Has anyone got AutoCad 2010 to deploy with Group policies? I'm having trouble!

[samofawe]

I'm trying to deploy several different deployments of CAD 2010 to a large amount of computers in our office, but whenever I try to launch a ACAD deployment that was installed via group policy it doesn't start and I get an error message that 'adui18res.dll not found'. I've had a bit of a read of the network administrator's manual and I suspect the problem may be happening because I'm not rolling out the language pack msi (can anyone confirm that adui18res.dll is a language pack file?). I've tried adding the language pack as a separate software installation pack but when I try to add the two mst files that are specified in the manual (gpo.mst and the one with my deployment's name in it) I get an error message saying 'An error occured accessing the software installation data in the active directory. See the event log for additional details'. The error message in the event log is "Software Installation encountered the following error: SQL query syntax invalid or unsupported.". I'm guessing that there might be something wrong with the AcadLP.msi?? Can anyone provide any advice on how to get it working? I've managed to get Revit 2010 to install via group policies just fine but autocad seems to hate me.

Oh, and for reference the ACAD msi file has the right mst files (one with my deployment name and gpo.mst) added to it in the group policy management console. The ACAD deployment also works fine when I deploy it by starting the shortcut.

Any help would be brilliant.

Thanks!

[Norton_cad]

I vaigley remember encountering an error message like the one you mention, when creating an MSI for network deployment. It couldn't find a DLL file either. It had something to do with the order it reads DLL files, as the errant file was available on the system.
I forget how I changed the order sequence, and maybe someone else can chime in.

In the meantime attached is a MSI creation guide from a couple of releases ago that might help. Perhaps creating an all in one MSI for Revit/ACAD deployment would be better?

[samofawe]

Thanks for the reply. I'll take a look at making my own MSI files if I can't get this to work, but for now I'd prefer just to use Autocad's with the mst transform files.

[forum1301]

Hey what did you ever do about the adui18res.dll problem, I am having the same issue?

[samofawe]

Sadly, nothing.

I'm trying to get it to install via computer startup scripts now and am running into a whole different world of trouble. I'm glad to hear it's not just me though, hopefully autodesk will get their act together and do something.

Let me know if you work it out!

[jvedio]

Having the same problem myself just doing a stand alone network deployment.

[Norton_cad]

don't wait for the factory, they are a tad busy I'm sure.
Write your own...
It will be quicker, trust me...

[samofawe]

For anyone interested, I ended up deploying it with a startup batch file script rather than trying to find what's wrong with deploying it with group policies. It's not ideal, but in some ways it is better as doing it this was is virtually the same as double clicking the deployment yourself which means that all the support programs and files get installed (the C++ and .NET runtimes for example) along with Autocad. This does not happen when you install AutoCad through a group policy, unless you create new software packages for each of the support programs.

In any case, this is a brief run down of how I did it. I'm fairly new to the whole enterprise computing scene so there's probably a few flaws in my method but hopefully it saves someone a bit of time working out what I took a while to. Hopefully it'll help me remember how I did it too!

Bear in my that in my situation I need to push out the deployments to computers rather than users. This is as there are quite a few different types of deployments that we use and users will sometimes log in to other's computers. I imagine it'd be similar if you want to push it out to users rather than computers but I haven't had any experience with that.

Anyway, first, I made a batch file for each of the deployments. They all looked something like this:

@ECHO OFF
 
rem Computer StartUp Script for the 32 bit SA version of CAD10
 
IF EXIST "C:/Program Files/AutoCad 2010/acad.exe" GOTO END

start /wait "Installing AutoCAD"

\\server\share\Autocad\Deployments\CAD10_32bit\AdminImage\setup.exe /qb /I \\server\share\installs\Autocad\Deployments\CAD10_32bit\AdminImage\CAD10_32bit.ini  /language en-us

ECHO If you are seeing this message please don't press any keys.
PAUSE

END

exit

I think that is fairly self explanatory but basically it checks to see if ACAD is already installed by looking for the acad.exe file, and if it isn't there proceeds to start the deployment. I tried to get it to look for a registry key instead but it was a bit finicky so I just gave up. Also note that the install path in the script is just taken from deployment shortcut's target.

The one problem I found with the script is that, while the /wait command works, it only waits for the setup.exe file to finish running before continuing. What this means is that the setup would initialise but then terminate right after and nothing would install. This is because the setup.exe file calls other executable in the deployment, however the batch file sadly isn't smart enough to know this. I thought of a couple of ways around this such as making it wait for a set time rather than just for setup.exe to terminate but finally decided just to put a pause at the end which means the batch file will just sit there waiting which lets the deployment run its course and install completely. Once it's done the login prompt won't appear for a few minutes before the 'running startup script' box times out. Obviously this isn't ideal but it's a few minutes once a year so it doesn't matter that much.

