It’s been a while since I played with (or even used  ) Admin Studio SMS Edition. It seems that MS/Macrovision have updated it beyond the free SMS version 6 they were offering, to version 8. It can be downloaded from: http://www.macrovision.com/products/adminstudio/adminstudio/editions/smsdownload.shtml . I’ve got no ...

I’ve downloaded the recent ITMU update for SMS 2003 that’s been mentioned at various places. One first annoyance is that I had to uninstall my current ITMU through Add/Remove Programs. Otherwise the installation would fail with ‘an error’ – but I couldn’t find anything that told me what error! So my ...

Well the rain held off until I got home – so so much for that reducing the number of people who actually attended. However there were noticeable spaces, so MS were right to overbook it (as is the general practise anyway). So what did I get out of “The Best of MMS”? I’ve got to say that those 15 min breaks weren’t long enough.There were some ...

Sort of. As you may (or may not) know, I live and work in the UK. In my previous job I worked with SMS and I still keep in touch with the online community I discovered. And it's through that community that I found this: http://spaces.msn.com/members/alfred/Blog/cns!1peScUDIRoEIsu-1YenjVb8w!301.entry . At the end of September, Microsoft will ...

Something that I’ve talked about before is the similarity and the annoyances in the SQL tables and field names using in Queries and Web Reports. Way back in October last year I saw some similarities and I wanted to investigate them further. It wasn’t until February this year that a posting on the MSSMS list prompted me to have a look ...

Well today I created, tested and swore at a package to uninstall the old M.I.S. software and fix Quick Address Pro. It turns out that the old M.I.S. software won’t uninstall cleanly when run under SMS, generating 1605 errors in the Event logs. That’s no great surprise considering the fudge we have to do to get it to work in the first ...

Sometimes the answer to the most confounding problem, is the simplest thing in the world. Or at least that’s what I found when I tried resetting up my SMS test bed. I like building things (and rebuilding them) so I think nothing of wiping Active Directory and re-installing software. The same goes for SMS. Except, as one has done this ...

SMS is becoming like second nature to me. I know it so well, the moment that a user called me up last week and requested that QuickTime be installed on their PC, I could immediately visual the whole process – the collections, the advert, the check boxes; is seem absolutely obvious as to how to do it. Even thought I had never done it ...

I’ve taken the plunge and downloaded and installed the evaluation version of AdminStudio. What convinced me to do this was of the good experience I’ve had with AdminStudio SMS Edition, and in particular the repackager component. But I now need to produce MSIs which have non-default permissions on the Installation Directory  and ...

I’ve been working on packaging a few work related software packages recently (more on those trials later). But I’ve just had a thought that wouldn’t it be nice if one could create administrative installation points for MSI files at a click of a button, rather than resorting to the command line or Start —> Run. Well now you can. Announcing ...