Name: gm110360 Date: 07/30/2003


A DESCRIPTION OF THE REQUEST :
Microsoft was recently forced to stop distributing its own version of the Java Virtual Machine, so the latest Microsoft products (Windows 2000 with service pack 4, Windows XP with service pack 1a) are shipped and installed without any Java support. This means a network administrator (or an user) needs to install the latest JRE on its client computers, to allow them to view a lot of websites which use Java technologies. Howewer, there is no way to automatically deploy the JRE to client computers using Microsoft's software distribution tools (group policies and Active Directory), because the product is shipped with its own installer program, and not with a MSI package that Windows Installer can understand.
So, in order to be able to automatically deploy the JRE (or any other Java product, such as the SDK) to client computers on medium or big networks (from 10 machines to some thousands), I'm kindly ask the Java team to provide a MSI installer package for them.


JUSTIFICATION :
Because there is absolutely no way (other than manual installation on each computer) to deploy the JRE across a Windows 2000/Windows XP Active Directory- based network.


EXPECTED VERSUS ACTUAL BEHAVIOR :
EXPECTED -
I'd like to have a MSI installer package that can be assigned to an Active Directory software distribution policy.

ACTUAL -
For now, the only way to install the JRE across multiple computers is to manually run the installation on averyone of them.
(Incident Review ID: 191375)
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