I added the "ECHO If you are seeing this message please don't press any keys" just in case the script is run visibly (by default it shouldn't but you can change that in the GP) so that the user doesn't prematurely end the install. I should also point out that if you choose to do it my way, any additional startup scripts won't be run after the pause in the CAD install script as the startup script seems to time out and just skip over any other scripts. This isn't really a huge issue as they'll run on the next startup as the script will exit properly as it'll detect that acad is installed.

Each of the deployments need to be put on a network share where domain computers have full access. This is because the batch files are executed before a user is logged on so are executed under the computer account.

Then I made a group policy for each deployment and added the batch file under Computer Configuration > Windows Settings > Scripts > Startup. I think it's important to add the UNC path rather than a path with a mapped share (so something like \\server\share\batchfile.bat rather than X:\share\batchfile.bat) as the script will run before any shares are mapped.

From there it's as simple as assigning OUs or individual computers to the group policy. Acad will begin to install when the user's computer is next rebooted!

Also, one thing that was really confusing for me was that on Vista machines the script would appear not to run, but some time after startup I'd look on the computer and find that it'd magically installed itself. This is because, by default, Vista runs startup scripts asynchronously which means that it allows users to log in even before the script has finished running. This might be a good or bad thing, but for us it is better to have the program installed before the user could log in. You can disable it if you like by going into the group policy and going computer configuration > administrative templates > system > scripts > run logon scripts synchronously. You'll also find options to run the script as visible or not there too.

[t.sutton]

Greetings all

First post here so be nice.

I've spent the last few days / weeks getting AutoCAD to deploy via GPO and have run into a few issues so thought I'd post the solutions here. This is still development work so please don't take it as gospel just yet!

The missing "adui18res.dll" file is because the msi package didn't copy down the file from in admin install point. In my case not only did it miss this but about 500 other files from there. These missing files were also chm's that were preventing the help and "new features workshop" from working.
I wrote an xcopy script to download the extra files like this -

    REM     check if done previously
    if exist “c:\Program Files\AutoCAD 2010\dllsynch.flg” exit else
    goto copy

    :copy
    REM    synchronise dll files from install point
    start /wait xcopy /d/e/h/c/y “\\domain\dfs\it\Deployment\ACAD2010_Fixed\AdminImage\x86\acad\en-us\Acad\Program Files\Root” “c:\Program Files\AutoCAD 2010\”

    REM    create dllsynch.flg to prevent rerun.
    echo done > “c:\Program Files\AutoCAD 2010\dllsynch.flg”

    Exit

I've run into two main issues with sub-applications not being installed by the package. These are the latest version of DirectX and the 2008 C++ Redist package. The C++ package was just a case of grabbing the download from MS and attaching the msi to the deployment GPO. The DirectX update was a bit of a nightmare and I've only got working via a startup script. That looks like this:

    REM    Check if dxwebsetup.exe exists already
    if exist %windir%\system32\DirectX\DXWebSetup.exe exit else

    REM     make folder and copy down base installer
    md %windir%\system32\DirectX

    xcopy /c/y \\domain\dfs\it\deployment\directx\dxwebsetup.exe %windir%\system32\DirectX\

    REM     install DirectX
    %windir%\system32\DirectX\DXWebSetup.exe /c:”DXwSetup.exe /windowsupdate” /q /r:n

    Exit

After that it has been the ever lovely .NET 3.5 SP1 issue which has cropped up on other applications. In AutoCAD that produces fatal stop errors of which AutoDesk is aware and point you at the MS site to download the SP again. Personally I've had iffy results with the web based setup.exe but downloading the standalone package seems to nail all the tricky ones. Unfortunately this is about 240Mb so it's not exactly something you can just whiz over to people. The only copy I've managed to find so far is here but I hope MS have it on their site too somewhere. If you find it, please let me know and I'll alter this.

Other than those minor issues and getting them to deploy / install in order it has been the usual AutoCAD install, ie: fiddly as hell!! I'm keeping an almost running diary going on my blog if anyone wants to keep up with my progress ..... and I will get this working smoothly via GPO!

[samofawe]

Good luck, I admire your persistence and patience!

We're lucky enough to only be a fairly small business so even though the startup scripts that link to the deployments don't work sometimes it's not too much of a big deal as we can just go around and manually fix it up. I'm guessing you're from a bigger company though so you probably don't have that luxury - it's a real shame that autodesk couldn't get it right from the get go (and don't even appear to be trying to rectify it), especially considering that their deployment system works fine!

As for your .NET 3.5 SP1 issue, I think it should be avaliable for deployment via WSUS? I'm not sure if that's an option for you but it'd be an easy way to push it out to your users.

Thanks for the link to your blog too, I've subscribed - it seems to have lots of interesting and relevant stuff!

Good luck with it all, keep us updated just in case autodesk don't have the issue fixed for 2011 CAD and make sure not to do something rash in frustration (I know I nearly did a few times). :P