NiXC's I.T. Take-Away

Microsoft recently created up to date Forefront Client Security installation packages. According to KB976669 these are only available within WSUS. So at least existing installs can get the latest version of the client via WSUS. But what about newly installed clients? Why should we have to install an out of date 2007 version and then do an update just to get the latest client. I want the latest version installed right at the beginning dammit!!!

Well there's a way of finding the install files if you're prepared to crawl the WSUS SQL database.

Here are the direct links to the install files with their associated language and architecture.

fcsclientpackage language 2052 x64
fcsclientpackage language 1028 x64
fcsclientpackage language 1033 x64 English
fcsclientpackage language 1040 x64 Italian
fcsclientpackage language 3082 x64
fcsclientpackage language 1041 x64 Japanese
fcsclientpackage language 1031 x64 German
fcsclientpackage language 1042 x64
fcsclientpackage language 1036 x64 French
fcsclientpackage language 1033 x86 English
fcsclientpackage language 2052 x86
fcsclientpackage language 1028 x86
fcsclientpackage language 1041 x86 Japanese
fcsclientpackage language 1040 x86 Italian
fcsclientpackage language 3082 x86
fcsclientpackage language 1031 x86 German
fcsclientpackage language 1042 x86
fcsclientpackage language 1036 x86 French

Basically download the one/s you want and extract to a folder by using /extract
You will then have a folder with the files you should use to overwrite your FCS deployment share.

Of course it's possible these links might change, in which case you will have to crawl WSUS yourself. The secret is to query the dbo.tbFile table for a value like %fcsclientpackage% in the FileName column. Reasonably easy when you know what to look for :)

Thought I'd try out the new Adobe Flash ActiveX control for IE, and naturally I wasn't expecting a smooth installation process - this is Adobe after all - and low and behold the plug-in would not install on Windows 7 x64.

In a normal administrative user account (hint hint), and running 'as admin' the setup process will get to 100% and then gets killed by Windows with the familiar "program unresponsive" dialog. Even setting compatibility settings on the installer or running it from an administrative command line interface will produce the same results. Plus I did the install on 2 completely different machines with different anti-virus, same thing.

The answer? Enable your proper "Administrator" account, login as that and then do the install. It works perfectly. That sort of points the finger at Adobe not know how to handle UAC again. Yes it's only a beta, but that's still quite lame.
I don't doubt running the installer as the system user would probably work too :)