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VMware Project North Star (Thinstall)

1. gt DWORD 30h OUT LPWSTR lpBuffer 4AD2BA20h gt L COM EXE BAT CMD VBS VBE JS JSE WSF WSH VMware Inc 84 001547 0a88 cmd exe 4adQ2aaa gt kernel32 d11 7c80b2d0 GetDriveTypeW IN LPCWSTR 1LpRootPathName 13D8C4h gt L C 001548 0a88 cmd exe 4ad02aaa lt kerne132 d11 7c80b2d0 GetDriveTypeW gt UINT 3h 001549 0a88 cmd exe 4ad01b5f gt USERENV d11 769cO3fa FindFirstFileW IN LPCWSTR 1LpFileName 1638COh gt L C test cmd_test bin foobar 001550 0a88 amp FindFirstFileW C test cmd_test bin foobar gt INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE failed system probe C test cmd_test bin foobar gt ffffffffh no virtual or system matches sbmerge sbmerge Sandbox Merge Sandbox Merge sbmerge exe is used to merge runtime changes recorded in the application sandbox back into a VMware Project North Star Thinstall project A typical work flow for using sbmerge looks like this 1 Use Setup Capture to create a VMware Project North Star Thinstall project 2 Build Thinstalled Application using build bat 3 Run Thinstalled Application customize user settings and virtual environment gt changes go to sandbox 4 Run sbmerge to merge registry and file system changes from sandbox into VMware Project North Star Thinstall project 5 Build updated Thinstalled Application using build bat 6 Deploy updated Thinstalled Application includes customizations from step 3 Usage sbmerge exe Print OptionalP
2. BuildOptions LogPath C ThinstalLLogs MS DefaultinstallAllUsers MSIDefaultInstaLlALLUsers Set default installation mode of the MSI database This option has an effect only when generation of a Windows Installer database is requested via the MSIFilename option MSIFilename on page 106 When set to 1 the default installation mode of the generated MSI database is set to per machine If you want the default mode to be per user set this option to 0 Setting it to 2 will result in a default mode of per machine for Administrators and a per user for non Administrators Example This directs VMware Project North Star Thinstall to generate an MSI which is installed on a per user bases by default VMware Inc 105 NOTE by suppling command line arguments to msiexec you can force a per machine install For example msexec exe mymsi msi ALLUSERS 1 BuildOptions MSIFilename mymsi msi MSIDefaultInstallAllUsers 0 This directs VMware Project North Star Thinstall to generate an MSI which is installed on a per machined bases by default NOTE by suppling command line arguments to msiexec you can force a per user machine install For example msexec exe mymsi msi ALLUSERS BuildOptions MSIFilename mymsi msi MSIDefaultInstaLlAllUsers 1 This directs VMware Project North Star Thinstall to generate an MSI which is installed on a per machined for Administrators and per user for non Admin
3. BuildOptions Example2 BuildOptions PermittedGroups Everyone App1 exe PermittedGroups App1Users AccessDeniedMsg Sorry you can t run this application VMware Inc 131 App2 exe In this example App1Users will be allowed to use App1 exe and Everyone will be allowed to use App2 exe The default message for denied user is also changed for App1 VMware Inc 132 Application PATH and Environment Variables SetupCapture will automatically capture system and user Environment Variables changes that occur indirectly by capturing and comparing the registry If an application needs a specific environment variable in order to run correctly you can make environment variable changes prior to completing the setup capture process Typically the application s installer should do this automatically To manually add environment variables to VMware Project North Star Thinstall packages during the Setup Capture process use My Computer gt Properties gt Advanced gt Environment Variables You can add new variables to either System or User Environment Variables C Program Files Microsoft Visual Studio C Prograen Files Microsoft Visual Studio C Program Files Microsoft Visual Studio C Program Files Microsoft Visual Studio System variables Variable Value APR_ICONY_PATH C Program Files Subversion iconv BISTRO_GLOBA C Prograen Files Intel yTune CGGibCache C Program Files Intel yTunelAnalyzer CAAWINDOWS
4. on page 111 SandboxPath Controls the path where VMware Project North Star Thinstall will create and look for a new sandbox by default SandboxPath on page 112 InventoryName Optional string that is used for package indentification by inventory control systems InventoryName on page 104 SandboxNetworkDrives Determines if network mapped drives will have sandboxing applied SandboxNetworkDrives on page 112 SandboxRemovableDisk Determines if removable disk will have sandboxing applied SandboxRemovableDisk on page 112 RemoveSandboxOnExit Resets the application by deleting the sandbox when the last child process exits RemoveSandboxOnExit on page 111 VMware Inc 95 Isolation amp Virtualization Granuality ExternalCOMObjects Controls weither a specific COM object CLSID will be created by VMware Project North Star Thinstall or by Windows ExternalCOMObjects on page 102 VirtualizeExternalOutOfProcessCOM Controls whether external out of process COM objects are run in the virtual environment VirtualizeExternalOut on page 114 ChildProcessEnvironmentDefault Determines if child processes are run in the virtual environment by default ChildProcessEnvironme on page 99 ChildProcessEnvironmentExceptions Enables exceptions as the default child execution policy ChildProcessEnvironme on page 99 DirectoryIsolationMode Controls default isolation for
5. Tip 3 The error may occur in a child process make sure you look at the correct trace file Log monitor will produce one trace file for each process that is started If your application starts several child processes the first step is to determine which process is causing the problem In some cases such as out of process COM a parent application will use COM to launch a child process execute a function remotely and then continue executing Tip 4 When running applications from a network share there is always 2 processes created Ignore the first one In order to work around Symantec AntiVirus slow performance issues VMware Project North Star Thinstall always relaunches processes when running from a network share NetRelaunch on page 108 VMware Inc 75 Tip 5 Search for the error message you see in dialog boxes Many applications will call the Win32 API function MessageBox to display unexpected errors at runtime You can search your trace file for either MessageBox or the contents of the string displayed in the error dialog For example if the application displayed a cryptic error message Unexpected child node Press OK to continue you could search for this string or part of the string and find what the application was doing just before the dialog box appeared Tip 6 Kill the application as soon as it gets to an error situation By killing the application as soon as possible you will have less informatio
6. 204 009 KB O1S EXE 37 KB POWERPNT EXE 36 KB WINWORD EXE 36 KB QJOUTLOOK EXE 35 KB 0w20 ExE 22 KB Z MSTORE EXE 22 KB Shmspview Exe 14 KB SEIPROFLWIZ EXE 13 KB Eal mspicons exe 12 KB a misc exe 12 KB Because VMware Project North Star Thinstall uses shortcuts installed during the capture process to generate the package ini make sure you let the installer create shortcuts for you Many installers offer the option to not write shortcuts if you disable shortcut creation Setup Capture won t know what EXEs you intend to generate and will start with an empty project If you accidentally disabled shortcuts during install or the application does not install any shortcuts during it s installation process you can manually tell VMware Project North Star Thinstall which EXEs the user can access directly by using a text editor to add this information to your package ini file Simply add the following lines anywhere in the text file My Application exe Source ProgramFilesDir My App My Application exe ReadOn1lyData bin Package ro tvr Where ProgramFilesDir My App My Application exe corresponds to a path inside of your VMware Project North Star Thinstall project Reboot continue When capturing an application that requires a reboot during installation just reboot the computer normally when prompted by the installer Setup Capture should automatically restart and allow you to continue the capture process If you ran Set
7. 3 0 Listing all registry keys in a Thinstall trv file VREGTOOL regfile tvr PrintKeys HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software ShowValues ShowData ExpandMacros regfile tvr Datafile in VMware Project North Star Thinstall Virtual Registry file format HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software You can optionally specify a registry subtree to print If no subtree is specified vregtool will print the entire contents of the tvr file If the specified registry subkey has a space in the name your should specify the key using quotes like this HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software Key with space ShowValues Optionally prints the names of all virtual values contained in virtual subkeys ShowData Optionally prints the data associated with each virtual value ExpandMacros Optionally expands macros contained in registry values amp data before printing Example vregtool c tmp test tvr PrintKeys HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software Adobe Save For Web 3 0 This operation will print all the virtual registry keys contained in a tvr file to the console VMware Inc 90 Listing diagnostic information about a Thinstall trv file VREGTOOL regfile tvr PrintStats regfile tvr Datafile in VMware Project North Star Thinstall Virtual Registry file format This option is used mainly for diagnosing issues with tvr files Example vregtool c tmp test tvr PrintStats Comparing virtual registry information with host PC registry information VREGTOOL regfile tvr SysCom
8. 5 MEDIA Office12 amp 1033 B 1036 3082 Samples Microsoft Works Because these directories are not actually created on the host PC the PC remains unchanged and thinstalled applications will not negatively impact other applications on the same PC VMware Project North Star Thinstall presents a merged view of the system registry as well Registry as seen by Windows Regedit S HEEY_LOCAL_MACHINE H HARDWARE a sam E SECURITY k SOH WARE aG covftsy 9 Classes amp 9 Clients Active Setup 5 NetSh NetShow C Non Driver Signing a Ole er Outlook Ex press 29 PCHealth VMware Inc 52 Registry as seen by Thinstalled Office My Computer a HKEY _CLASSES_ROOT E3 eq HKEY_CURRENT_USER d HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE 2 HARDWARE H E 5am 9 SECURITY B SOFTWARE E covftsy H Classes E Clients H E Gemplus S E Microsoft 2 Active Setup J NetSh H E Netshow Non Driver Signing Elen p Office a 12 0 H Access Connectivity common E Registration JE User Settings Visio Common B Delivery 5 InfoPath E visio H E ole J Outlook Express HJ PCHealth Block based Streaming Any network storage device can serve as a streaming server for hundreds or thousands of client PCs VMware Inc To use VMware Project North Star Thinstall packages in a streaming fashion simply place your VMware Project North Star Thinstall package in a location that is accessi
9. Drive D will appear to be a CD ROM drive with an automatically assigned Serial number Drive Z will appear to be a FIXED disk with an automatically assigned Serial number NOTE the character is used to separate information assigned to different drive letters BuildOptions VirtualDrives Drive X Serial ff897828 Type REMOVABLE Drive D Type CDROM Drive Z How to change the isolation mode for a Virtual Drive 1 Add the folder Drive_X to your VMware Project North Star Thinstall project 2 Inthe new directory place an Attributes ini file Attributes ini on page 150 to specify the isolation mode for this drive letter This option requires VMware Project North Star Thinstall version 3 146 or higher Version XXXX Version XXXX Used to override EXE version strings or add new version strings Version resources are normally copied from the original exe You can override the version resource strings and add new ones using a Version lt string_name gt string_value setting Example Sets the VersionInfo field ProductName to the value My New Product Name Application exe Version ProductName My New Product Name Version Description This Product is great This option requires VMware Project North Star Thinstall 3 133 or higher VMware Inc 115 Thinstall Virtualization Suite 3 0 WorkingDirectory WorkingDirectory Sets the current working directory before the application starts This
10. Excel won t be affected ThinReg exe u server share Microsoft Office 2003 Winword exe This will unregister all Office applications for the current user Will also remove the Add Remove Programs entry ThinReg exe u server share Microsoft Office exe NOTE Command line unregistration is supported in VMware Project North Star Thinstall 3 210 and higher snapshot Snapshot Snapshot exe can be used for m Saving the state of a PC s filesystem and registry Example snapshot C data snapshot snapshot C data snapshot C HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Comparing two previously recorded states Example snapshot C start snapshot diffprint C end snapshot m Printing contents of a saved state Example snapshot C start snapshot print m Generating a VMware Project North Star Thinstall project by comparing two previously saved states Example snapshot C start snapshot SuggestProject C end snapshot C project ini snapshot C project ini GenerateProject Usage snapshot exe SnapshotFileName snapshot Config ConfigFile ini BaseDir1 BaseDir2 BaseReg1 snapshot exe Snap1 snapshot Snap2 snapshot OutDir Config ConfigFile ini snapshot exe Snap1 snapshot SuggestProject Snap2 snapshot OutputTemplate ini snapshot exe Template ini GenerateProject OutDir Config ConfigFile ini snapshot exe SnapshotFileName snapshot Print Example bat file to generate a VMware Project North Star Thinstall project using a sta
11. ExecuteVirtualProcess added documentation for script API ExpandPath ExpandPath on page 122 Added Script function WaitForProcess WaitForProcess on page 128 ExecuteVirtualProcess and ExecuteExternalProcess will now return a process ID Updated SetupCapture so Attributes ini is stripped out for Desktop and Personal so subdirectories are not redirected to sandbox Fixed problem with past release where Desktop and Personal always used default isolation level instead of specified level Fixed problem where applications could not access COM and LPT ports Fixed problem with ActivePerl where probes for virtual file security info would fail Fixed problem for TeamMate Audit Management System Setupcapture will now exclude HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE system CurrentControlSet control from captures was capturing computername Fixed Data Execution Prevention problem for Office products that occurs on w2k3 when DEP is enabled Fixed problem with Acrobat Reader 8 where Last Access Time for parent directories was incorrect Changed virtual services so that the WMI service can be accessed by virtualized applications Version 3 035 Fixed problem for 64bit Windows XP for EXE that support addresses above 2GB Added Scripting support Chapter 9 Scripting on page 117 Fixed problem with Office XP activation system running on Windows 2003 Setup Capture will now scan other drives besides just drive c Version 3 032 Fixed pr
