Executive Summary:
Microsoft's Group Policy Software Installation works in conjunction with Microsoft Group Policy and Microsoft Active Directory (AD) to manage applications' life cycles, including their deployment. Unfortunately, not all applications are designed to be deployed with Group Policy Software Installation. For example, Microsoft Visio 2007 Viewer wasn't designed to be deployed that way. Although you can make some tweaks that enable you use Group Policy Software Installation for deployment, one possible consequence is that these applications don't register their file extensions, so the auto-install feature doesn't work. Using Microsoft Visio 2007 Viewer as an example, here's how you can use ADSI Edit to manually add the file extensions to the appropriate Group Policy Object (GPO), thereby fixing the problem. |
Applications that you deploy
with Group Policy Software
Installation sometimes don’t
register their file extensions.
Consequently, when someone
double-clicks a file that has an
extension of one of those published
applications, the autoinstall
feature doesn’t work.
This situation most often occurs
in applications that weren’t
designed for deployment
through Group Policy Software
Installation but were deployed
anyway through some minor
tweaks. (If you’re unfamiliar
with Group Policy Software
Installation, see technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/en/library/4bdaf0f7-b7ac-41a6-9d25-9eab6aa1965c1033.mspx.)
One way to solve the file
extension problem is to use
ADSI Edit to manually add the
file extensions to the Group Policy Object (GPO) that publishes
the applications. To show
you how this solution works,
let’s walk through the steps
you’d use to add the file extension
for Microsoft Visio 2007
Viewer, which unfortunately
wasn’t designed for deployment
through Group Policy Software
Installation. Here are the steps
you need to follow:
1. Download Visio 2007
Viewer (visioviewer.exe) from
the Microsoft Download
Center (www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=D88E4542-B174-4198-AE31-6884E9EDD524&displaylang=en). You’ll need
WinZip to unzip this file. If you
don’t have WinZip, you can use
7-Zip, which is freeware that you
can download from www.7-zip.org.
2. Double-click visioviewer
.exe. In the window that appears,
right-click visioviewer.exe and
select the option to extract the
files to a new folder. After the
extraction operation completes,
the folder should contain five
files, including vviewer.msi.
Copy that folder to the share you
use for GPO-installed packages.
3. Create a new GPO, go to
the User Configuration\Software
Installation folder in the
Microsoft Management Console
(MMC) Group Policy snap-in,
and use the vviewer.msi file
to publish the application.
Because Microsoft
didn’t create Visio
2007 Viewer with
GPO installation
in mind, the file
extension .vsd
doesn’t get registered.
4. Obtain the
globally unique
identifier (GUID) of
the GPO you used
to publish Visio
2007 Viewer. To get it, open the
GPO and move to the root level,
which is the level above Computer
Configuration. Right-click
and select Properties. The GUID
appears in the Unique name
field.
5. Use ADSI Edit to edit the
GPO. (If you don’t have this tool
installed already, you can find
it in the Windows Server 2003
Support Tools.) Under the Start
menu, select Run. In the Run
dialog box, type adsiedit.msc
and click OK. After ADSI Edit
opens, go to the Action menu
and select the Connect to option
to open the Connection Settings
dialog box. In the dialog
box’s Connection Point section,
click Select a well known Naming
Context and select Domain
from the list. In the Computer
section, enter the name of your
nearest domain controller (DC).
Click OK.
6. Navigate to Domain,
DC=<your AD domain’s
LDAP name>,CN=System,
CN=Policies,CN=<your GPO’s
GUID>,CN=User,CN=Class
Store,CN=Packages. Here you’ll
find representations for all your
GPOs. If you have more than one
GPO, you’ll have to manually
find the correct one by doubleclicking
each GPO and checking
the value of the displayName
attribute, which needs to be Visio
Viewer in this case.
7. After you find the correct
GPO, look for its fileExtPriority
attribute and open
it. (If you don’t
see this attribute,
clear the Show only
attributes that have
values check box.)
In the dialog box
that appears, enter
the extensions you
want to associate
with this package.
Visio 2007
Viewer’s extension
is .vsd, so you’d enter
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