Transforming MSI files for Active Directory deployment

Question

I'm currently rebuilding all our setup files (used to be .exe files) into MSI installers so that I can deploy them through Active Directory.

Basically, we have a tool (Windev for those who know it) that generates MSI files, but since our tool is limited, I generate .mst files (using Orca) to fine-tune the setup, and merge the source installer and the transform with msitran.exe. When I manually install the transformed setup file with /qb or /qn, the install works fine.

But when I try to add the setup file in the AD, I get an error message : "Unable to extract deployment information".

I found multiple solutions online, but none of them fit my problem (ie. I have all admin rights, my final MSI validates in Orca (with a couple warnings, but no errors). I get the same issue with the original MSI that our tool generates (but it doesn't validate in ORCA, hence the transform to fix that among other things).

Are there any properties that I need to set to successfully deploy my MSI to AD ?

Answer 1

Never mind, solution is plain stupid, but MS does not mention this anywhere.

Basically, it was an issue with the UNC path. My MSI was located in a path that contained whitespaces, and Windows Server 2003 apparently doesn't like that (wrapping the path in quotes in the open dialog does not change anything). Moving the files to a path without spaces fixed it.

Good day to all