installing the same software on 100 computers

[Kodi4444]

I made a bat file that retrieves the zip file from the server and copies it to the desktop then open the zip file so all I have to do is run it then put in admin username and password to install it. I was wondering if there is a way to automate this prosses further. like unzipping the file and/or including admin username and password in the bat file so the only thing I have to do is run the bat file then I can move to the next computer. 

[NumLock21]

I think it depends on the program's installer, some have unattended install options.  I know that Microsoft office has a utility that does unattended installs where you can customized the office setup before hand and then run the file. The office will installed based on your customization.

 

http://unattended.sourceforge.net/installers.php

[UselessBread]

You should probably verify that what you are downloading is what you want (use some kind of cryptographic signatures) because otherwise that sound like a security nightmare.

Also including passwords in plain text files is a bad idea.

You could probably create some kind of image with all the software that you need installed on it and then deploying that on your computers. 

Alternatively there was some powershell commandlet to install software from a repository or you could look into something like this: https://chocolatey.org/

[TMH52]

If all the computers are on an Active Directory Domain you can use Group Policy to push the software. I'm not going to say its 'simple' but it would do it. Its not super complex but its a bit of tinkering. there are 3-4 days to do it inside group policy alone. 

 

If these are Windows 10 Machines you can look at provisioning packages to run your batch file. These are made by the Windows Configuration Designer. It has the password but its encoded. You can also apply a password to the provisioning packages if you want and give it to end users. This means they have the password to the provisioning package but not the actual password to run as admin (Note: super smart people may be able to reverse engineer to get the encoded password). These are very new and some features are depending on the various build versions of Windows 10 (Aka Creators Update, Fall Creators Update, etc). The cool thing about these is that they are designed for end users to use. It can pick them up as soon as you plug in thumb drive with the provisioning package or even be opened via email. 

 

Otherwise there are management packages that can remotely install software. Take a look at Spiceworks. NB: Spiceworks is free so i'm sure their are conditions/catches but I think its not too bad (anonymised telemetry data en-mass). I haven't used this in full and only tried it out for about half a day but I think its one of their tools features. See https://community.spiceworks.com/tools?source=navbar-drawer for more. 

 

Lastly, You can look at one of the amazing SysInternals tools. Specifically, psexec. If the username and password is the same on all machines then psexec can remotely execute the batch file from a shared location as admin to complete the setup. 

 

Another cool thing would be to create a customised chocolatey package and then a powershell script that remotely connects to all the computers and runs the chocolatey install command and then install your customised chocolatey package. NB: you may need to make an internal chocolatey (file share) and add it as trusted. This will take a bit of work but will teach you HEAPS about both Powershell, chocolatey and remote management.