Installing, Upgrading, and Removing Software
Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Scripting Guide
As part of the software life cycle, software must be installed, upgraded, and removed. These activities can be carried out using Software Installation and Maintenance. Sometimes, however, you might need to perform these actions without using Group Policy. For example, you might want to install, upgrade, or remove software:
Without restarting the computer or without logging the user off and back on.
The Software Installation and Maintenance component policies are refreshed only when a computer restarts or a user logs on. These policies are not affected by the automatic Group Policy refresh rate. If they were, you could encounter a scenario in which Group Policy attempts to remove an application while it is being used.
On only one or two computers.
Creating a Group Policy object (GPO) to manage software installation and maintenance on a single computer involves more administrative overhead than performing the activity directly on the computer. Applying Group Policy to a single computer would require you to:
Create the Group Policy object.
Create a security group.
Add the computer as the sole member of the security group.
Create a filter to ensure that the GPO is applied only to the new security group.
Apply the GPO.
WMI provides the Win32_Product Install, Uninstall, and Upgrade methods to perform these tasks without using Group Policy and without restarting the computers.