12. Thinstall development team you must be logged into your account to access the blog amp discussion forum Change Log on page 26 What s new in this version Features VMware Project North Star Thinstall includes the following features 100 user mode VMware Project North Star Thinstall is the only Virtualization solution available which runs completely in user mode User Mode on page 16 This has many system stability security infrastructure and ease of use implications For more details see User Mode on page 16 Support for Virtual Side by Side SxS VMware Project North Star Thinstall is the only Virtualization solution to fully support SxS a critical feature for deploying most new applications For more details see Side by Side SxS on page 18 No device drivers Because VMware Project North Star Thinstall requires no device drivers it can run applications without Administrator rights and requires no changes to the PC even if the user is running on a locked down PC Microsoft reports 3rd party device drivers cause over 80 of machine crashes and a large number of new machine wide vulnerabilities come from bugs in device drivers Application Isolation capabilities VMware Project North Star Thinstall allows applications to run without any modification to the host PC s registry or file system Other applications running on the same PC will not be aware of virtualized applications s
13. Thinstall Virtualization Suite 3 0 17 Frequently Asked Questions 151 Application Updates 153 Plugins and Addins 154 Large Packages 155 Index 157 VMware Inc About This Book The VMware Thinstall Installation and Adminstration Manual provides information about installing and configuring Thinstall including how to upgrade your software configure packages configure isolation modes and sandboxes use the utilities and tools configure MSI files use scripts and use License Manager Intended Audience This book is intended for anyone who wants to install upgrade or use VMware Thinstall Typical users will be system administrators responsible for the distribution and maintenance of corporate software packages Document Feedback VMware welcomes your suggestions for improving our documentation If you have comments send your feedback to docfeedback vmware com Technical Support and Education Resources The following sections describe the technical support resources available to you You can access the most current versions of this book and other books by going to http www vmware com support pubs VMware Education Services VMware courses offer extensive hands on labs case study examples and course materials designed to be used as on the job reference tools For more information about VMware Education Services go to http mylearn1 vmware com mgrreg index cfm VMware Inc 7 VMware Thinstall Installation and Admi
14. Virtualization at the filter driver level is comparatively simple to implement the Vista OS team has implemented this in the Windows Vista kernel In user mode virtualization is much more complex and requires virtualization of any functionality that touches the file system or registry More than 400 different windows sub systems and APIs have been replaced by VMware Project North Star Thinstall including the windows loader service control manager and process manager Side by Side SxS SxS is a relatively new OS feature supported by Windows on XP Windows 2003 and Vista SxS is a must have feature in order to deploy most modern software products such as Microsoft Office 2007 Adobe Reader 8 and NET 2 0 3 0 VMware Project North Star Thinstall is the only application virtualization solution which supports SxS In the early days Microsoft recommend installing DLLs to c windows system32 if you wanted to share them with other applications This lead to DLL Hell since one applications installer would install one version of a DLL and another installer would install another version overwriting the existing DLL If the new version of the DLL wasn t compatible the older application would suddenly break and stop working This is still how the majority of applications install their DLLs even Office 2007 installs approximately 7 DLLs to c windows system32 Slowly the industry is moving to deploy shared DLLs using SxS as XP becomes mains
15. Your application can now run on computers that don t have NET Professional Setup build single EXE virtual app If you prefer to generate a single exe that runs without cmd exe follow these additional steps First let s assume you unzipped from Step 2 to c project though this location doesn t matter 1 2 3 Copy your net application dll files and data files to c project ProgramFilesDir myapp Edit c project package ini change the line which says From Source SystemSystem cmd exe To Source ProgramFiLesDir myapp myapp exe where myapp exe is your application s executable Run c project build bat Also see How to reduce your package size for NET Reducing size Whether you download our pre captured NET Framework projects or you capture the NET install yourself the size of packages is often important Here are a few tips for reducing your package size 1 VMware Inc Turn on compression The easiest way to generate smaller packages is to enable compression in your package ini file To do this replace Compression None with Compression Fast in your package ini file Delete any msi files left behind by the installer Many application leave behind their original installer in msi format so that they can reinstall if they become corrupted or if any features of the application were installed using install on demand You can safely delete the msi files captured during
16. designed to protect against some security exploits that occur with buffer overflows Because this feature causes a number of compatibility issues it is turned off by default on XP SP2 and it is possible to use an machine specific opt in or opt out list of which applications to apply DEP protection to Opt in and opt out policies can be difficult to manage when a large number of machines and applications are involved This option instructs VMware Project North Star Thinstall to add Execution Permission to pages allocated by an application so that it can run on machines that have DEP protection enabled without having to modify the opt out list Examples Disable some Data Execution protections for this particular application BuildOptions AddPageExecutionPermission 1 Don t mess with DEP protections default BuildOptions AddPageExecutionPermission 0 AutoShutdownServices AutoShutdownServices Controls whether to automatically shutdown virtual services when the last non service process exits By default VMware Project North Star Thinstall will automatically shutdown virtual services when the last non service based child process exits This option instructs VMware Project North Star Thinstall to keep virtual services running even when all other processes have exited This option does not have any effect on non virtual services Examples Keep virtual services running when the application exits BuildOptions AutoShutdownServ
17. t change the sandbox name Fixed problem where App Paths should be inherited by child processes fixes Gimp Added work around for Symantec AV where it would scan the entire EXE from a network drive for any app that uses networking Now apps should start up quickly from network shares when SAV is installed Fixed problem where status bar never disappears when parent process does not create any windows Licensed versions of VMware Project North Star Thinstall are now available if you have purchased VMware Project North Star Thinstall VS the web server will automatically provide you with a licensed download If you have existing projects all that needs to done is rebuild the apps using this new licensed version and they will not time out The applications should display a Thinstall statusbar message saying something like Licensed to Company XYZ during startup End user license agreement for VMware Project North Star Thinstall was added and is displayed for applications that contain the VMware Project North Star Thinstall VOS on first execution by a new user If you have a license agreement this can be turned off if you accept the EULA on behalf of your users and you are deploying only internally within your company or otherwise have the legal right to accept the EULA terms for your users Fixed problem with Office XP where it might crash during Activation Fixed problem where SetupCapture did not continue after reboot hopefully we
18. though NET may not be installed m You can add your application files into the pre captured NET project and build a single EXE file which runs without installation of NET This guide should only be used for NET applications that do not require installation of COM components or 3rd party components requiring registry entries m If you need to include Crystal Reports in your package you should perform a full capture m If you need to include COM components in your package you should perform a full capture m If you need to include customized registry settings you should perform a full capture VMware Inc 135 Pre captured NET Application deployment Guide Express Setup build virtual cmd exe 1 Download and Install Thinstall Virtualization Suite on any PC signup at http www thinstall com products virtualization_suite_dl php Download NET 1 1 2 0 or 3 0 pre captured VMware Project North Star Thinstall projects You only need to download the version of the NET Framework required to run your application http thinstall com examples dnet11_captured zip http thinstall com examples dnet20_captured zip http thinstall com examples dnet30_captured zip Unzip your pre captured VMware Project North Star Thinstall project from step 2 Click the build bat file In the bin directory you will find cmd exe you can now launch your NET application using this cmd exe like this cmd exe c myapplication exe You are done
19. 3 066 Mar 12 2007 Virtual Registry is now scanned for corruption on startup if detected a backup copy is used We found registry can become corrupted on USB flash devices where the app was plugged in and out without safe remove SetupCapture with add a commented out section to run Internet Explorer for using IE plugins Fixed an issue where Thinstalled Internet Explorer would crash when McAfee Enterprise Anti virus script blocker was installed Added package ini option VirtualizeExternalOutOfProcessCOM default is 1 This allows you execute all Out of process COM objects on the system without being loaded into the virtual environment Now you can determine which version of VMware Project North Star Thinstall an application has been packaged by running with package exe ThinstallVersion SetupCapture displays status messages in main window instead of seperate DOS window Fix to enable NT4 Update to services some support for shared process services Allowed access to device drivers referenced through format Setup Capture no longer scans HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG this subtree is not needed for applications Fixed issue where Vista native File Open dialogs crash under VMware Project North Star Thinstall Added support for LoadCursorFromFile Version 3 052 Feb 9 2007 Virtual Registry is now scanned for corruption on startup if detected a backup copy is used We found registry can become corrupted on USB flash devices where th
20. IMM32 DLL 7639039b GetFulLPathNameW gt DWORD 14h COUT LPWSTR lpBuffer 163D60h gt L C test cmd_test bin OUT LpFilePart 13D8D4h gt 163D82h gt L bin 001539 0a88 cmd exe 4ad01b29 gt kernel32 dL1 7c80acOf SetErrorMode IN UINT uMode 0h 001540 0a88 cmd exe 4ad01b29 lt kernel32 d1L1 7c80acOf SetErrorMode gt UINT 1h O 001541 0a88 cmd exe 4ad01ba8 gt USERENV d1LL 769c03b9 GetEnvironmentVariableW CIN LPCWSTR 1LpName 4AD34618h gt L PATH IN DWORD nSize 2000h 001542 0a88 GetEnvironmentVariable PATH gt C WINDOWS system32 C WINDOWS C WINDOWS System32 Wbem c program files subversion bin c Program Files Microsoft SQL Server 90 Tools binn c bin C Program Files Microsoft Visual Studio Common Tools WinNT C Program Files Microsoft Visual Studio Common MSDev98 Bin C Program Files Microsoft Visual Studio Common Tools C Program Files Microsoft Visual Studio VC98 bin 001543 0a88 cmd exe 4ad01ba8 lt USERENV dll 769c03b9 GetEnvironmentVariableW gt DWORD 173h OUT LPWSTR lpBuffer 4AD2BA20h gt L C WINDOWS system32 C WINDOWS C WINDOWS System32 Wbem c program files su 001544 0a88 cmd exe 4ad01ba8 gt USERENV d1LL 769c03b9 GetEnvironmentVariableW CIN LPCWSTR LpName 4AD34608h gt L PATHEXT IN DWORD nSize 2000h 001545 0a88 GetEnvironmentVariable PATHEXT gt COM EXE BAT CMD VBS VBE JS JSE WSF WSH 001546 0a88 cmd exe 4ad01ba8 lt USERENV dll 769c03b9 GetEnvironmentVariableW
21. Irrespective of what you specified at package build time you can still override the type of installation at deploy time For example if you created the database with MSIDefaultInstallAllUsers 1 MsSIDefaultInstallAllUsers on page 105 you can still force a per user deployment by deploying using msiexec i lt database gt msi ALLUSERS If you want to force a per machine deployment you d use msiexec i lt database gt msi ALLUSERS 1 To default to per machine install for Administrators belonging to the Administrators group and per user for non Administrators set the value of MSIDefaultInstallAllUsers to 2 MSIDefaultInstallAllUsers on page 105 When doing a per machine deployment the default installation directory is the localized equivalent of ProgramFilesDir lt InventoryName gt Thinstalled For a per user deploy the default is AppData lt InventoryName gt Thinstalled In both cases you can override the installation directory by passing an INSTALLDIR property to msiexec msiexec i lt database gt msi INSTALLDIR C Mydir Mypackage Vista For deployment on Vista you need to indicate whether an installer needs elevated privileges or not Normally when doing a per user install you won t need elevated privileges but when doing a per machine install you will You can specify whether the package needs elevated privileges by using the MSIRequireElevatedPrivileges option MSIRequireElevatedPr
