Count Down HTA/VBscript with User Notification Before Installing Application.
There are installations that are completely silent for the user, not even a progress bar, absolutely nothing. Think about forensic software, or other tracking/monitoring software.
Then there are installations where the user needs a nice notification. The users already received email(s) about the coming installation, but when the day comes how many remembered that email or even read it.
Or the application needs to close before an update or a dependency for that application can get installed. With HTA you can give the user a notification (warning) that they have a certain time to save their work and close that application and have that application automatically close after 5 minutes or so. You'll always miss a few users with this approach, because they are in meetings, on break etc., so you can extend the time.
This script doesn't cover the above, this script notifies the user that in 60 seconds Orca will get installed (I used Orca as an example since it's free, small and installs quickly).
If there is interest out there for a HTA script that closes an application / uninstalls previous versions etc. then please add a comment and I'll post one, otherwise make the desired modification to this script or create your own.
InstallOrca.hta
The hta script needs to be in the same folder as the installation files.
- Double click the installorca.hta and below window will pop up.
- Notice that the user doesn't have an option to close this window or cancel it. Nice for mandatory installations.
- You can stop the installation through the Task Manager and End the mshta.exe process.
When the installation was successful the user is notified and a Close Window button is now available for the user.
When the installation wasn't successful the user is also notified. You can add more information, like Helpdesk phone numbers and/or email address to contact.
Since Orca takes seconds to install, I didn't add any more notifications to this script. Most applications will take much longer and you can add a line like: 'Application name' is now installing, or something like that.
Again, if there is interested for a larger script, with more options, then let me know.
Change the .txt extension to .hta when using the attached script.
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