Anon,
Let's take a step back and go over a few things first.
Mixed mode or Native mode should have no bearing in the deployment of GPOs.
But it is good that you included this information.
Are all of your computer clients pointing to your internal DNS servers? No
client should have any ISP / External DNS Server information in their tcp/ip
configuration information. I would check my DHCP server to make sure that
in addition to the IP Address lease that your DHCP Server is dishing out the
correct 'additional' information. If you are using WIN2000 as the DHCP
Server then you would be interested in Options 003, 006 and 015. And, GPOs
can be applied to WIN2000 and WINXP clients only. WIN9x and WINNT do not
understand GPOs.
You can deploy software via GPO in two methods: assign and publish.
However, there is a restriction: you can ONLY assign software to the
computer configuration side of things while you can both assign and publish
software to the use configuration side of things.
The share point to the software has to have the correct permissions on both
the share and ntfs tabs. For example, if you are deploying software to the
computer-configuration side of things then you need to make sure that
'domain computers' - or something similar - has at least read permissions on
both the share and ntfs permissions. If you are deploying software to the
user-configuration side of things then you need to make sure that the
'domain users' - or something similar - has at least read permissions on
both the share and ntfs permissions.
Did you publish or assign the software to the user-configuration side of
things? If you assigned the software then it should be installed
automagically. However, if you published it then the user would need to go
to the Control Panel | Add/remove programs and click on the 'Add New
Programs' to get a list of the published applications. Does this help? Did
you assign the software to the computer-configuration side of things?
Also, when you created the package, did you use the UNC path (
\\server\share\file.msi ) or did you use a mapped network drive (
S:\share\file.msi )? You *MUST* use the UNC path - otherwise it will fail!
I would guess that if everything else is in order ( DNS, permissions, et
al ) that this is what you did.
Also, take a look at the event logs to see if there are any errors in there.
Have you installed the Resource Kit so that you can make use of the
utilities in there ( both gpotool and gpresult ) to troubleshoot this a bit
deeper?
HTH,
Cary