22. SYSTEM CurrentControlSet Services Apache2 2 Value Type REG_DWORD 10 00 00 00 Value Start REG_DWORD 02 00 00 00 Value ErrorControl REG_DWORD 01 00 00 00 Value ImagePath REG_EXPAND_SZ ProgramFilesDir Apache Software Foundation Apache2 2 bin httpd exe k runservice 2300 Value DispLayName REG_SZ Apache2 2 2300 Value DependOnService REG_MULTI_SZ Tcpip 2300Afd 2300 2300 Value DependOnGroup REG_MULTI_SZ 00 Value 0bjectName REG_SZ LocalSystem 2300 Value Description REG_SZ Apache 2 2 3 Win32 2300 isoLation_full HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SYSTEM CurrentControlSet Services Apache2 2 Parameters Value ConfigArgs REG_MULTI_SZ f 2300 ProgramFilesDir Apache Software Foundation Apache2 2 conf httpd conf 2300 d 2300 ProgramFilesDir Apache Software Foundation Apache2 2 2300 2300 isoLation_full HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SYSTEM CurrentControLSet Services Apache2 2 Security Value Security REG_BINARY 01 00 14 80 90 00 00 00 9C 00 00 00 14 00 00 00 30 00 00 00 02 00 1c 00 01 00 00 00 02 80 14 00 ff 01 0f 00 01 01 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 02 00 60 00 04 00 00 00 00 00 14 00 fd 01 02 00 01 01 00 00 00 00 00 05 12 00 00 00 00 00 18 00 ff 01 0f 00 01 02 00 00 00 00 00 05 20 00 00 00 20 02 00 00 00 00 14 00 8d 01 02 00 01 01 00 00 00 00 00 05 0b 00 00 00 00 00 18 00 fd 01 02 00 01 0 2 00 00 00 00 00 05 20 00 00 00 23 02 00 00 01 01 00 00 00 00 00 05 12 00 00 00 01 01 00 00 00 00 00 05 12 00 00 00 isolation_full HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SY
23. Star Thinstall install directory typically C Program Files Thinstall VS It can also be run from Start Menu gt Program Files gt Thinstall Virtualization Suite gt Log Monitor VMware Project North Star Log Monitor Version 3 345 Log Monitor converts trace files to a text readable report The following list shows trace files that have been created since Log Monitor has started Process Log Filename Last Modified Size Delete Setup Capture exe snapshot exe ebc 2 21 2008 17 30 0 secs ago 621150208 rt snapshot exe cb8 2 21 2008 17 29 30 secs ago 17235968 Input Trace File and Settings User plugin1 41 trace Browse Ouput Repott Filename a and Settings User plugin 41 trace log tst l Browse al 6l Generate text trace report Any new VMware Project North Star Thinstall process which has been started after Log Monitor begins will show up in the list if the application was built with logging options enabled or with Just in time logging options enabled Clicking on the process entry will automatically fill in 4 and 5 Delete will delete any trace files selected in the process list 1 This will not delete any text log files you may have generated Kill will kill any process selected if it is currently running This is a easy way to stop a process from logging additional entries once an error condition has been reached Input trace file You can manually browse for a trace file to convert by clic
24. Windows Installer popup during each launch of a Thinstalled Office 2007 application To prevent the repair the files of the Office 2003 Handwriting feature need to be made visible to the Thinstalled Office 2007 apps This can be done by changing the isolation mode on a couple of directories ProgramFilesDir Common Files Microsoft Shared INK ProgramFilesDir Common Files Microsoft Shared Office11 ProgramFilesDir Common Files Microsoft Shared Office11 1033 ProgramFilesDir Microsoft Office Depending on the language version of your installation you might have a different directory instead of ProgramFilesDir Common Files Microsoft Shared Office11 1033 After a fresh capture these directories will contain a Attributes ini file Attributes ini on page 145 with DirectoryIsolationMode Ful1l Change this to DirectoryIsolationMode WriteCopy The isolation mode of a couple of registry files needs to be adjusted too Edit HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE txt and search for these keys HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion Installer UserData S 1 5 18 Componen ts 379E92CC2CB71D119A12000A9CE1A22A HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion Installer UserData S 1 5 18 Componen ts 1650EACF3C291D11A92C0006794C4E25 Change the isolationmode_ful1 at the beginning of the lines to isolationmode_writecopy The Outlook Tips and Tricks Outlook on page 137 also apply to Outlook 200
25. Windows is instructed to load it from there Note that the usefulness of this option is limited If the DLL depends on other DLLs which are located in the virtual filesystem Windows won t be able to load it You can check dependencies using Dependency walker http www dependencywalker com Example This instructs VMware Project North Star Thinstall to pass loading of inject dll and injectme2 dll on to Windows BuildOptions ExternalDLLs inject d11 injectme2 d11 Availability This option requires VMware Project North Star Thinstall version 3 324 or higher Icon Icon Indicates which icon file to use for the generated EXE file By default each generated application will use the main group icon from its source EXE and the individual icon resource pointed to by the group icon You can use an alternate icon by specifying an ico file or exe file Examples Specify NULL to generate an EXE with no icons NOTE NULL cannot be used if the FileTypes directive is used because one icon per filetype is allocated in the EXE image myapp exe Source ProgramFiLesDir myapp app exe Icon NULL Specify application icon using a EXE different from the Source EXE myapp exe Source ProgramFilLesDir myapp app exe Icon ProgramFilesDir myapp app2 exe You can optionally specify which set to use by appending 1 2 to the end of the Icon path name like this myapp exe Source ProgramFiLesDir myapp a
26. an application you should have available a clean Windows system for the lowest platform you need to support For example use Windows 2000 if you plan to support 2k XP 2k3 and Vista 35 3 VMware Inc Use default options and select Pre install Scan On a fast clean PC the scan process should take 10 seconds for Windows XP Tikanta Base 3 Vidware Workstation ACT Catton ld Pe EM ven M Tos AE Weds Hee D Vibesse Prajnc Marth Star Setup C Setup Capture ED ewe tre Fieaysten bara drectans te soa Foot P Volume Label Fin yom k IFS ao len an ee ee ee ee When the scan finishes install your target application After installing your application you may also want to configure it as you want it to appear when the resulting Thinstalled application is first executed by a new user 36 VMware Inc If the application does not have an installer you can manually copy the application files to the capture machine and add desktop or shortmenu shortcuts to EXE files you want to generate VMware Project North Star Thinstall EXEs for during the build process Setup capture will automatically detect all the changes made to the guest machine including installation of 3rd party libraries COM registrations and registry edits Setup Capture Lor a tr ds PLO gol ONE em Setup Capture 37 5 VMware Inc After the application has been installed and configured click Post instal
27. be inherited from parent subkey VMware Inc 145 Thinstall Virtualization Suite 3 0 146 VMware Inc Virtual Filesystem wy VMware Project North Star Thinstall virtual filesystem is represented in 3 different stages 1 The package build format This format stores files directly on the normal file system as they are to be compiled into the embedded virtual file system Folder Macros Folder Macros on page 148 are used to reprent Windows standard shell folder locations A typical view of the virtual files in pre build package format AppData D Common AppData O Common Programs O Desktop O drive_c B Fonts G Local AppData 5 Personal O Profile O ProgramFilesDir SystemRoot D SystemSvstem 2 The embedded virtual filesystem read only This filesystem is embedded in EXE files during the build process The read only filesystem may be compressed and provides block based streaming Block based Streaming on page 53 to client PCs 3 The file system sandbox read write This directory structure holds file data which was modified by the application Any file modification operation will cause embedded virtual files to be extracted to the sandbox including m Changing a file s timestamp or attributes m Opening file with write access m Truncating file m Renaming Moving file Prior to building an application you can adjust isolation modes Chapter 4 Isolation Modes on pag
28. callback functions Callback functions on page 117 Q What is the format for script files and what functions can use VMware Project North Star Thinstall uses VB Script to execute script files so any valid VB Script will load an execute under VMware Project North Star Thinstall Click here for Microsoft s VB Script User Guide http msdn microsoft com library default asp url library en us script56 html dd5dc02a 71e4 412b 8b30 9 cc2d3d5e6fb asp VB script can be used to access COM controls registered on the host system or registered within the virtual package Callback functions Callback functions with specific names will execute only under certain conditions For example callback functions allow script code to execute only when an application starts or quits Currently defined callback function names OnFirstSandboxOwner Called only when an application first locks the sandbox This callback will not be called if a 2nd copy of the same application is launched using the same sandbox which the first copy is still running If a 1st application spawns sub process and then quits the sandbox remains locked by the 2nd sub process so this callback will not execute again until all sub processes have quit and the application is run again OnFirstParentStart Called prior to executing a VMware Project North Star Thinstall EXE file regardless of weither the sandbox is simutaneously owned by another Thinstalled EXE OnFirstPar
29. correctly when installed to a non default location this approach can only be used in limited situations When using VMware Project North Star s Setup Capture Setup Capture on page 69 to create Thinstalled applications you can install applications using their default location without concern for short pathnames Virtual Services VMware Project North Star Thinstall can be used to package up services in 2 different modes 1 A Virtual Service m Packaged together with a main supporting application m Runs on application start up m Runs under the user account which ran the application m Can be started and stopped only by virtual applications in same sandbox Visible to services control panel services manager only by running from virtual cmd exe m Zero Installation or system changes required By default any application that installs a service will automatically use virtual services When using Setup Capture to capture an application which installs virtual services no changes are needed to your project to run virtual services Starting virtual services VMware Project North Star Thinstall uses the registry values captured by Setup Capture to determine if it should automatically start a virtual service when it s host application is run VMware Inc 24 If the Service Startup Type Automatic then VMware Project North Star Thinstall will start the service automatically before executing the host application If the Service Star
30. d1l CopyFileExw gt 7feb1lfcf 000835 0a88 cmd exe 4ad04907 lt AcGenral DLL 6f880364 GetProcAddress gt FARPROC 7FEB1IFCFh O 000836 0a88 cmd exe 4ad04919 gt AcGenral DLL 6f880364 GetProcAddress IN HMODULE hModule 7c800000h IN LPCSTR lpProcName 4AD0496Ch gt IsDebuggerPresent 000837 0a88 GetProcAddress mod 7c800000 C WINDOWS system32 kernel32 dll IsDebuggerPresent gt 7fecOdfa 000838 0a88 cmd exe 4ad04919 lt AcGenral DLL 6f880364 GetProcAddress gt FARPROC 7FECODFAh 000839 0a88 cmd exe 4ad0492b gt AcGenral DLL 6f880364 GetProcAddress IN HMODULE hModule 7c800000h IN LPCSTR LpProcName 4AD04954h gt SetConsoleInputExeNameW 000840 0a88 GetProcAddress mod 7c800000 C WINDOWS system32 kernel32 d11l SetConsoleInputExeNameW gt 7fe90c21 000841 0a88 cmd exe 4ad0492b lt AcGenral DLL 6f880364 GetProcAddress gt FARPROC 7FE90C21h O 000842 0a88 cmd exe 4adQ2c97 gt 01le32 d11 774e03f0 GetFileType CIN HANDLE hFile 3h 000843 0a88 GetFileType 3 gt 0x2 000844 0a88 cmd exe 4adQ2c97 lt ole32 d11 774e03f0 GetFileType gt DWORD 2h 000845 0a88 cmd exe 4adQ2ccQ gt kernel32 d11 7c812f39 GetStdHandle IN DWORD nStdHandLe FFFFFFF6h VMware Inc 82 000846 0a88 cmd exe 4adQ2ccQ lt kernel32 d11 7c812f39 GetStdHandle gt HANDLE 3h 000847 0a88 cmd exe 4adQ 2ccd gt kernel32 d11 7c81af14 GetConsoleMode IN HANDLE hConsoleHandle 3h 000848 0a88 cmd exe 4adQ2ccd lt kernel32
31. data is not written to disk and decompression is very efficient the performance impact for using compression is usually negligible When loading applications from slower media such as USB flash or network shares compression helps to accelerate loading times because less data needs to be transferred Because data is not cached or decompressed to disk first no extra disk space is required before during or after executing Thinstalled applications Q Does VMware Project North Star Thinstall work with Net applications A Yes if you are deploying an application that requires NET there a number of different options available You can include NET in your package by capturing on a clean machine which doesn t have NET already installed such as clean Win2k or XP SP1 If you start with a clean machine install NET first and then do the capture process the resulting application will use NET from the host PC instead of being included in the package If you don t want to capture the NET Framework yourself we have some pre captured projects you can use https thinstall com thintalk viewtopic php t 203 Q Can I VMware Project North Star Thinstall application using Java or ActiveX components in a browser A These flash demo shows how you can virtualize Internet Explorer plugins addins such as the Java Runtime Environment using VMware Project North Star Thinstall VS http thinstall com demos java_applet VMware Inc Chapter
32. fs entry not found ProgramFilesDir Microsoft Visual Studio VC98 bin foobar fs entry not found ProgramFilesDir Microsoft Visual Studio VC98 bin As you can see the potential errors did a good job of highlighting possible areas where the application is failing Digging Deeper 001550 FindFirstFileW C test cmd_test bin foobar gt INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE failed system probe Let s suppose we want to find out why cmd exe is probing the location c test cmd_test bin We can search the log for this line of text using the log entry number and find out what is occurring before this call In the bold excerpts below you can two possible places where cmd exe obtained the path c test cmd_test The first is by calling GetCurrentDirectoryW and the second is from it calling GetFullPathNameW with the path specified In both cases this returns the path for the current working directory so now we know exactly how cmd exe is obtaining this path You can even see in the log file how cmd exe creates the c test cmd_test bin gt prompt it does this by querying the environment variable PROMPT which returns P G and then uses the API function WriteConsoleW to print the prompt to the screen after internally expanding P G to c test cmd_test bin gt as 000824 0a88 cmd exe 4ad0697a lt ADVAPI32 d11 77dd038f FormatMessageW gt DWORD 29h COUT LPWSTR 1lpBuffer 4AD38BAOh gt L C Copyright 1985 2001 Microsoft Cor
