Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Deploy Internet Explorer 11 using SCCM

One of my client has decided to upgrade their end user devices to IE 11. They have various versions of IE's in the environment, on nearly 4800 devices and most of these devices never patched.
One good thing out of this is all of the end user devices are on Windows 7 x64 SP1.

So the project tasks from design and deployment perspective are;
       Identify the Internet Explorer versions;
       Identify the Internet Explorer 11 Prerequisites
       Develop Internet Explorer 11 deployment methodology
       Deploy the solution
Identify the Internet explorer version:
First identify how many internet explorer versions exists in the environment.
Identifying the IE versions is important, because based on this inventory the deployment road map will be created. This is also useful to answer management questions and Project management briefing. We can use this process to identify the Internet Explorer versions.

Identify the Internet Explorer 11 Prerequisites:
Microsoft has categorised the Internet explorer 11 prerequisites into two categories, Mandatory and Optional. However, in my testing I have noticed that IE 11 fail's because of missing updates.
If we review the IE11_main.log file, the main installer checks for the optional updates. My recommendation is, review all the required and optional updates before creating SCCM package.

The following (required and option) updates are required to deploy IE 11.
            Windows6.1-KB2882822-x64.msu
            Windows6.1-KB2888049-x64.msu
            Windows6.1-KB2639308-x64.msu
            Windows6.1-KB2834140-v2-x64.msu
            Windows6.1-KB2786081-x64.msu
            Windows6.1-KB2670838-x64.msu
            Windows6.1-KB2533623-x64.msu
            Windows6.1-KB2731771-x64.msu
            Windows6.1-KB2729094-v2-x64.msu

IE 11 deployment methodology:
We can upgrade Internet Explorer to IE 11 in different ways achieving the same outcome.
Some of them are;
         - Windows Updates
         - AIK and package
         - Scripted install and package
         - Application task sequence

I am not going to explain one vs other. However I prefer using application task sequence.
The benefit of upgrading IE 11 using task sequence is;
        - Flexibility to check and install the pre-req's only if not installed
        - Can manage installation order
        - Controlled reboots

So how can we upgrade IE 11 using task sequence?
Source Download:
First download all (required and optional) the prerequisites from here, then download the Internet Explorer installer (IE11-Windows6.1-x64-en-us.exe) from here.
SCCM Package Creation:
Create a SCCM package using perquisites and Internet Explorer installer, without creating a program and deployment.

SCCM Task Sequence for Internet Explorer 11 deployment:
Follow this guide to create a task sequence to deploy Internet Explorer 11.

2 comments:

  1. Knowledgeable information you have shared. We are also working with it.
    upgrade from ie8 to ie11

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  2. Hi Venu,

    Thanks for this blog, i had tried the steps mentioned here ,but on the Client machine i see the folders with the prerequisites, but no content in them. I trying to upgrade Windows 7 SP1 64 bit from IE 9 to IE 11
    Appreciate any assistance

    Thanks

    Raju George 0421 998 516

    ReplyDelete