Manual client install fails

Avast Business Avast Distributed Network Manager
1

Anyone noticing my name showing up a lot knows that I’ve already tried automated deployment and building MSI packages to get my clients running. They are Vista or Windows 7 machines that previously had a trial version of the Avast Free product on them.

Since automated and MSI aren’t working, the next suggestion in the ADNM admin guide was manual. So, I copied the InstPkgs folder to a network drive and tried running the command “setup.exe /client /createprogress /sfx /sfxstorage .” from the mapped folder. Every attempt either fails without giving me even an install dialog box and just returning to a command prompt, or the one time I was able to run through the dialog, when I finished it came back after rebooting and says “License key is not entered” and Avast doesn’t even show in the system tray (Windows 7 machine). The machine doesn’t show a previous or current install in the control panel, but does report in the setup.log that the license expired 2 days ago. That’s not accurate for the SBS Suite license - it still has a few months to go, but the trial license on this machine was set to expire today. I specifically pointed the installation at that file, used the LOAD button during the manual installation dialog, and the license info on screen even showed correctly.

This whole process is messed up. Do I need to go around to every PC and uninstall Avast Free before installing SBS clients?

And, how do I get these machines to license and configure properly when all 3 methods of installation are failing? I’m worried about how messed up the Server installation is going to go. I can’t afford to screw that up, but I know the automated deployment and one attempt at manual have already failed. The MSI package for that one also did NOT build.

This is very frustrating for such a cool application to be so hard to deploy.

HELP!!!

2

Try Avast uninstall utility to remove Avast free. Avast 5 free is higher version than Avast Managed clients (i.e. 4.8), so I suppose that it may be your problem

3

Quite true. I’ve never tried to deploy an older version to a client that already had a newer version, but I’d say that it would give problems.

The uninstall utility will get them cleaned up, and unfortunately, you might have to run this on each machine, unless you can get it to run with a login script via group policy.

Sorry, but I haven’t seen your other threads yet, so I’ll ask this here. What did your remote install log say when you tried the automatic deploy method?

Did you have network discovery on and firewalls turned off, or did you try to add exceptions for the ports that the AMS needs to deploy and update the clients?
I’ve had a few problems with a select few Win 7 machines taking the automatic deployment, but the manually created MSI worked like a charm. The machines didn’t have an A/V installed though, so that’s probably why.