33. has no ability to exceed the security rights of the user account it is running in because it has no device drivers or components running in kernel mode When using VMware Project North Star Thinstall Administrators do not need to consider how their system wide security policies will be affected For example other solutions used filter drivers to redirect file system activity however it is not always clear what will be applied first virtualization or security rights VMware Project North Star Thinstall can be deployed in conjunction with central IT group policies or separately in the case of smaller development groups In the later case developer groups have the freedom to use the code components and frameworks of their choice without requiring security policy relaxation by centralized IT System stability through user mode Ever have your systems blue screen and you don t know why They usually appear fairly random and can be hard to diagnose without significant time and resources Microsoft reports that approximately 80 of system crashes and blue screens come from 3rd party device drivers Every instruction running in kernel mode represents an opportunity for a system crash or hang often the hangs are due to thread dead locks which only occur in rare circumstances and when combined with other products It is a testing impossibility to ensure that products will never crash or hang and most do The difference is that user mode code can never d
34. launch brand new packages from a network share instantly without a lengthy decompression step All the package data is decompressed a block at a time as needed by the application so only startup data is sent over the network m Significant disk space savings are available on the client PC since file data is not decompressed to disk When packages are deployed to PC hard drives for offline use the disk requirements are much reduced because package data remains compressed at all time m VMware Project North Star Thinstall has similar compression ratios to ZIP VMware Inc 12 Streaming VMware Project North Star Thinstall provides streaming capability without requiring a new server or a client VMware Project North Star Thinstall uses the standard SMB protocol to stream applications over a LAN so any Windows file share can instantly become a streaming server VMware Project North Star s embedded client technology means users can simply click on EXE files from network shares and the client will be loaded directly into memory Client is Windows already installed Server is any SMB share already exists Streams block by block Packages over 8GB in size can start instantly Streams from any source media Network shares amp ISCSI Hard drive USB Flash CDROM Terminal Server and MetaFrame support m Typically the same VMware Project North Star Thinstall packages can be used on Terminal Servers and Desktop PCs without c
35. of Administrators by default and will prompt users before accessing privileged objects on a computer Better security by confining vulnerabilities in user mode First let s start with the assumption that all sufficiently large and complex software projects have some bugs and with many bugs there is the possibility for security exploit The most public of these occur in Internet Explorer because it is easy to force every computer on the internet to execute code using Internet Explorer via HTML email or redirecting page views to illegitimate sites With Windows Vista Microsoft runs Internet Explorer in a separate user account which has limited security rights This way if IE is compromised the compromised account cannot do anything to the rest of the machine This solution is possible because IE runs VMware Inc 16 in user mode Because VMware Project North Star Thinstall runs 100 in user mode any bug or vulnerability presents no additional risk to the rest of the system because all VMware Project North Star Thinstall code is running in user mode in the same security context as the application Other solutions use device drivers and run significant amounts of kernel mode code which if compromised allows full control over the machine For a few examples search for symantec vulnerability on google and you ll see this is a pretty common attack vector for hackers User mode code can be walled off using user accounts where as kern
36. privileges This option has an effect only when generation of a Windows Installer database is requested via the MSIFilename option MSIFilename on page 106 Also this option has an effect on Vista only When this option is set to 1 the generated MSI database will be marked as requiring elevated privileges If your system is set up for UAC prompts this results in a UAC prompt when installing When you set the option to 0 no UAC prompt will be given but you won t be able to install machine wide For more information see Chapter 7 MSI Generation on page 93 This creates a msi file with always prompts for elevated privileges on Vista BuildOptions MSIFilename mymsi msi MSIRequireE LevatedPrivileges 1 Availability This option requires VMware Project North Star Thinstall version 3 210 or higher MSIUpgradeCode MSTUpgradeCode Specify an upgrade code for the MSI database This option has an effect only when generation of a Windows Installer database is requested via the MSIFilename option MSIFilename on page 106 It is highly recommended that each MSI database has an UpgradeCode SetupCapture will generate a suitable default UpgradeCode and place it in Package ini There should be no need to change it If you do change it make sure the new value is a valid GUID Globally Unique IDentifier For more information see Chapter 7 MSI Generation on page 93 This creates a msi file with a
37. reader_sl exe Shortcut AdobeDownloadManager exe m After edit BuildOptions OutDir bin SandboxName reader7 AcroRd32 exe Source ProgramFiLesDir Adobe Acrobat 7 0 Reader AcroRd32 exe ReadOn1lyData bin Package ro tvr At this point you have a virtualized application which can be run directly from a network share on restricted accounts without installation or modification to local PCs The Thinstalled EXE is read only and never changes so it can be placed in a central location where it is shared by multiple users VMware Project North Star Thinstall supports files of unlimited size and provides transparent streaming capabilities so a 2 terra byte file can be launched over the LAN in seconds only the data required to launch the application is pulled across the network Windows 2k and XP have a known issue where they will not display icons in the Explorer shell for very large EXE files the exact size depends on the local PC but typically around 500MB 1GB Because shortcut EXEs are always very small they will never encounter this problem only the primary EXE and a dummy primary EXE can be used as a work around for large packages Controlling the location of the Sandbox The sandbox is the directory where all changes made by the application will be stored The next time the user executes the application those changes will be remembered from the sandbox By deleting the sandbox directory you can instantly revert the application back
38. removable disk network shares When creating a new project structure VMware Project North Star Thinstall will automatically configure isolation modes for directories and registry subtrees The isolation modes control which directories the application can read and write on the local PC Though the configuration can be easily modified the default options work well The default options are m Fixed disk i e c The user can write to their Desktop and My Documents folder other modifications made by the application will go into the usertapp sandbox located by default under Application Data It is a simple configuration change to allow the user application to write to any location on the PC m Removable Disk By default the user can read or write to any location on a removable disk assuming they have access rights to do so m Network mapped drives By default the user can read or write to any location on a network mapped disk assuming they have access rights to do so VMware Inc 56 m UNC Network Paths The user can read or write to any location on a removable disk assuming they have access rights to do so Access to the system registry By default Thinstalled application can read the full system registry as permitted by access permissions except for specific parts of the registry are automatically configured to be isolated from the system during the package creation process to reduce conflicts between different versions of virtual a
39. same EXE can run on all platforms with no changes This is why we advertise VMware Project North Star Thinstall as instant migration In the case of emergency policy updates VMware Project North Star Thinstall will automatically switch from using the packaged version of DLL to system DLLs if the system policy file dictates This means if the host PC is up to date with Windows update you are protected from Thinstalled packages that contain DLLs that fall into this needs emergency update category When we implemented this we had a discussion with the Microsoft SxS team and they assured us that policy files are only used in 2 cases 1 Incase of emergency none have occurred yet 2 For MS beta products in this case beta DLLs will be redirected to shipped versions VMware Project North Star Thinstall is the only virtualization technologies which fully supports SxS which allows you to virtualize most new applications where virtualization products fail and must have SxS dlls physically installed on the machine before they will work Dynamic Path Relocation An important feature and concept of VMware Project North Star Thinstall is Dynamic Path Relocation which refers to the ability to move files and modify registry values to match the local host PC on the fly VMware Inc 19 VMware Project North Star Thinstall performs dynamic remapping during application startup and during runtime which allows both applications and their a
40. service based COM objects If an application can create such COM objects on the host PC and cause these COM objects to modify the host PC then the integrity of the host PC cannot be assured However if VMware Project North Star Thinstall executes out of process and services based COM objects inside of the virtual environment all changes made by the COM objects will be stored in the sandbox VMware Inc 102 Example usage This instructs VMware Project North Star Thinstall to execute 2 COM objects outside of the virtual environment if they are created by the application BuildOptions ExternalCOMObjects 8BC3F05E D86B 11D0 A075 00C04FB68820 7D096C5F ACO8 4F1F BEB7 5C22C517CE39 ExternalDLLs ExternalDLLs Force some DLLs to be loaded by Windows By default VMware Project North Star Thinstall determines whether it should load DLLs itself or pass the loading on to Windows If the DLL is located in the virtual filesystem VMware Project North Star Thinstall will load the DLL itself In some circumstances it is required to have Windows load the DLL even if it is in the virtual filesystem An example of this is a DLL that is injected in other processes using a mechanism known as Windows hooks For hooks to work the DLL implementing the hook must be available on the host filesystem and be loaded by Windows When you specify a DLL in ExternalDLLs the DLL is extracted from the virtual filesystem into the sandbox and
41. simultaneously If a sandbox is already in use by another computer VMware Project North Star Thinstall will display a warning and create a new sandbox to allow the user to continue working until the previous copy closes Portable Applications To make an application portable so that it can be executed from a USB Flash device IPod etc the sandbox should operate in local mode In this mode the sandbox is in a subdirectory relative to the EXE This mode is not recommend for shared environments like Terminal Server unless each user has their own copy of the application because sandboxes are not user specific but instead become location specific To cause an application to run with a local sandbox simply create a directory called Thinstall in the same directory as your Thinstalled application You can also move the Thinstall directory from AppData to the application directory to take existing application settings and make them operate in local mode Using a Clean PC for Capturing VMware Project North Star s Setup Capture application works by taking 2 snapshots for a PC s filesystem and registry before and after installation the target application The VMware Project North Star Thinstall project is created using the differences between the two snapshots We recommend using a clean PC to capture application installs because installers will skip files that already exist on the PC If the installer skips files they will not be included
42. snapshot tool like this 1 snapshot exe c snapl1 dat 2 install application 3 snapshot exe c snap2 dat 4 snapshot exe c snap1 dat diff c snap2 dat c myproject Q Why can t I delete or rebuild my application the file appears to be locked A Thinstalled EXE files and some associated sandbox files will be locked while the virtualized application is running and cannot be deleted or altered This also applied for any virtual child process started by the parent process Sometime application will purposefully leave processes behind after they quit for example Office 2003 will start a process called ctfmon exe and leave it running even after Word or Excel have quit You need to manually kill these child processes before you can rebuild the application Luckily VMware Project North Star Thinstall gives you a tool to hunt down any Thinstalled processes that might be running This tool is d11_dump exe canbe found in c program files thinstall1 vs and run likes this dll_dump If the application is locked on a user s desktop VMware Project North Star Thinstall has the ability to perform in place updates Upgrading applications on page 57 Q Why don t icons display in the Windows Shell for large EXE files gt 1GB A This is due to limitations in how Windows is implemented a work around is available Large Packages on page 155 Application Updates What happens if an application has auto updating capabi
