All About Admin Images
Best Practices for Admin Images from
Setting up to Deployment
All About Admin Images Summary
• What is an admin image
• What are the advantages of having one
• What are my options when creating one
• How do I set it up and customize it
• Troubleshooting permissions
• Best practices from creating through deploying an image
What is an Admin Image?
The Installation Manager is the Keystone
This is where all types of Installations happen, including
Admin Images
Admin Images are defined as:
An administrative image allows configurable installations of
SOLIDWORKS products from a single network location
What are the advantages of having an Admin Image?
As an IT or Admin this method is very time efficient if there
are more than 5 to 10 users
It can provide an easy platform that can be modified to meet
all users needs
It creates a workflow that has every user on the same page,
yet still gives users the ability to customize their SOLIDWORKS
settings
Ease of troubleshooting
Easy to work with if you follow the correct steps
What are my options when creating one?
First from your installation disc or download locate:
These three executables/folders are ways to install any prereqs
needed
The Setup executable is most common and is what we will use
What are my options when creating one?
Important in any installation upgrade process—always do the following
before installing:
Disable any anti-virus software that may be running before installing
Turn your User Account Control settings (UAC) to Never Notify
Run the SETUP.EXE by Right Clicking and select Run as Administrator
These three things will solve 80% of issues that come up in installations
What are my options when creating one?
Now to answer the rest of the
question: what options do I have
in creating an admin image?
The installation manager is your
keystone (remember that)
Once the Installation Manager
dialog box comes up you will see
a Welcome Page like this one:
There are two options to choose from for an admin image
“Create a new image using setting and files from
“Create a new image using default settings” an existing image (smaller download)”
You create a brand new Can browse to an existing image
shiny image that is fresh and and base the new one off of
clean and you can modify it that one, keeping your criteria
accordingly (like the cherry the same as before (like trading
red 1968 Corvette you in your minivan for a Porsche
always wanted) Cayenne)
How do I set it up and customize it?
First setting it up:
In the Welcome Page of the installation
manager select the first option:
Select “Administrative Image”
“Create a new image using default
settings”
Click “Next”, then the serial number
page will come up. If your serial
numbers auto populate great but
always double check them and see if
more need to be added
How do I set it up and customize it?
Select “Next”
On the summary page make sure the Image is going to the location you want
and make sure the check box is checked for the terms for SOLIDWORKS
Then select “Download and Create Image”:
It will then download the installation files and finish the install
Then you will be on the Finish page of the installation Manager
I would highly recommend before clicking the customize button to check the
little box that says “Show me how to install this image on a client”, then
browsing through the admin image area to learn more
How do I set it up and customize it?
Notice when you click customize on the installation manager the Admin
Image Option Editor pops up
This is where we will do most of the rest of our work
In case it doesn’t pop up this is where it is located:
How do I set it up and customize it?
In the Option Editor there
are many things we can
discuss
We will break it down into
three areas
Setup
Deploy Manually
Deploy Automatically
How do I set it up and customize it?p
First, I would identify all of your players who are going to need SolidWorks
Then, break them into groups according to what they will need for software reqs
Then I would put that information into the Admin Image Option Editor using the highlighted
tool which is “New Group”:
Select “New Group” and enter in the group name associated with the needs of that group
Repeat that until completed
How do I set it up and customize it?
Next let’s assign those groups with actual people
SOLIDWORKS 2016 has 3 ways of doing this
Machine name
IP address
IP address range
Click on the New Machine tool (just to the right
of the New Group tool)
The Add Machine Dialog comes up
You can now enter in users by their IP address or
by their IP address range
If doing by machine there’s a nice tool that can
help you easily add machines with a couple of
clicks:
Add Multiple Machines button (see next
slide)
How do I set it up and customize it?
Clicking on the Add Multiple Machines Button will bring up this dialog:
Just open the networks where you are looking and multi select all needed then
click on the boxed arrow button
Then you have all those machines added to that group
How do I set it up and customize it?
If setting up by IP addresses
or IP address range you will
need to type out the IP
address or range for each
computer
You can also leave
comments on in this field
How do I set it up and customize it?
Once I have all my groups and
machines/IP address(s) added I can
now input my global settings and
adjust each setting for each group
using SOLIDWORKS
I need to use the Edit tool on the
Global Setting first then close that
edit and do that for each group
thereafter
Deploy Manually
Onto the next portion of the Admin
Option Editor: “Deploy Manually”
Deploying manually means you will
be:
Emailing a link to the network
path that will access the HTA file
and install the image
Deploy Automatically
To Deploy Automatically you will be
pushing the image install to the
computers selected. This push will
install either now or at a later date,
whichever you choose
The key is to make sure the admin’s
credentials are put in associated with
the Domain that the image was
created on
Permissions Troubleshooting
Make sure all image users have full control of the Administrative
Image main folder
Permissions Troubleshooting
Elevated permissions will be needed when running these tests (Meaning IT or a Admin)., Download PSTools.zip from:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897553, Extract the ZIP to a location that's easily accessible by multiple logins
using the command prompt. (i.e. C:\temp).
Download and save Process Explorer from http://live.sysinternals.com/procexp.exe to the same location where PSTools is extracted
(see above)., Login to the client computer with client credentials.
Launch Process Explorer with administrative privileges (right click on "procexp.exe" and choose Run as Administrator). (See second
bullet for reference) If you cannot launch Process Explorer with administrative privileges do NOT proceed. Please contact
Support@GoEngineer.com
Open a command prompt with administrative privileges (Go to the Windows Start menu, go to Accessories, then right click on
"cmd.exe" and choose Run as Administrator)., Change directories to the location where psexec.exe was extracted (from PSTools
down load)., Press enter.
This will attempt to interactively launch "startswinstall.exe" using the Windows LocalSystem account, similar to how the Push Install
task is launched from Windows Task Scheduler., If you see: "access denied", then the share permissions to the administrative image
need to be modified so that the LocalSystem account on the client machine can access it.
If you see "Starting\\<client_computer_name>\<location of admin image>\startswinstall.exe", followed by "SolidWorks 20XX SPx will
start installing automatically in 5 minutes or click OK to start it now", then the LocalSystem (domain\machine_name$) should have
the proper permissions to launch the installation in the same way from Task Scheduler.
To cancel the installation at this point, Close the "SolidWorks 20XX SPXX will start installing automatically in 5 minutes or click OK to
start it now" window and locate "PSEXESVC.exe" service in Process Explorer. Right click on the process and choose "Kill Process Tree"
to stop the installation. See Below:
If the service ends properly, you should see "Error communicating with PsExec service on <computer name>: The pipe has ended" in
the command prompt window. Otherwise, for all instances of "startswinstall.exe" and "sldim.exe" in Process Explorer and end those
manually. To do so, in the Process Explorer window, right click on the process needing to be ended and select Kill Process.
Use the log file check box in the Admin Option Editor to troubleshoot
Best practices from creating through deploying an admin image
Key factors that will make you or break you:
When creating the admin image remember: UAC, Anti-virus and
Run as Administrator
When all is set up in your admin image, before deploying, run a
script that disables anti-virus on the computers and turns the UAC
to “never notify”.
Make sure that all the users having the image deployed have full
access to the main Administration Image folder!
Use the tack scheduler to monitor the status of your deployment
If you have a failed deployment whether on one or all machines
remember that you can select in the Admin Image Option Editor
to create a log file
