1. Download the Visual Studio 2008 Express ISO to your local system and mount it using something like MagicDisk.
2. Locate the “VBExpress” directory and copy it somewhere locally.
3. Run ixpvb.exe, this will extract the setup files to your local drive. Mine got extracted to:
   C:\057f3ad5975a04eeddb339635a50

   Copy the files to somewhere, and then discard the notification that you must run setup.exe to install the software. The temporary directory will be automatically removed when you dismiss the dialog.

   At this point, it’s now safe to remove the “VBExpress” directory you copied earlier.

4. Make sure the dependencies are installed. These are: Windows Installer 3.1, .Net Framework 1.1 + SP1, .Net Framework 2.0 + SP1, .Net Framework 3.0. Reboot after they’ve been installed.
5. Then run the command that makes it all happen.

   msiexec /i vs_setup.msi VSEXTUI=1 ADDLOCAL=ALL REBOOT=ReallySuppress /qn

   Assuming that works, you know you’re good to go.

   You should be able to then create a simple transform to set the VSEXTUI, ADDLOCAL and REBOOT properties and then deploy via Group Policy Software Installation. Be sure to make sure all your target systems have the dependencies installed.

If anyone runs into a problem leave a comment and I’ll see if we can work out where things are going wrong.

The only problem the MSI above is that it’s in French. Here’s a transform (mst) to change the language to English and remove the “What’s new” and “Help” shortcuts.

IZArc is the ultimate freeware archive utility with a modern easy-to-use interface. IZArc provides support for most compressed and encoded files, as well as access to many powerful features and tools

You’ll probably want my Skype Transform which will remove the desktop shortcut and prevent Skype from auto starting with windows.

You can now deploy Skype in your prefered way (Group Policy, SMS, Microsoft Deployment etc). If you’re using Microsoft Deployment, you can use the following command:

msiexec /i SkypeSetup.msi /quiet TRANSFORMS="NoDesktopShortcutNoAutorun.mst"

%HOMEPATH%\Local Settings\Application Data\{3248F0A6-6813-11D6-A77B-00B0D0150060}

You then need to create an MST using Orcas and MsiTran or download mine. All you need to change if you create your own transform is change the IEXPLORER Property from 0 to 1.

Then put the MSI and MST in your distribution share and simply assign the MSI and apply the transform as you would normally and you’re done.

For reasoning unknown to me, Microsoft released them as an exe as opposed to an MSI so it’s a little work to get them to deploy via group policy (and ZAP is evil).

Extract FileFormatConerters.exe to somewhere useful like so:

FileFormatConverters.exe /extract:\\nwtraders.msft\SoftwareDeployment\FileFormatConverters

Once that’s done setup the software installation as per usual and then use the following WMI filter to restrict the install to systems with Office 2003 (since we don’t want to install it if they have office 2007)

SELECT * FROM Win32_Product WHERE (Caption LIKE .Microsoft Office%2003%.)