43. specific project 2 A copy of the ThinReg registration utility ThinReg on page 86 What happens when a VMware Project North Star Thinstall created msi package is executed on an end user desktop 1 The msi database will extract your Thinstalled EXE file s to c program files You can use the optional configuration option MSIInstallDirectory MSIInstallDirectory on page 106 to control where files are extracted to If you specify ALLUSERS to msiexec or you create a msi package that install s per user by default using the configuration option MSIDefaultInstallAllUsers MSIDefaultInstallAllUsers on page 105 then the Thinstalled EXE files will be extracted to the users AppData directory 2 The msi install will execute ThinReg to register filetypes and create shortcuts ThinReg on page 86 How to build an MSI database 1 Edit a package file generated by package ini to specify MSIFilename lt filename gt msi MSIFilename on page 106 2 run build bat NOTE If MSIFilename MSIFilename on page 106 is not specified msi generation will be skipped during the build process VMware Inc 93 By default the generated database will install machine wide You can change this by setting the option MSIDefaultInstal1lAl1lUsers 0 MSIDefaultInstallAllUsers on page 105 This will create a database which will have a default of per user installation msiexec command line parameters
44. specified upgrade code BuildOptions MSIFilename mymsi msi MSIUpgradeCode D89F1994 A24B 3E11 0C94 7FD1E13AB93F Availability This option requires VMware Project North Star Thinstall version 3 210 or higher NetRelaunch NetReLaunch Controls whether to relaunch an application from the local disk when running from a net share or removable disk By default VMware Project North Star Thinstall will automatically detect if an application is being run from a network drive or removable disk and will relaunch the application using a local fixed disk This is to resolve a problem in which Symantec Anti Virus tries to perform a complete scan of an EXE under some conditions and this scan can have a big impact on launch times for large EXE files located network shares When Symantec AV decides to perform a full file scan VMware Inc 108 m If EXE is launched from a network share or removable disk it skips the scan when the EXE is located on the hard drive m When the EXE makes its first network connection it does not scan the EXE if the EXE does not make any network connections Because a large number of desktops have SAV installed VMware Project North Star Thinstall automatically compensates for this by allowing applications to launch from a network share without incurring the lengthy scan times It does so by creating a small stub executable in the user s sandbox which is then relaunched Because the small executable ca
45. system32 cmd exe Ci Prograen Files Common Pies Instols Windows stores environment variables on a system wide and user specific basis The location for these two stores are located in the following locations System wide environment variables HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SYSTEM CurrentControLSet Control Session Manager Environment User specific environment variables HKEY_CURRENT_USER Environment VMware Inc 133 For packages running under VMware Project North Star Thinstall any environment variables captured in these 2 locations will be applied for all applications running in the same Sandbox Per user values take precedence over per machine values You can manually edit HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE txt and HKEY_CURRENT_USER txt to add environment variables after the capture has completed For example the following text can be appended to the end of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE txt to add a CLASSPATH environment variable which contains the string c mypath isolation_writecopy HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SYSTEM CurrentControlSet Control Session Manager Environment Value CLASSPATH REG_SZ c mypath 00 NOTE the Path variable is ignored by VMware Project North Star Thinstall instead a new variable VirtualPath is used see below The PATH variable The PATH environment variable is treated differently because typically you do not want to completely replace the local system PATH variable but instead prepend specific values To accompli
46. test cmd_test bin 000004 0a88 start_env_var 000005 0a88 start_env_var C C test cmd_test bin 000006 0a88 start_env_var ExitCode 00000000 000007 0a88 start_env_var ALLUSERSPROFILE C Documents and Settings All Users WINDOWS List of DLLs loaded into memory during runtime The section labeled Modules loaded is located near the end of the log and will describe all of the DLLs which were loaded into memory at runtime and the addresses they were loaded to This list also describes whether DLLs were loaded by Windows or by VMware Project North Star Thinstall Modules loaded PRELOADED_MAP 00400000 00452fff C Program Files Adobe Reader 8 0 Reader AcroRd32 exe PRELOADED_BY_SYSTEM 00400000 00452fff C Program Files Adobe Reader 8 0 Reader AcroRd32 exe SYSTEM_LOADED 00400000 00452fff C test AcroRd32 exe SYSTEM_LOADED 00df0000 00df8fFF C WINDOWS system32 Normaliz d11 MEMORY_MAPPED_ANON 0 13b0000 020affff C Program Files Adobe Reader 8 0 Reader AcroRd32 d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 035a0000 035b4fff C WINDOWS system32 nvwddi d1l SYSTEM_LOADED 035a0000 03698ffFf C WINDOWS system32 nvwimg d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 035e0000 O3ba9ffF C WINDOWS system32 ieframe d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 04730000 04828ffFf C WINDOWS system32 nvwimg d11 MEMORY_MAPPED_ANON 5000000 050a8fff C Program Files Adobe Reader 8 0 Reader ACE d11 MEMORY_MAPPED_ANON 06000000 064bOfff C Program Files Adobe Reader 8 0 Reader AGM d11 MEMORY_MAPPED_ANON
47. the install of the NET Framework 136 3 Delete Native Images NET uses a process called Just in time compilation to convert IL byte code into native processor code at runtime During installation Native Image files will be generated to the hard drive These files can increase your package size by 2 or 3 times by deleting them your packages can be much smaller In NET 1 1 this process was very fast and it could occur at startup time very quickly In NET 2 0 and higher the native image compilation is significantly slower There is a speed hit for startup time if you decide to delete native images because these images will be generated in memory rather than be pre exiting in your VMware Project North Star Thinstall package You can delete native images by deleting the directories SystemRoot assembly Nativelmages Tips and Tricks for Specific Applications The following sections describe tips and tricks that you can use to create packages for certain applications Office 2007 There is a potential conflict when you run a Thinstalled Office 2007 on a system which has a full native installation of Office 2003 In this configuration the Thinstalled Office 2007 applications will detect that the Handwriting feature of Office 2003 was installed but because of isolation the applications won t see some of the files registry values belonging to that feature This will cause an automatic repair to be started which shows up as a
48. uses GetWindowsDirectory to obtain the partial path c windows system32 and then appends macromed flash to obtain the location of it s install directory As well flash uses a registry value which corresponds to this location HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT CLSID 1171A62F 05D2 11D1 83FC OQ0A0C9089C5A InprocServer32 DefaultValue C WINDOWS system32 Macromed Flash Flash9b ocx When running an application that installs Macormedia Flash dynamically or during the capture process for example Firefox or Internet Explorer the registry stores the path C WINDOWS system32 and files are written to c windows system32 macromed flash If the application is moved to another PC where the windows root directory is different for example c winnt windows 20060 it will fail to work unless both the files and registry keys are remapped to point to c winnt VMware Project North Star s virtual filesystem stores file paths using Folder Macros Folder Macros on page 148 so the file paths will automatically expand to the correct location on different PCs As well VMware Project North Star Thinstall stores registry data using the same Folder Macros so that registry values automatically re adjust to point to the correct location on a different PC For example when the application writes the registry value C WINDOWS system32 Macromed Flash FLash9b ocx VMware Project North Star Thinstall stores this internally as SystemSystem Macromed Flash Flash9b o
49. using ShellExecute Windows will actually try a number of possible commands to see if they are valid c Program exe Files Microsoft Office OFFICE11 winword exe c Myfile doc c Program Files Microsoft exe Office OFFICE11 winword exe c Myfile doc c Program Files Microsoft exe Office OFFICE11 winword exe c Myfile doc If a user creates the file c Program exe on a PC it could break office and also represents a security threat m Short pathnames allow compatibility with legacy applications 16 bit applications cannot support filename paths other than 8 3 style When windows runs 16bit applications it will provide applications with the short pathname version for all filenames This typically does not come into play for most people but was one of the primary reasons for the original conception of short pathnames m Short pathnames work around Windows API path length limitations Many Windows API functions have limitations on the maximum string length they can handle for paths For example on Windows XP SP1 the ShellExecute API command cannot handle a string length longer than 128 characters Often the registry is used to store a value that look like Command Parameters like this entry for Office 2003 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE Classes AppLications ois exe shell Edit command DefaultValue C PROGRA 1 MICROS 3 OFFICE11 0IS EXE sheLLEdit 1 If the Exe filename plus the parameter is greater than 128 characters the command
50. written to if they pre exist in on the system m Fixed problem where load unload load sequences for some DLLs could cause a crash m Added support for RegGetValue Vista m Fixed issue where Thread local storage was not being allocated for threads created for services m Added support for SetServiceBits m Fixed issue where applications call registry functions with invalid buffer sizes Version 3 081 Apr 9 2007 m Fixed short path problem where MSI thinks products are not installed correctly when it obtains two different shortpath values m Fixed problem where applications calling registry queries with a buffer larger than 1GB of memory would cause a lock up Version 3 080 Apr 9 2007 m Now you can easily tell which version of VMware Project North Star Thinstall an EXE was built with by looking in the File Version information pane m Added Package ini option RemoveSandboxOnExit 1 to delete sandbox after execution completes Chapter 8 Package ini format on page 95 m Added scripting callback function OnLastProcessExit which will be called when the last process quits Chapter 9 Scripting on page 117 m Added ability to perform in places updates to application while EXE files may be locked by users Upgrading applications on page 57 Version 3 078 Apr 5 2007 m Update to correct Office XP DEP related bug m Fixed problem with 3 077 where licenses could not be verified Version 3 077 m Minor correction for 3 076 whe
51. 0 CRT_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8 0 50727 163_x ww_681e29fb msvcp80 d11 MEMORY_MAPPED_ANON 7c4c0000 7c53cfff C WINDOWS WinSxS x86_Microsoft VC80 CRT_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8 0 50727 163_x ww_681e29fb msvcm80 d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 7c800000 7c8f3ffF C WINDOWS system32 kernel32 d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 7c900000 7c9afffF C WINDOWS system32 ntd1LL d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 7c9c0000 7d1d4ffF C WINDOWS system32 SHELL32 d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 7e410000 7e49fffF C WINDOWS system32 USER32 d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 7e830000 7eb9efff C WINDOWS system32 mshtm1L d11 SYSTEM_LOADED Indicates the DLL was loaded by Windows the file must exist on the disk MEMORY_MAPPED_ANON Indicates the DLL was loaded by VMware Project North Star Thinstall the file may be loaded from the virtual file system 46800000 46873fff Indicates the address ranges in virtual memory where the DLL was loaded Timing Report list of slowest 150 objects profiled 8255572220 total cycles 2955 56 ms sprof thinstall_LoadLibrary2 765380728 cycles 274 01 ms on log entry 21753 428701805 cycles 153 48 ms on log entry 191955 410404281 cycles 146 93 ms on log entry 193969 231503734 cycles 82 88 ms on log entry 188438 227419794 cycles 81 42 ms on log entry 190209 211952538 cycles 75 88 ms on log entry 197416 202095103 cycles 72 35 ms on log entry 189394 200356604 cycles 71 73 ms on log entry 194646 192420627 cycles 68 89 ms on log entry 190812 183214731 cycles 65 59 ms on l
52. 00000 061aq000 C Program Files Adobe Acrobat 7 0 Reader AGM d11 MEMORY_MAPPED_ANON 07000000 0701b000 C Program Files Adobe Acrobat 7 0 Reader BIB d11 MEMORY_MAPPED_ANON 7c3a0000 7c41b000 C WINDOWS system32 MSVCP71 d11 VMware Inc 88 VREGTool VREGTool is VMware Project North Star Thinstall s virtual registry compiler and exporter Command Line Usage NoTE All parameters are case insensitive VREGTOOL regfile tvr ExportDir output_directory HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software VREGTOOL regfile tvr ImportDir input_directory VREGTOOL regfile tvr ImportReg regedit reg Merged WriteCopy Full NoReplace NoMacros VREGTOOL regfile tvr ExportReg filename reg HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software VREGTOOL regfile tvr PrintKeys HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software ShowValues ShowData ExpandMacros VREGTOOL regfile tvr PrintStats VREGTOOL regfile tvr SysCompare HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software Exact VREGTOOL regfile tvr DelSubkey HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software NoMark Exporting registry data to VMware Project North Star Thinstall registry directory format VREGTOOL regfile tvr ExportDir output_directory HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software regfile tvr Datafile in VMware Project North Star Thinstall Virtual Registry file format output_directory Output directory where registry data will be written HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software You can optionally specify a registry subtree to export If no subtree is specified VMware Project North S
