SCCM - How to Deploy .Net Framework

Deploying any version of .Net using Config Manager is straightforward once you have the detection rule for it.

This step-by-step guide will use .Net 4.5.1 as an example, deployed to Windows 7 computers.

If you wish to deploy the Windows Management Framework 4.0 to your Windows 7 SP1 computers then you will need to deploy .Net 4.5.1 as a pre-requisite first.

Here’s how I did it:

Firstly, you will need to download the offline installer for the framework and place the exe on your config manager server where you would normally place the files that you distribute. I downloaded it from here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=40779

  1. Create a new Application

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  1. Select “Manually specify the application information”

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  1. Specify the application information. I chose to Allow the application to be installed from the task sequence as I may do this at a later stage.

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  1. Fill in any details that you would like to appear in the Application Catalog. I will not be making this available in the Application Catalog as I intend to deploy this to a computer collection so I left these fields at their defaults.

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  1. Click the ‘Add’ button to create a new deployment type.

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  1. Change the type to ‘Script Installer (Native)

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  1. Give the Deployment type a meaningful name

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  1. Browse to where you placed the installation .exe on your Config Manager server and complete the rest of the fields as shown in my screenshot below. Note: I chose to force a reboot suppression as I do not want computers having to restart at an inconvenient time to the end user. Also note that I chose to “Run installation and uninstall program as 32-bit process on 64-bit clients” as I found that if I didn’t do this then the uninstallation of it would fail with a ‘16389’ error in the software centre.

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  1. Click the ‘Add Clause’ button so that we can configure a detection rule for this deployment.

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  1. This next link holds the secret sauce that enables you to create a detection rule for any .net framework version: I looked here for the detection method: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee942965(v=vs.110).aspx#detect_net

With that in mind, ensure that your detection rule looks like mine (for a .net 4.5.1 deployment) in the screenshot below then click OK:

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  1. Click Next

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  1. Set the Installation Behavior to : Install for system and the Logon Requirement to: Whether or not a user is logged on.

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  1. Click the ‘Add’ button on the Requirements screen

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  1. Add any system requirements that you would like for this deployment type.

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  1. Click the next button at the Dependency screen unless you would like to add any.

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  1. Click Next at the deployment type summary

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  1. If all has gone well you should have a successful message on the deployment type:

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  1. Click Next on the Deployment Type screen

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  1. Click Next on the Summary

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  1. If all went well you should have a success screen:

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  1. All that’s left is to upload the finished application to your distribution point and then deploy it to a computer collection.