>Bruce
>
>Thanks for the suggestions. I was hoping for a completely automatic process. All I would need to do is put the new files on the server and tell the Installer program how to install them. No need for the very busy system admins to visit all 150 user's machines.

No such luck. Once you have the *runtimes* installed, just doing EXE updates is simple, as you probably know already. But getting the runtimes installed is no longer easy (well, it was never "easy" - it's just more difficult than it was before lockdowns came along).


>One question. What is SMS?

MS Systems Management Server. I know, it doesn't sound too meaningful :-) But it is the tool of choice (AFAIK) for deploying under lockdown, or even without lockdown, for large numbers of users, and I'd be lost without it. For example I can deploy upgrades to 100 workstations in one quick shot using SMS, which has its own Admin account (System) on every workstation. You still have to enter which workstations to deploy to, which takes a few minutes. But as an alternative to visiting 100 workstations, interrupting users, logging on as Admin, then installing...you see my point.

SMS makes life an awful lot easier - we distribute all kinds of things with it on a daily basis: security patches, AV DAT updates, even NT or Win2K to XP upgrades are done using SMS. And most applications, of course.

If you have very many users, I would look into it, it's not real cheap or simple to set up, but over the long term it's well worth the investment.