53. 06d6172696F writecopy HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software NVIDIA Corporation writecopy HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software NVIDIA Corporation Global writecopy HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software NVIDIA Corporation Global nView VMware Inc 68 Utilities and Automation Tools VMware Project North Star Thinstall utilities are stored in the default install directory i e c Program files Thinstal1 VS Setup Capture on page 69 The primary application for converting traditional installers into VMware Project North Star Thinstall projects SetupCapture is a GUI front end for snapshot exe The following utilities can be used to troubleshoot issues and help diagnose problems m Log Monitor on page 74 Generates log files for running Thinstalled apps m sbmerge on page 85 Can be used to merge runtime changes stored in the sandbox back into an existing project m dil_dump on page 88 Lists all running Thinstalled applications as well as individual DLLs loaded by those applications The following tools are intended to be used by companies integrating VMware Project North Star Thinstall into their products these tools are automatically invoked during the build process so you typically do not need to use them m VFTool Virtual Filesystem Compiler m VREGTool on page 891 Virtual Registry Compiler m TLink on page 91 VMware Project North Star Thinstall Linker Setup Capture Setup Capture is used to automatically convert standa
54. 07000000 07019fff C Program Files Adobe Reader 8 0 Reader BIB d11 MEMORY_MAPPED_ANON 08000000 08239fff C Program Files Adobe Reader 8 0 Reader CoolType d11 SYSTEM_LOADED Offd0000 OffFF7FFF C WINDOWS system32 rsaenh d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 10000000 10165fff C WINDOWS system32 nview d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 20000000 202c4fff C WINDOWS system32 xpsp2res d11 MEMORY_MAPPED_ANON 20800000 20fdafff C Program Files Adobe Reader 8 0 Reader plug_ins AcroForm api MEMORY_MAPPED_ANON 22100000 224f2fff C Program Files Adobe Reader 8 0 Reader plug_ins Annots api MEMORY_MAPPED_ANON 23000000 2311afff C Program Files Adobe Reader 8 0 Reader plug_ins DigSig api MEMORY_MAPPED_ANON 23800000 23951fff C Program Files Adobe Reader 8 0 Reader plug_ins EScript api MEMORY_MAPPED_ANON 24000000 24023fff C Program Files Adobe Reader 8 0 Reader pLug_ins EWH32 api MEMORY_MAPPED_ANON 25800000 25817fff C Program Files Adobe Reader 8 0 Reader plug_ins IA32 api MEMORY_MAPPED_ANON 26800000 2680ffff C Program Files Adobe Reader 8 0 Reader plLug_ins eBook api MEMORY_MAPPED_ANON 28000000 285d1fff C Program Files Adobe Reader 8 0 Reader plug_ins PPKLite api MEMORY_MAPPED_ANON 28800000 2885dfff C Program Files Adobe Reader 8 0 Reader plug_ins reflow api MEMORY_MAPPED_ANON 29000000 29227fff C Program Files Adobe Reader 8 0 Reader pLug_ins MakeAccessible api MEMORY_MAPPED_ANON 29800000 2985afff C Program Files Adobe Reader 8 0 Reader plug_ins Accessibility api MEMORY_M
55. 0k on disk Package multiple applications together for access to same shared environment Suites share the same virtual registry amp file system Packaging ActiveX controls Ability to load Internet Explorer from host system using pre fab virtual environment Use ActiveX controls with out install Use Java applets without installing Java Runtime logging amp diagnostics VMware Inc Report of potential errors in application Complete API trace with all parameters Top 100 slowest API calls DLL usage amp load location Crash information COM Interface logging 15 User Mode VMware Project North Star Thinstall is the only 100 user mode application virtualization solution on the market This document details why a user mode solution is critical for maintaining system security stability and usability One of the most fundamental principles of system administration is to use the Principle of least privilege http en wikipedia org wiki Principle_of_least_privilege which requires the use of user mode solutions where possible VMware Project North Star Thinstall can do the following things m VMware Project North Star Thinstall can run applications on locked down PCs without Admin rights This means users on the road can execute applications on kiosk and hotel PCs where they are not able to install software or device drivers m VMware Project North Star Thinstall can run application directly from USB Flash devices
56. 17 Frequently Asked Questions http thinstall com demos ica_activex Q Does VMware Project North Star Thinstall support applications using services A Yes VMware Project North Star Thinstall supports virtual services If a captured package installs a service VMware Project North Star Thinstall will automatically start the service as virtual service in the same user account as the logged in user as needed by the application Q Does VMware Project North Star Thinstall support plugins and Addins A Yes There are a number of different ways plugins can be packaged together or separate from applications Plugins and Addins on page 154 Q Can VMware Project North Star Thinstall run on XPe embedded A Yes Q Is there a way just to re run the post scan before doing the build I did the pre scan installed the app and then ran the post scan After doing the post scan I realized that I wanted to change the configuration of the app slightly and re run the post scan but I can t seem to find away to just run the post scan again on it s own A Yes if you premature clicked the Post install scan you can just hit the back gt gt button and it will take you to the post install scan step again and continue from there The back button also always to create multiple similar VMware Project North Star Thinstall projects in the same session Alternatively you can also create projects from the command line using the
57. 2000 Professional vmdk which holds the contents of the hard drive This file will grow as need to hold the contents of the hard drive up to the limit specified above You should now have a fresh new virtual machine Configure the virtual machine to boot from the CD drive A virtual machine is created with a completely empty hard drive and is not able to boot up You will need to configure the virtual machine to boot from your installation CD either physical or ISO file Select the VM gt Settings menu to edit the virtual machine settings Select the CD ROM device Click once to place a check mark in the connect at power on check box If you have a physical installation CD select the use physical drive radio button select the Host radio button and select Auto detect menu item VMware Inc 46 Insert the CD into your physical machine s CD drive Local host Mware Server Console F Tt Je Configuration file C Virtual Machines Windows 2000 Professional Windows 2000 Professional vmx Version Current virtual machine for VMware Server 1 0 2 Commands fide 1 0 ODROM T 7 Click the Ok to close the Machine Setting dialog Step 8 Start up the virtual machine and begin installing the operating system Select the Power gt Power On menu to start the virtual machine running VMware Inc 47 At this point you will see the virtual machine s desk top turn black then the BIOS post screen and later the insta
58. 54 the operating system When subsequent read requests are made by the application for the same data the Window disk cache will provide the same data without requiring a network read operation If the client PC runs low on memory Windows will automatically throw away some of its disk cache and provide the memory resource to other applications Thinstalled EXE 128K Read Request Compressed File Supported OSs amp Apps OS Supported m 32bit platforms Windows NT 2000 2000 Server XP XPE 2003 Server Vista m 64bit platforms Windows XP 64 bit Windows 2003 64 bit Windows Vista 64 bit m VMware Project North Star Thinstall does not support 16bit or non intel platforms such as Windows CE VMware Project North Star Thinstall currently supports most 16 and 32 bit windows applications running on 32bit and 64bit versions of Windows m VMware Project North Star Thinstall can run 16 32bit applications on a 64bit OS but it does not currently support 64 bit native applications m Neither Windows nor VMware Project North Star Thinstall support 16bit applications running on 64 bit OSs Software which typically needs to be deployed using traditional installation technologies Applications requiring installation of kernel mode device drivers ODBC drivers will work because they are user mode m Products such as anti virus and personal firewalls m Scanner drivers and printer Drivers m Some VPN clients VMware Inc 55 Th
59. 6 Each MSI database needs a ProductCode SetupCapture will generate a suitable default ProductCode and place it in Package ini If you change it make sure the new value is a valid GUID Globally Unique IDentifier For more information see Chapter 7 MSI Generation on page 93 This creates a msi file with a specific product code BuildOptions MSIFilename mymsi msi MSTProductCode 590810CE 65E6 3EQB O8EF 9CCF8AE20DO0E Availability This option requires VMware Project North Star Thinstall version 3 210 or higher MSIProductVersion MSTProductVersion Specify a product version number for the MSI database This option has an effect only when generation of a Windows Installer database is requested via the MSIFilename option MSIFilename on page 106 The product version number will be displayed when you show the properties of the database When deploying to a machine that already has the package installed Windows Installer will check the version numbers and will refuse to install an older version over a newer version you ll have to manually uninstall the old version first This creates a msi file with a specific product version VMware Inc 107 BuildOptions MSIFilename mymsi msi MSTProductVersion 1 0 Availability This option requires VMware Project North Star Thinstall version 3 210 or higher MSIRequireElevatedPri MSTRequireElevatedPrivileges Mark the MSI database as requires elevated
60. 7 Outlook Outlook stores its account settings etc in a number of registry keys and files When you start up Outlook for the first time it will check if these keys exist and if not will prompt the user to create a new account This works fine in the virtual environment when Outlook is not installed on the physical system However when the user already has Outlook installed physically the Thinstalled version will find the registry keys in the system registry and use those settings which is probably not what s intended What s needed is Full Isolation Mode Chapter 4 Isolation Modes on page 61 for the registry keys and files where Outlook stores its settings so the Thinstalled version will pretend the system systems don t exist To set this up some changes need to be made to the capture First of all the following entries need to be added to the HKEY_CURRENT_USER txt file VMware Inc 137 isolation_full HKEY_CURRENT_USER Identities isolation_full HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software Microsoft Windows NT CurrentVersion Windows Messaging Subsystem Profiles Next a file named Attributes ini Attributes ini on page 145 with the following contents Isolation DirectoryIsolationMode Full must be created in each of the following subdirectories AppData Microsoft Addins AppData Microsoft O0ffice AppData Microsoft Out Look Local AppData Microsoft FORMS Local AppData Microsoft Out Look create the subdirec
61. 97 gt 01le32 d11 774e03f0 GetFileType CIN HANDLE hFile 3h 000877 0a88 GetFileType 3 gt 0x2 000878 0a88 cmd exe 4ad02c97 lt 0le32 d11 774e03f0 GetFileType gt DWORD 2h 000879 0a88 cmd exe 4ad02cc0 gt kernel32 d1L1L 7c812F39 GetStdHandle CIN DWORD nStdHandle FFFFFFF6h 000880 0a88 cmd exe 4ad02cc0 lt kernel32 dL1 7c812f39 GetStdHandle gt HANDLE 3h 000881 0a88 cmd exe 4ad02ccd gt kernel32 d1L1 7c81af14 GetConsoleMode IN HANDLE hConsoleHandle 3h 000882 0a88 cmd exe 4ad02ccd lt kernel32 d1L1 7c81af14 GetConsoleMode gt BOOL 1h COUT LPDWORD 1pMode 13DD50h gt A7h 000883 0a88 cmd exe 4ad02c97 gt 01e32 d1L1 774e03f0 GetFileType CIN HANDLE hFile 3h 000884 0a88 GetFileType 3 gt 0x2 000885 0a88 cmd exe 4ad02c97 lt ole32 dll 774e03f0 GetFileType gt DWORD 2h 000886 0a88 cmd exe 4ad02cc0 gt kernel32 d1L1L 7c812F39 GetStdHandle CIN DWORD nStdHand1le FFFFFFF6h 000887 0a88 cmd exe 4ad02cc0 lt kernel32 d1L1 7c812f39 GetStdHandle gt HANDLE 3h O 000888 0a88 cmd exe 4ad02ccd gt kernel32 d1L1 7c81af14 GetConsoleMode IN HANDLE hConsoleHand1le 3h 000889 0a88 cmd exe 4ad02ccd lt kernel32 d11 7c81af14 GetConsoleMode gt BOOL 1h COUT LPDWORD 1pMode 13DD50h gt A7h VMware Inc 83 000890 0a88 cmd exe 4ad0b9d4 gt kernel32 d1L1L 7c812F39 GetStdHandle CIN DWORD nStdHand1le FFFFFFF5h 000891 0a88 cmd exe 4ad0b9d4 lt kernel32 d1L1 7c812f39 GetStdHandle gt HANDLE 7h 000892 0
62. APPED_ANON 29a00000 29a1dfff C Program Files Adobe Reader 8 0 Reader plug_ins ReadOutLoud api MEMORY_MAPPED_ANON 2qa000000 2a018fff C Program Files Adobe Reader VMware Inc 77 C WINDOWS WinSxS x86 VMware Inc Reader pLug_ Reader pLug_ Reader pLug_ Reader pLug_ Reader pLug_ Reader pLug_ Reader pLug_ Reader pLug_ Reader pLug_ Reader pLug_ Reader pLug_ Reader pLug_ MEMORY_ MEMORY_ MEMORY_ MEMORY_ MEMORY_ MEMORY_ MEMORY_ MEMORY_ MEMORY_ MEMORY_ MEMORY_ ins Search5 api IAPPED_ANON 2a300000 2a359fff C Program ins Search api IAPPED_ANON 2a800000 2a821fff C Program ins SendMail api IAPPED_ANON 2b000000 2b045fff C Program ins Spelling api IAPPED_ANON 2b800000 2b865fff C Program ins PDDom api IAPPED_ANON 2d800000 2d94efff C Program ins Multimedia api IAPPED_ANON 2e000000 2e02fffF C Program ins webLink api IAPPED_ANON 30800000 30829fff C Program ins Updater api IAPPED_ANON 31800000 31810fff C Program ins HLS api IAPPED_ANON 32000000 3204dfff C Program ins SaveAsRTF api IAPPED_ANON 40800000 40821fff C Program ins DVA api IAPPED_ANON 45800000 458cffff C Program ins Checkers api MEMORY_ Reader pLug_ SYSTEM_LOADED 59a60000 59b00fff C WINDOWS system32 dbghelp d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 5ad70000 Sada7fff C WINDOWS system32 uxtheme d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 5d090000 5d129f fF C WINDOWS system32 COMC
63. AppDara oo Profile O Profle E ProgramFiesDir f E 40000026500002 a ED tuldCache O dret2 O EXCEL_Sandbox a The GIMP 2 2 13 E Thinstalbudder a O Traders C3 Wisdom soft AutoScreenReco we Tertoisesvn Vowere O Contacts Cookies E Desktop YP Favorites E Local Settinas In addition to shell folders like AppData VMware Project North Star Thinstall will also create three registry files m Registry rw tvr contains all registry modifications made by the application m Registry rw lck zero byte lock file used to prevent other computers from simultaneously using a registry located on a network share m Registry tvr backup contains a backup of the tvr file from the last good execution if corruption is detected on startup it will be restored Additionally if an application executes a child process VMware Project North Star Thinstall will create a directory who s name looks like the following 40000026500002i This directory stores a dynamically generated EXE stub for the child process so the correct name is displayed in explorer for that child process You can delete these directories and they will be regenerated the next time they are required VMware Inc 67 Sandbox FAQ Q If copy files into the sandbox folder they are not visible to the application Why not VMware Project North Star Thinstall stores all of its filesystem information in the virtual registry this allo
