How do you guys deploy the Creo installation to client computers?

[creodential]

Hello, 

we have been using Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager to deploy software to the clients so they can install it "manually" without having admin access. Creo used to be installed with a silent install, users needed temporary admin access to execute a batch file that triggered the silent install. 

This year we finally managed to put Creo in the SCCM as well. Unfortunately it does not work very reliably. It's less a problem if a former Creo version had been installed on the computer, with new laptops it pretty much never works. 

IT found out that when using SCCM the installation happens with user "system" (session 0) and then fails. If executed manually, as a local admin, "session 1" is used and it works just fine. 

SCCM is not supported and I'm out of ideas how to share and deploy the software to 12 sites in 5 countries. How do huge enterprises with hundreds or thousands of seats do this?

[dnordin]

SCCM, PDQ (https://www.pdq.com/), and our own "push" scripts.

The fact that the installation is running under the "system" account should not have an effect on the Creo Parametric installation itself besides the fact that the "system" account doesn't have certain aspects that a non-system account would have. For example, a "C:\users" folder. Your company security settings may limit what a local PC system account can access on the network.

I would suggest that you look at the installation script that is used in the SCCM application to determine if the installation script is trying to write anything to the C:\users area, access network areas, or such. You mentioned that a local admin account has no issues with the installation which leads me to believe the script is trying to access an area to which the system account does have access. If you could share the flow of the installation script, we may be able to help further.

The PTC silent installation method should not have issues running as the system account to my knowledge.

For debugging purposes, other items to check are the local PC event logs for any errors thrown during the failed installation process. Your security settings may be blocking some aspect of the installation. Additionally, SCCM writes lots of log files during installations. You mention that laptops rarely succeed. Laptops typically have different configurations than desktops (firewall settings, VPN settings, etc.). Those settings may be contributing to the laptop failures.

Regards,

Dan N.

[creodential]

Thanks for the quick reply. I'll reach out to the SME who created the SCCM package for the flow of the script you asked for. 

Regarding laptops - we have a unified installation on all computers, and all Creo computers are laptops. When the hardware gets delivered it gets wiped and the company image installed. Specific applications like Creo get then installed at the end of the process. 

What I meant with "new laptops" is that freshly installed laptops where no Creo version had been on, the installations over SCCM fails. Laptops that already had been in use and former version of Creo installed, can install Creo over the SCCM in ~70% of the time. The installation then fails with error code -609 and the following installation of creosvcs_64.exe also fails.