Preventing XP clients from getting deployments before an OS deployment

[pxedave]

This may seem like a daft question but I want to prevent my XP clients from installing software before I've had a chance to deploy WIndows 7 to them and I'm not sure the best way of doing it.

 

I'm thinking that when I setup UDA for all my machines and add my users to the correct application deployment groups ahead of deploying the OS so that the apps get installed at build-time I'm guessing the SCCM client will try and reinstall all my apps early.

 

I was thinking I would target my XP clients with modified SCCM client settings which turn off software deployment but this is sure to prevent me from deploying the OS to them too.

 

Then I thought I would just limit all my application collections to Windows 7 or above rather than "all devices" but this would mean the machines wouldn't be allowed in the collections until after they are Windows 7 and therefore no apps would install at build time.

 

I'm thinking the best way might be to build a requirement into each app so they won't install on XP, but it's far from the set-in-one-place-and-forget-about-it solution I was hoping for.

 

Any better ideas?...

[anyweb]

target the application deployments to a collection which Excludes Windows XP computers - done.

[pxedave]

... But as I said above, if the collection excludes XP devices then the deployment of Windows 7 isn't going to install the app for me... because the machine isn't in the app collection because the device will still show as XP in the console until after WIndows 7 is installed, the SCCM client has been reinstalled and the collection has had time to update(?)...

[pxedave]

Right, I think I've got a handle on this. At this point I think our Windows 7 deployment including UDA will look something like this:

1) Define all apps (reworked for Windows 7, optionally setting primary device = True)

2) Define Windows 7 deployment Task Sequence (adding in a few standard apps not in the image)

3) Create user collections for all remaining apps (likely one per app in our case)

4) Create deployments for each app to collections (likely all Required rather than Available)

5) Add user accounts to the appropriate collections

6) Define one primary user for each device

7) Roll out the SCCM client to our existing devices (XP in our case)

8) Create a device collection to target (night-by-night, probably 500 or so at a time)

9) Deploy the Windows 7 Task Sequence to the device collection.

 

As I said, I can't think of any easy way to prevent apps from being inappropriatly deployed between steps 7 and 8 above other than to set a requirement within each app excluding XP. The downside is it's an extra step when defining all my apps, but hey ho.

 

All constructive cryticisim welcome.