[[Mathias Chauvin]] - IT stuff

What’s going on?!?!? It looks like I’m doing a lot of MS stuff these last few days
Well… yes I do!

Here is something I’ve been fighting for a couple of hours, so if it can save someone’s time…

In order to have a backup for remote users’ laptops (Yes, a folder redirection is not really the best way to do it when some of your users are 99.9% working from remote office), I’ve chosen to provide them with a “manual sync” using SyncToy, that users can run on their own!

The first thing to do is then to have SyncToy installed on every laptops that are to be “manually” synced. As users do not have Administrators privileges, the best way to install the tool is to set a GPO that applies to the computer (given that the tool is available in msi package).

Doing all the necessary, one might encounter this issue: The software does not get installed on the computer that are in the OU where the GPO is defined…
Having a look at the Application log in the Event Viewer, one may see this error:

Event Type:     Error
Event Source:   Application Management 
Event Category: None
Event ID:       102
Description:
The install of application "Package Name" from policy "Policy Name"
failed.
The error was : The installation source for this product is not 
available.

The solution? Well, the msi packages need to be installed in a DFS share to be available when the computer boots.
If none seems available on the domain, one may use the SysVol share…

Follow up:

Here is how I’ve proceeded:

1/ Unpack SyncToy to get the three required msi packages
The msi packages must be installed in the following order:

1. Synchronization.msi
2. ProviderServices.msi
3. SyncToySetup.msi

2/ Prepare the GPO.
On the selected OU, create a new GPO “deploySyncToy“.
This is done to get a specific path for this GPO under SysVol share.

3/ Prepare the packages to be distributed over the network
Using msiexec.exe, the msi packages can be prepared for a network installation:

U:\DownloadedApps\SyncToy>misexec /a ProviderServices.msi 
TARGETDIR=path_to_dfs_share
U:\DownloadedApps\SyncToy>misexec /a Synchronization.msi 
TARGETDIR=path_to_dfs_share
U:\DownloadedApps\SyncToy>misexec /a SyncToySetup.msi
TARGETDIR=path_to_dfs_share

No “human defined” DFS being available in the domain I’m using, path_to_dfs_share has been set to something like this:

\\domain.com\SysVol\domain.com\Policies\{XX-GPO-ID-XX}\Machine\Applications\SyncToy

4/ Setting the GPOe
The GPO has been prepared in Step 1. In the Computer Configuration / Software Settings / Software installation, select New / Package. Browse to the dfs path to find the msi. Add three packages, one for each msi to deploy. Rename the “package definition” to make sure that they will be installed in the appropriate order.

5/ Applying the GPO
If you want to test the GPO on a PC “immediately", run

c:>gpupdate /force

.
The PC then needs to be rebooted…

6/ Conclusion
You might be done!!!
Obviously, in the idea to have a manual sync, two login VBscripts have also been developped to create a Shortcut to SyncToy on the user’s desktop, and to “preconfigure” SyncToy (defining a Folder Pair)