Office 2010 - Packaged application deployment failure due to packaging tool 'wrapper'

Hi there

Got a bit of a strange Office 2010 deployment issue, not sure if anyone can help but thought I'd post anyway.

We are deploying Office 2010 domain wide via SCCM 2007. However the issue is not connected with SCCM 2007 (as far as I am concerned) so I saw little point in posting under the SCCM topic.

Basically, we deploy Office 2010 using a .cmd script configured in the SCCM package program.

All this .cmd script does is copy the install folder down to a local folder, checks to see if Office 2010 is installed, if so it exits, if not it proceeds to running msiexec.exe against the .msi file and corresponding .mst file.

All well and good.

We had a lot of success, up until we encountered a particular problem.

Now, I should point out that the Office 2010 package was created a third-party vendor for us, and they included for some reason a very annoying application wrapper, which when Office 2010 installs (or doesn't install!) causes an entry to appear in Add/Remove

Programs, let's say it's exactly 'Office 2010 XYZ123'.

The problem arises when for whatever reason Office 2010 fails to initially install (as can happen) on its first deployment run.

Even though Office 2010 does NOT install, this wrapper appears in Add/Remove Program stating that 'Office 2010 XYZ123' is installed. But Office 2010 is not installed.

Ok, so another deployment is run against a pc with that wrapper showing in Add/Remove programs, and this is what happens:

the second (literally) that the msiexec.exe line of the .cmd script is run (the important bit) the install instantly exists - and if you look in the application logs, at that exact time it will say 'Office 2010 XYZ123 installed successfully'. But it hasn't

installed at all.

Testing this on various machines which have this wrapper showing in Add/Remove Programs, they all behave the same way: as soon as the msiexec.exe line is run it instantly exits yet reports in the application log that 'Office 2010 XYZ123 installed successfully'.

Anyone encountered this behaviour?

From a high level, it appears that as soon as msiexec.exe starts to run against the .msi file, it runs a very quick check, sees that 'Office 2010 XYZ123' is already showing as being installed in Add/Remove Programs, then exits.

I had a look at the .mst file, and the Product Name entry in the .mst file is EXACTLY 'Office 2010 XYZ123'.

Could this be the issue? Would changing the product name in the .mst file prevent msiexec.exe from 'thinking' that Office 2010 is already installed?

A line of code was added near the start of the .cmd script, which uninstalls the wrapper if it finds it (in the registry) but this has only been partially successful.

If anyone has encountered this or can shed any light, please feel free to share your experiences!

Regards,

John H.

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