Download Java

You need to download the full offline installation package.  As of the time of this post the link is
http://www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp

Extracting The MSI

Double click on the EXE file and leave the installation window open.

Now while that window is still open open up Windows Explorer and go to the below location and you will see the CAB and MSI files that are needed to deploy via GPO.

Note: You need to keep the setup window open for 64bit version because it removes the temp files when you cancel the install process. 32 bit doesn’t but its good practice.

Copy these files to your distribution location (or your staging area where you can modify the file using ORCA)

Modifying The MSI

So now we need to make some changes to the Java MSI installation so that it installs correctly and does not try to auto update seeing as most admins don’t give their users local admin rights. The tool that I use is ORCA, and is available for download from the Microsoft website.

Here are some common properties you can modify.  I have found that changing the update settings work, but if you check in the control panel, it appears as if nothing has changed.

Table	Property	Original Value	Proposed Value	Description
Property	JAVAUPDATE	1	0	All three need to be changed to completely disable Java automatic updates
Property	AUTOUPDATECHECK	1	0
Property	JU	1	0
Property	IEXPLORER	0	1	Activates Internet Explorer plugin
Property	MOZILLA	0	1	Activates Mozilla plugin
Property	SYSTRAY	1	0	Disables system tray icon when Java applets are active
Property	RebootYesNo	Yes	No	Suppresses the need to reboot – not affected by GPO that I’m aware of but does when installed manually.
Property	EULA	0	1	I leave this setting to 0, however if you are installing it via the msiexec through cmd prompt you may need to set this to 1 to install without interuptions.

Once you have made the changes you are happy with you can simply save the changes to a MST (transforms) file. The transforms file simply tells the MSI to use its preferred settings, and the benefit is you can have one MSI to multiple MST files.

NOTE: if you wanted to use a transforms file, you need to create a transforms in ORCA first by clicking Transform -> New Transform, and then when you are finished you need to go to Transform -> Generate Transform.

Deploying Via Group Policy (GPO)

Now you are ready to deploy the package via Group Policies. The general process is to do the following:

1. Create new GPO (or use existing GPO for same software title)
2. Copy the install files to a network share
3. Add MSI package
4. Add MST transforms file (note you can only do this at the beginning, and it cannot be changed later).