10.10.3 Combo Update breaks Office 2011

@Diddel I can't see why the combo would make a difference, but with 10.10.3 available via the App Store.. Why not deploy an OS.dmg of that instead of 10.10.2 & then updating to 10.10.3?

Let me clarify, I am not talking about my NBI but my production Yosemite image apart from the NBI boot issues I reported earlier this week. I was just thanking your @bentoms for the AutoCasperNBI utility-a REAL time saver!!

While not a truly monolithic image, I created a custom image with Office for Mac 2011 baked in as we have a site license and every machine gets a copy here. In updating that with the Combo Update, Office 2011 breaks. Also, somewhere along my journey, I was told to use the 'whole enchilada' when doing .dot releases of OS X.

I will drop a fresh image and try updating to 10.10.3 from the App Store just to see if it breaks.

/randy

@Diddel I was talking about the OS.dmg too & not the NBI!

When a new App Store release comes out, we create an AutoDMG OS.dmg using that, & swap out the old OS.dmg with this newer one.

For Office, we deploy the volume licensed PKG when imaging. This is downloaded from the MS licensing portal, no repacking needed.

Yes, I want to get to that point-a thin(er) image process but since everything gets Office, I just bake it in. If I actually had access to our licensing portal (long story-political), I could do what you do too. I the newest Office media version I have is SP2. Yes, I could chain all of the updates and prioritize them but in the interest of time and simplicity, one update of the image a semester works for us.

But, back to the original question... I wonder why the Combo Update is whacking the license files.

/randy

Not relevant to the Combo update, but if you did need to re-deploy Office to make sure that it's licensed: https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2014/04/09/creating-an-office-2011-sp-4-14-4-1-installer/

UPDATE:

Running Update OS X 10.10.3 from within the App Store breaks Office as well. I guess I will reinstall Office from scratch and apply the updates all the way to 14.4.8. I would still like to know why this is happening.

Thanks @bpavlov good information!

/randy

I re-deployed a system with OS X 10.10.3 from NetRestore just this morning, and installed Office 14.3.9 then applied the update to 14.4.8 through Casper Policies this morning, without issues.

@Diddel This has to be something in your environment or in your deployment methodology. Strongly suggest a modular approach and don't "bake in" Office.

If you have a Volume License Installer that's 14.1.0 or later (last one I saw was 14.3.0), you just need to apply the 14.4.8 update afterwards.

I have clients that imaged 10.10.3 and installed Office 14.3.0 + 14.4.8 update, other clients already at 10.10.2/14.4.8 and updated to 10.10.3. In either case, zero issues.

+1 on what @RobertHammen said
I just deployed an image of 10.10.0 with office 14.4.6 baked in ( I didn't create it! Don't judge!) applied the combo updater to 10.10.3 and office is still licenced as expected.

Ours is also licensed after 10.10.3 Combo Update deployed through Self-Service. We use a separate licensing PKG if that matters.

Resolved.

I went and removed office as outlined here https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2398768 on a freshly dropped image with 10.10.3 combo applied.

I tried to reinstall Office back onto the Mac using our Admin user. The install files refused to be installed. Hmmm. So I dropped a fresh image again with 10.10.3 applied, removed office as noted above. This is where it got interesting. I decided enable the root user, logged in as our Admin. Initiated the Office install process and authenticated as root instead of the Admin, rebooted. Office came up licensed and happy. I then applied 14.4.8, rebooted and it was still happy.

I think I know the cause but I am not 100% certain. My theory is that permissions go sideways after the 10.10.3 on my image for some reason. Thanks for the feedback that stated there were no issues in your environments.

YES, YES! I am slowly making my way toward 100% modular images. You should have seen what my predecessor left me with. I am down to just Office baked into my image and after this, I will be omitting that from my next ground-up build.

Thanks for the help everyone.

/randy

I have a package built that dumps the license file back on a machine. There's been a few times that VL file gets doiked for some reason.