Acrobat 9 Deployment with AD / GPO

Question

I'm having some issues deploying Acrobat 9 with Active Directory Group Policy.
The administrative installation point works just fine, the issue I have is with applying the transformation / MST during the installation.
If I great a group policy, and don't specify any modification files, the install completes without error on the workstation.
Obviously, I'd like to use the modifications to enter the product key, etc.
The MST file I'm using was generated using the Customization Wizard 9.
The Application Event Log generates these errors every time the PC is started and the installation is started over.
EVENT ID: 1040
Beginning a Windows Installer transaction: {ac76ba86-1033-0000-7760-000000000004}. Client Process Id: 1120.
EVENT ID: 1013
Product: Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro -- 1118################ error.
EVENT ID: 102
The install of application Adobe Acrobat 9 Professional from policy Install - Adobe Acrobat 9 Professional failed.  The error was : Fatal error during installation.
It's obviously reading the MST file since it's showing the product key in the second error, which is specified in the MST file.
Again, I can perform the automatic installation without error if I don't apply the MST file.

Answer 1

Installation won't be silent if you use MSIEXEC /I C:\A9\AcroPro.msi TRANSFORMS="C:\A9\AcroPro.mst" command even if you have specified the silent option while creating the mst file using the customizations wizard.
The reason is that most of the customizations you do using the customization wizard are saved in the mst file but few (like whether installation would be silent or progress bar or interactive) are stored in the setup.ini file. If you open the setup.ini file then you can see something like "CmdLine= /sAll" . This is the information which tells installer to run silently.
since you are running installer directly from commandline using the msi file so in your case setup.ini is not being read and hence installation is not silent.
NOTE: When setup.exe is run only then setup.ini is read and installation progresses. In case of AIPs there is no setup.exe, so you can not read setup.ini file.
If you want to silently install from an AIP then use /qn switch in the command line. For example-
MSIEXEC /I C:\A9\AcroPro.msi TRANSFORMS="C:\A9\AcroPro.mst" /qn
Now coming on to your original problem which is the actual issue - (When you are using the mst file along with an AIP, why the installation is failing when deploying via GPO !! )
Loking at the error posted by you in the first post it sems that the serial number is not correct.
EVENT ID: 1013
Product: Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro -- 1118################ error.
Try these steps-
1.In your original AcroPro CD there must be a file named "abcpy.ini".
2.Copy this file inside the AIP (C:\A9)
3.Open this file and populate the ISX_SerialNumber field with your product serial number. Example- ISX_SERIALNUMBER=1234-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx (This file might have read only permissions so right click and uncheck 'readonly' box if required )
Save the file
5. Now do what you do usually do for deploying any AIP via GPO.
(These steps would ensure that now serial number is picked from abcpy.ini file rather than the mst file)
Do post your results after running the above test.