New swinstall available

After some conversations and concerns regarding the swinstall.exe not working when triggered manually, I have made some changes to it, and published a new version that is a bit more suited for running manually.

The new swinstall file is called, oh-so-appropriately, swinstall_manual.exe, and can be found in:
\\do-tech\scripts$\swinstall_manual.exe

The changes on this swinstall are as follows:

• The LANDesk removal will trigger 1 MINUTE after running that file. (note that the only factor that will not allow the LANDesk agent to be removed is if you have the Management Suite Console installed. Otherwise, there's no stopping it.
• The NOD32 client will be installed 9 MINUTES after the LANDesk uninstaller starts
• The KACE Agent will be installed at about 3 MINUTES after NOD32
• The Dameware Agent will be installed about 2 MINUTES after KACE
•  Finally any left over VNC installs will be removed about 1 MINUTE after the dameware agent installer.

I have tested this on a more or less busy machine, and this time seems to work ok. Please keep me informed if there are any issues with the new times (I can further adjust those if needed). Unfortunately, as far as the total time concerned, the bottom line is that this method will take longer, simply  because we have to wait on the LANDesk agent to complete installation. I have tested parallel uninstalls, and anything that start after the LANDesk uninstaller while the LANDesk uninstaller is running, will invariably fail.
If you happen to run across any machines that have any of the other installers fail, just rerun the task after you verified that the LANDesk uninstaller has completed. I have seen that go anywhere from 30 seconds up to 30 minutes.

==============================================
For those of you who are may be interested in a little "efficient" trickery, here's a tip:
You can run the whole installer remotely without ever going to the machine using psexec.exe (can be found in \\do-tech\install$\pstools\psexec.exe)

You can run the installer against one machine like so:
- Open start / run  ... and type cmd
- Type:
psexec -d \\WorkstationName -u cvusd\taskrunner -p -e cmd.exe /c \\do-tech\scripts$\swinstall_manual.exe

Replace "WorkstationName" with the computer name OR IP.
Replace with the password corresponding to the user. I usually use TaskRunner, but you can use any account that would have admin privileges on the workstation (i.e: lisa carr). If you are using a username with a space though, remember to put it in quotes: i.e:  (...) -u "cvusd\lisa carr" (...)

To do the same thing with many workstations, you would type the same line, and use an input file instead.
For instance, if you have 3 computers to push the script to: 315-lab-01, 315-lab-02, 315-lab-03
you would create a text file that looks as follows:
315-lab-01
315-lab-02
315-lab-03
and save it as, computerlist.txt

Now the command line for psexec would be:
psexec -d @computerlist.txt -u cvusd\taskrunner -p -e cmd.exe /c \\do-tech\scripts$\swinstall_manual.exe

Note that the psexec method usually works on anything that you want to run remotely on a machine.
For instance, if you want to re-run a particular task remotely on one or more machines, the psexec line would look something like this:
psexec -d @computerlist.txt -u cvusd\taskrunner -p -e c:\windows\system32\schtasks.exe /RUN /TN "Install KACE Agent"

You can replace the "Install KACE Agent" with any task name that already exists on the target machine.

You can check whether the task is running by doing the same without any arguments:
psexec \\315-lab-01 -u cvusd\taskrunner -p -e c:\windows\system32\schtasks.exe
(note that I removed the -d, so as to get the results on your local screen, as opposed to remotely)

you can get some additional tips on using psexec more creatively, by going to the  help for it:
psexec.exe /?


Happy Installations!