command-line tool here.

One of the highlights is a complete list of the role, role service, and feature command identifiers for installing Windows Server 2008 components.

This is an excellent reference and very handy when configuring a Windows Server 2008 server.

Link: Overview of Server Manager Commands