GPO Installs - Differentiating between 64 and 32 bit systems

Question

What is the easiest way to use group policies to install the 64 bit version of a package on 64bit systems and the 32bit package on 32 bit systems.

I have done some searching and I am not seeing anything useful about how to use group policies in an environment where I have some 64 bit systems and some 32 bit system and I want to install the correct version for both.

Just to use a few examples. I want to automatically install things like 7zip, and TortoiseSVN which both come as both 32, and 64 bit.

Ideally I was hoping that I do not have to create groups of computers, or write any scripts to accomplish this.

Solution 1

Gpo will automatically target the right system for you. A 64bit msi will not be installed on 32bit clients, but 32bit can be deployed on both 64 and 32.

To avoid that 32bit msi's gets deployed to 32bit systems:

• Add the 32bit msi to the gpo.
• right click and then select properties.
• click the Advanced button
• untick Make this 32-bit X86 application available to Win64 machines. checkbox

For 64bit msi's I just add them as usual and they will only install on 64bit systems.

I deploy 7zip and TortoiseSVN like above with plain gpo (windows 2003 sp1).

Solution 2

You can apply a WMI filter to the GPO in order to have it applied only to specific systems:

http://blogs.technet.com/askds/archive/2008/09/11/fun-with-wmi-filters-in-group-policy.aspx.