64. EG_MULTI_SZ then VALUE will be listed as sequence of characters terminated by a newline or carriage return character Any unprintable character should be escaped into 2 hex characters REG_SZ This is a Line Oawith a carriage return as part of the data 00 REG_MULTI_SZ This is a line1 00This is Line2 00 00 Additionally escaped characters because the represent an escape character all characters must also be escaped the is used for VMware Project North Star Thinstall macro expansion it must also be escaped when it the value should remain unexpanded Example Macro expansion REG_SZ ProgramFiLesDir AppLicationx control ocx at runtime when the program accesses this registry value it will be expanded by VMware Project North Star Thinstall Virtual Registry Text Format Text format for the virtual registry is similar to regedit reg format however it supports macro expansion for string registry values names and value data The format looks like isolation_mode FULL_SUBKEY_NAME Value VALUE_NAME VALUE_TYPE VALUE_DATA OR Value VALUE_NAME VALUE_TYPE MACRO_VALUE_DATA isolation_mode Can be one of VMware Project North Star Thinstall s isolation modes Chapter 4 Isolation Modes on page 61 as specified by isolation_full isolation_merged or isolation_writecopy VALUE_TYPE Specifies one the value data registry type This should be one of the following REG_SZ REG_
65. EXE when building the target application StripVersionInfo on page 113 WorkingDirectory Sets the current working directory before the application starts WorkingDirectory on page 116 Version XXXX Used to override EXE version strings or add new version strings Version XXXX on page 115 Example package ini file BuildOptions SandboxName MainApp v1 0 SandboxName on page 111 Compression CompressionType Fast CompressionType on page 100 Isolation DirectoryIsolationMode wWriteCopy DirectoryIsolationMode on page 101 MainA pp exe Source ProgramFiles Test MainApp exe Source on page 113 Test exe Source ProgramFiles Test UtilityApp exe Source on page 113 Shortcut MainApp exe Shortcut on page 113 AccessDeniedMsg AccessDeniedMsg Holds error message to display to user if they do not have permission to run package Example BuildOptions PermittedGroups Administrator 0fficeUsers AccessDeniedMsg You do not have permission to execute this application please call support 1 800 822 2992 This setting controls the string which is displayed to the user if they are not authorized to execute the application VMware Inc 97 AddPageExecutePernii AddPageExecutePermission Used to fix applications that don t work in DEP environments Windows XP SP2 Windows Server 2003 and above have a feature called Data Execution Prevention which is
66. EXPAND_SZ REG_BINARY REG_DWORD REG_DWORD_BIG_ENDIAN REG_LINK REG_MULTI_SZ REG_RESOURCE_LIST REG_FULL_RESOURCE_DESCRIPTOR REG_RESOURCE_REQUIREMENTS_LIST If you need to represent a non published registry type alternatively you can specify a decimal base 10 number For example 453 00 VALUE_DATA Specifies value data Data is represented differently depending on if the data type is a string or non string type VMware Inc 144 String Types REG_SZ REG_MULTI_SZ REG_EXPAND_SZ Values are represent as escaped string values A Unicode text file must be used to represent non ansi characters VMware Project North Star Thinstall uses unicode text files by default The newline character tab character carriage return end of file and NULL characters must be escaped if they exist in the original string Escaped characters begin with and are followed by 2 hex characters to represent the ANSI value for the character Non ansi Unicode characters do not need to be escaped but can only exist in unicode text files Examples REG_SZ Both 00 This represents a 5 character string value the 5th character being a NULL 0 character REG_MULIT_SZ String1 00String2 00 00 This represents a multi string value which contains a list of 2 values String1 and String2 REG_DWORD 27 c6 00 02 This represents a 4 byte binary value For binary values data is stored as a string of escaped bytes For DWORD values data
67. M objects provided by virtual environments for example a system installed application can access virtualized Office components by running the system application in the virtualized environment Services Thinstalled applications can start and execute system installed services as well as virtual services By default system services will be executed in the virtual environment so that modifications made by that service will be controlled by the virtual environment Filetype Associations Thinstalled applications can execute system installed application via file type association File type association can be added to the local PCs registry to point to Thinstalled EXE files on a per user or per machine basis Upgrading applications VMware Project North Star Thinstall allows you to upgrade or roll back an application version which it is still running The upgrade process will occur automatically when the user quits the application and runs it a second time In terminal server environments you can have multiple users executing different versions at the same time during the transition period The process for doing in place upgrades or roll backs is very simple and is described below Locked files While applications are running the EXE package will be locked and it cannot be replaced deleted or moved This file lock ensures that any computer or user accessing a specific version of an application will continue to have that version available as lon
68. Microsoft Visual Studio generates c progra 1 micros 1 and c progra 1 micros 2 c progra 1 micros 1 c progra 1 micros 2 c program files Microsoft Office c program files Microsoft Visual Studio installing Microsoft Visual Studio and then Microsoft Office also generates the same two paths which refer to different locations c progra 1 micros 1 and c progra 1 micros 2 c progra 1 micros 1 c program files Microsoft Office c progra 1 micros 2 c program files Microsoft Visual Studio When capturing a snapshot of an application s install it will write a number of short pathname values to the registry as described above When moving the application to a different PC or installing additional applications on the same PC may effect the short pathname values that the operating system provides from the underlying operating system Virtualization solutions that are based on filter drivers do not have ability to control short pathname values because they are generated by the windows filesystem and as a result a capture on one PC has a good chance of failing when moved to another PC or when executed some time later on the same PC when other applications have been installed Common areas of failure that occur when proper short pathname support is not available include m In process and out of process COM failure The application tries to create COM objects and fails because the registry values point to the in process or out of process COM se
69. Modes on page 61 which are automatically determined by SetupCapture SetupCapture has a few simple rules for determining what isolation mode to apply to a registry subtree or directory during capture m Ifthe application created a new directory or registry subtree during its installation on a clean PC the isolation mode is set to Full Isolation m User specific storage areas like the Desktop and My Documents are set to Merged Isolation so the application has direct write access to these locations m All other directories and subkeys will default to WriteCopy Isolation NOTE Network shares are not affected by isolation modes read and write operations to network shares occur unchanged by VMware Project North Star Thinstall For example the following image shows a section of the Windows registry for a PC which has various older Office applications installed Office 2003 creates the registry subtree HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software Microsoft 0ffice 11 0 Registry as seen by Windows Regedit H E ODBC a a M 10 0 9 11 0 9 8 0 39 0 Ga Common CJ Delivery C Live Meeting CA Outlook J PowerPoint Visio l E E H PE AE E When running a thinstalled version of Visio 2007 VMware Project North Star Thinstall will set the HKLM Software Microsoft O0ffice registry subtree to Full Isolation This setting prevents Visio 2007 from failing because of registry settings that may pre exist on the host PC at
70. NT_USER of HKCR for HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT IsolationMode in Isolation mode to be set 1 WriteCopy 2 Merged 3 Full Example Set isolation of HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software Thinstall Test to Full SetRegistryIsolation HKCU Software Thinstall Test 3 Availability This option requires VMware Project North Star Thinstall version 3 215 or higher WaitForProcess Function WaitForProcess ProcessID TimeOutInMilliSeconds This function waits until the specified ProcessID has completed execution Parameters ProcessID in The processID to wait for completion The process ID can come from ExecuteExternalProcess or Execute VirtualProcess TimeOutInMilliSeconds in The maximum amount of time to wait for the process to end before continuing If 0 is specified INFINITE is used VMware Inc 128 Returns This function returns an integer 0 Timeout failed 1 Process exited 2 The process does not exists or security denied Example id ExecuteExternalProcess cmd exe WaitForProcess id 0 VMware Inc Chapter 10 API functions 129 Thinstall Virtualization Suite 3 0 130 VMware Inc Access Control using Active Directory You can control access to application using Active Directory Groups At build time VMware Project North Star Thinstall will convert AD Group names into SID values A SID is small binary value that unique identifies an object similar to a GUID SIDs are not unique for a few spe
71. OOT CLSID 00020800 0000 0000 C000 000000000046 LocalServer32 C PROGRA 1 MICROS 3 OFFICE11 GRAPH EXE automation VMware Inc 21 In process COM HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT CLSID 0002E55E 0000 0000 CQ00 000000000046 C PROGRA 1 COMMON 1 MICROS 1 WEBCOM 1 11 OWC11 DLL Cryptography HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE Microsoft Cryptography Defaults Provider Microsoft Exchange Cryptographic Provider v1 0 C PROGRA 1 MICROS 3 OFFICE11 EXCHCSP DLL Intelligent Search HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE Microsoft Intelligent Search Schema 1 XML MSUSP Filel C PROGRA 1 MICROS 3 OFFICE11 USPTYPES XML Internet Explorer plugins HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE Microsoft Internet Explorer Extensions 92780B25 18CC 41C8 B9BE 3C9C571A8263 Icon C PROGRA 1 MICROS 3 OFFICE11 REFBAR ICO Location of shared DLLs HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE Microsoft O0ffice 11 0 Common FilesPaths mso dll C PROGRA 1 COMMON 1 MICROS 1 OFFICE11 MSO DLL Error reporting and crash handling HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software Microsoft PCHealth ErrorReporting DW Installed DWO0200 C PROGRA 1 COMMON 1 MICROS 1 DW DW20 EXE Short pathnames are not consistent across PCs and are also highly dependent on installation order For example installing Microsoft Office after installing Microsoft Visual Studio can create identical short pathnames which refer to different location than when installing Microsoft Visual Studio and the Microsoft Office installing Microsoft Office and then
72. PCs complex application can literally run directly from network shares with no preinstall requirements This enables companies to guarantee change management policies are not violated through group policies and quickly deploy new applications at the same time Because there are no device drivers or system files installed the roll back process is as simple as deleting an EXE file Ok user mode is great why is VMware Project North Star Thinstall the only one doing it Thinstall pioneered the user mode application virtualization with patents granted and pending The user mode virtualization technology is very large undertaking to complete VMware Project North Star Thinstall has been in development for nearly 10 years to date and it is technologically most similar to the open source projects Wine and ReactOS which have also been in development for approximately the same time frames Thinstall focused on staying user mode from day one and this is reflected in the product you see today Not knowing a user mode solution was possible other solutions started out as device driver based solutions and switching to a user mode model would require complete rewrites Device driver solutions work by implementing a windows filter driver in kernel mode which intercepts various file system requests in the kernel mode At this level the hard work of loading applications resolving DLLs and processing side by side manifest is done by the Windows operating system
73. R C HEY LOCAL MACHINE SA gt NOTE VMware Project North Star Thinstall selects one primary EXE to host the VMware Project North Star Thinstall runtime plus application registry data and files The other EXE files are simply Shortcuts to the main EXE and can be deleted prior to distribution to users if they are not needed EXEs are selected based on which shortcuts were installed by the application during install so you can delete unimportant shortcuts before completing the post install setupcapture scan on capture machine If you want a different primary EXE after SetupCapture has completed you can edit the package ini file Shortcut EXEs cannot be run unless the primary EXE is located in the same directory Shortcut and the primary EXE will share a common virtual registry and filesystem and can interact with each other ew potme foo ie OQ Woef O toarn U Shires Ub 1 COFFIN UTA itn me W F Editing package ini For example with Acrobat reader we can make AcroRd32 exe the only EXE by editing VMware Inc Before edit BuildOptions OutDir bin SandboxName reader7 AdobeDownloadManager exe Source ProgramFiLesDir Common Files Adobe ESD AdobeDownLoadManager exe ReadOn1lyData bin Package ro tvr 39 AcroRd32 exe Source ProgramFiLlesDir Adobe Acrobat 7 0 Reader AcroRd32 exe Shortcut AdobeDownloadManager exe reader_sl exe Source ProgramFiLlesDir Adobe Acrobat 7 0 Reader
74. SDev98 Bin foobar gt INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE failed system probe C Program Files Microsoft Visual Studio Common MSDev98 Bin foobar gt ffffffffh no virtual or system matches xxx FindFirstFilew C Program Files Microsoft Visual Studio Common MSDev98 Bin foobar gt INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE failed FS missing in view O fs entry not found ProgramFilesDir Microsoft Visual Studio Common MSDev98 Bin foobar fs entry not found ProgramFilesDir Microsoft Visual Studio Common MSDev98 Bin xxx FindFirstFilew C Program Files Microsoft Visual Studio Common Tools foobar gt INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE failed system probe C Program Files Microsoft Visual Studio Common Tools foobar gt ffffffffh no virtual or system matches xxx FindFirstFilew C Program Files Microsoft Visual Studio Common Tools foobar gt INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE failed FS missing in view O fs entry not found ProgramFilesDir Microsoft Visual Studio Common Tools foobar fs entry not found ProgramFilesDir Microsoft Visual Studio Common Tool1s FindFirstFilew C Program Files Microsoft Visual Studio VC98 bin foobar gt INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE failed system probe C Program Files Microsoft Visual Studio VC98 bin foobar gt ffffffffh no virtual or system matches VMware Inc 81 kx FindFirstFilew C Program Files Microsoft Visual Studio VC98 bin foobar gt INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE failed FS missing in view O
75. SIInstal1Directory ExampleDir then the default install dir for per machine installs willbe ProgramFilesDir ExampLeDir This option can only be used to change the last component of the default install path If you want to change the whole path specify a INSTALLDIR lt full_path gt on the installer command line VMware Inc 106 This creates a msi file that will be installed to c Program Files My Applicaiton BuildOptions MSIFilename mymsi msi MSIInstal1lDirectory My Application Availability This option requires VMware Project North Star Thinstall version 3 210 or higher MSIManufacturer MSIManufacturer Specify the manufacturer to put in the MSI database This option has an effect only when generation of a Windows Installer database is requested via the MSIFilename option MSIFilename on page 106 Set this option to the name of your organization It will be displayed when you show the properties of the database but has no effect otherwise This creates a msi file with the Manufactor set to My Company Name BuildOptions MSIFilename mymsi msi MSIManufacturer My Company Name Availability This option requires VMware Project North Star Thinstall version 3 210 or higher MSIProductCode MSTProductCode Specify a product code for the MSI database This option has an effect only when generation of a Windows Installer database is requested via the MSIFilename option MSIFilename on page 10
76. STEM CurrentControLSet Services Apache2 2 Enum Value 0 REG_SZ Root LEGACY_APACHE2 2 0000 2300 Value Count REG_DWORD 01 00 00 00 Value NextInstance REG_DWORD 01 00 00 00 Change Log Version 3 330 Dec 14 2007 m Fixed a problem where error messages were not displayed correctly in SetupCapture m Save drives to be scanned by SetpuCapture across reboots m Fixed generation of incorrect VirtualDrives lines in Package ini fixes licensing of QuickBooks 2008 m Fixed problems when using D Program Files instead of C Program Files m Added ExternalDLLs option ExternalDLLs on page 103 m Respect suppression of error messages requested by app when loading a DLL fails m Fixed problem which caused long delays in Vista style Open File dialogs when browsing to network shares m Fixed MUI problem with DialogBoxParam Allow surrounding spaces in section and key names for ini files m Fix IE6 m SxS now looks up the source directory for dependants VMware Inc 26 Fixed problem with SQL Server Configuration Manager Fixed problem with clip art not showing up in Word 2007 on Vista Fixed problem with opening Word and Excel attachments in Outlook 2007 where a vbs script was included Fixed a problem with automatic update of Visio 2007 Fixed a number of problems related to Merged isolation mode of the registry Fixed problem with connecting to remote registry Fixed problem with icon extraction functions Properly recognize MS style shor
77. TL32 d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 61410000 61533fff C WINDOWS system32 urlmon d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 629c0000 629c8fffF C WINDOWS system32 LPK DLL SYSTEM_LOADED 63380000 633f7ffF C WINDOWS system32 jscript d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 6e850000 6e894fff C WINDOWS system32 iertutil d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 71aa0000 71aa7fff C WINDOWS system32 WS2HELP d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 71ab0000 71lac6fff C WINDOWS system32 ws2_32 d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 71bf0000 71c02fff C WINDOWS system32 SAMLIB d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 746c0000 746e8fff C WINDOWS system32 ms1s31 d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 746f0000 74719f ff C WINDOWS system32 msimtf d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 74720000 7476afff C WINDOWS system32 MSCTF d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 74d90000 74dfafff C WINDOWS system32 USP10 d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 755c0000 755edfff C WINDOWS system32 msctfime ime SYSTEM_LOADED 75cf0000 75d80fff C WINDOWS system32 MLANG d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 75e90000 75f3fffF C WINDOWS system32 SXS DLL SYSTEM_LOADED 76390000 763acfff C WINDOWS system32 IMM32 DLL SYSTEM_LOADED 76780000 76788fff C WINDOWS system32 shfolder d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 769c0000 76a72fff C WINDOWS system32 USERENV d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 76b40000 76b6cfffF C WINDOWS system32 WINMM d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 76bf0000 76bfafff C WINDOWS system32 PSAPI DLL SYSTEM_LOADED 76f60000 76f8bffF C WINDOWS system32 WLDAP32 d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 76fd0000 7704efff C WINDOWS system32 CLBCATQ DLL SYSTEM_LOADED 77050000 77114fff C WINDOWS system32 COMRes d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 77120000 771labfff C WINDOWS syste
78. VMware Project North Star Thinstall User s Manual VMware Project North Star Thinstall Beta 1 E vmware VMware Project North Star Thinstall User s Manual VMware Project North Star Thinstall User s Manual Revision 20080324 Item XXX ENG ONNN NNN You can find the most up to date technical documentation on our Web site at http www vmware com support The VMware Web site also provides the latest product updates If you have comments about this documentation submit your feedback to docfeedback vmware com 2008 VMware Inc All rights reserved Protected by one or more U S Patent Nos 6 397 242 6 496 847 6 704 925 6 711 672 6 725 289 6 735 601 6 785 886 6 789 156 6 795 966 6 880 022 6 944 699 6 961 806 6 961 941 7 069 413 7 082 598 7 089 377 7 111 086 7 111 145 7 117 481 7 149 843 7 155 558 7 222 221 7 260 815 7 260 820 7 269 683 7 275 136 7 277 998 7 277 999 7 278 030 7 281 102 and 7 290 253 patents pending VMware the VMware boxes logo and design Virtual SMP and VMotion are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware Inc in the United States and or other jurisdictions All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies VMware Inc 3401 Hillview Ave Palo Alto CA 94304 www vmware com 2 VMware Inc Contents About This Book 7 1 Introduction 9 Features 10 User Mode 16 Side by Side SxS 18 Dynamic Path Relocation 19 Sho
79. a88 cmd exe 4ad0ba16 gt kernel32 d1L1L 7c81bc2b GetConsoleScreenBufferInfo CIN HANDLE hConsoleOutput 7h 000893 0a88 cmd exe 4ad0ba16 lt kerne132 d11 7c81bc2b GetConsoleScreenBufferInfo gt BOOL 1h COUT PCONSOLE_SCREEN_BUFFER_INFO lpConsoleScreenBufferInfo 13DD08h gt struct COORD dwSize struct SHORT X 50h SHORT Y 12Ch COORD dwCursorPosition struct SHORT X 15h SHORT Y 5h WORD wAttributes 7h SMALL_RECT srWindow struct SHORT Left 0h SHORT Top 0h SHORT Right 4Fh SHORT Bottom 18h COORD dwMaximumWindowSize struct SHORT X 50h SHORT Y 53h 000894 0a88 cmd exe 4adQba71 gt kernel32 d11 7c871a6c ReadConsoleW IN HANDLE hConsoleInput 3h IN DWORD nNumberOfCharsToRead 2000h IN LPVOID 1lpReserved 13DD20h 001518 0a88 cmd exe 4adQba71 lt kernel32 d11 7c871a6c ReadConsoleW gt BOOL 1h COUT LPVOID lpBuffer 4AD2FAEOh OUT LPDWORD 1lpNumberOfCharsRead 13DD70h gt 8h 001519 0a88 cmd exe 4adQ2c97 gt 01e32 d11 774e03f0 GetFileType CIN HANDLE hFile 3h 001520 0a88 GetFileType 3 gt 0x2 001521 0a88 cmd exe 4adQ2c97 lt ole32 d11 774e03f0 GetFileType gt DWORD 2h 001522 0a88 cmd exe 4adQ2ccQ gt kernel32 d11 7c812f39 GetStdHandle IN DWORD nStdHand1le FFFFFFF6h 001523 0a88 cmd exe 4adQ2ccQ lt kernel32 d11 7c812F39 GetStdHandle gt HANDLE 3h 001524 0a88 cmd exe 4adQ2ccd gt kernel32 d11 7c81af14 GetConsoleMode IN HANDLE hConsoleHand1le 3h 001525 0a88 cmd exe 4adQ2ccd lt kernel32 d11 7c81af14 GetCo
80. abase MSIUpgradeCode on page 108 Access Control PermittedGroups Restricts usage of package to a specific set of Active Directory groups PermittedGroups on page 110 AccessDeniedMsg Holds error message to display to user if they do not have permission to run package AccessDeniedMsg on page 97 Application Specific Options Disabled Indicates that a build target is a placeholder and thus should not generate an EXE Disabled on page 102 Icon Indicates which icon file to use for the generated EXE file Icon on page 103 CommandLine Specify command line arguments for a shortcut executable CommandLine on page 100 NoRelocation Strips relocation information from the resulting executable NoRelocation on page 109 VMware Inc 96 RetainAllIcons Indicates all of the source EXEsoriginal icons should be retained in the Thinstalled EXE files RetainAllIcons on page 111 Source Points to the EXE file which will be initially loaded by VMware Project North Star Thinstall Source on page 113 ReserveExtraAddressSpace lIndicates how much extra address space needs to be reserved for the Thinstalled executable ReserveExtraAddress on page 110 Shortcut Points to the name of the VMware Project North Star Thinstall generated EXE which will host the package data Shortcut on page 113 StripVersionInfo Removes all version information from the source
81. al applications there is no problem with having 2 virtual application using the same short pathnames internally In the screen shot below you can see VMware Project North Star Thinstall uses a different name space than Windows for short pathnames when the system does not have the paths already created You can see this in action by running a virtualized cmd exe and use dir x to list short pathnames The three directories below do not follow the normal Windows convention of ABCDEF 1 192 168 2 5VtestOffice 27003 binicmd exe lt DIR gt lt DIR gt a lt DIR gt COMNON Common Files lt DIR gt ComPlus Applications lt DIR gt TE i Internet Explorer lt DIR gt s z Me nye we lt DIR gt j microsoft frontpage lt DIR gt MOUTEN 1 Movie Maker lt DIR gt MSH lt DI R MSNGAN 1 NSM Gaming Zone lt DIR gt NETHEE 1 HetMeet ing lt DIR gt ONLINE 1 Online rvic lt DIR gt OUTLOO 4 Outlook Expr lt DIR gt lt DIR gt WINDOWS indows Media Player lt D WINDOY 1 Windows NT xerox MI GUTE soft ActiveSyne MI 3H315 icrosoft Of fice TH PBP6H eA A bytes 5 358 452 736 Pytas fTree Result Install to default location migrate seamlessly Other virtualization solutions require you to install applications to separate drive letters using 8 3 filenames in order to resolve the various short pathname issues described above Because many applications will not let you specify an alternate installation path or will not run
82. all Thinstalled applications 3 THINSTALL_SANDBOX_DIR ComputerName SANDBOXNAME Example THINSTALL_SANDBOX_DIR ComputerName 4 THINSTALL_SANDBOX_DIR SANDBOXNAME Search for an application specific local sandbox 5 ExeDirectory SANDBOXNAME ComputerName 6 ExeDirectory SANDBOXNAME Search for a local sandbox for all Thinstalled applications 7 ExeDirectory Thinstall SANDBOXNAME ComputerName 8 ExeDirectory Thinstall SANDBOXNAME Use the value SandboxPath from Package ini to determine a custom sandbox path this option is set SandboxPath on page 112 9 SANDBOXPATH SANDBOXNAME ComputerName 10 SANDBOXPATH SANDBOXNAME VMware Inc 65 Search in the user s Application Data Thinstall folder for a sandbox 11 AppData Thinstall SANDBOXNAME ComputerName 12 AppData Thinstall SANDBOXNAME If an existing sandbox cannot be found Thinstall will create a new sandbox VMware Project North Star Thinstall creates a new sandbox using the following logic 1 IfSANDBOXNAME_SANDBOX_DIR environment variable is set try to create a sandbox at this location 2 If THINSTALL_SANDBOX_DIR environment variable is set try to create a sandbox at this location 3 If SANDBOXPATH Package ini option is set try to create a sandbox at this location 4 Try to create a sandbox in the user AppData Thinstall folder NOTE SANDBOXNAME and SANDBOXPATH come from the Package ini file Example Scenarios Scenario I w
83. ally ngen exe writes to HKLM and c windows both of which are off limits for non Admin accounts When running under Thinstall ngen exe can install Native Image assemblies even on Guest user accounts however these changes will be stored in a user specific directory How can I update applications from a central location You may want to update the package on a central computer and push the changes to clients or central network shares as new Thinstalled EXE file The first step is to create a VMware Project North Star Thinstall project which contains the application updates There are three main approaches for accomplishing this Approach 1 Apply patches during capture This approach is very simple and fairly error proof Approach 2 Apply patches inside the virtual environment If any application offers auto update capabilities it can update itself as described above If the application update is in the form of a patch exe the patch program can be run in the virtual environment creating a cmd exe entry point and running the patch program from there The changes that occur during auto update or manual update will go into the sandbox so you can easily roll back to the original version by deleting the sandbox You can apply patches in the virtual environment either on an end user desktop machine or on a central packaging machine In the second case sandbox changes made by the patch or update can be merged back into the application using Thin
84. and also needs to be present in the same directory in order for MyShortcutApp exe to run MyShortcutApp exe VMware Inc 113 Source ProgramFiLesDir Myapp MyShortcutApp exe Shortcut HostApp exe UpgradePath UpgradePath Location to probe for application updates By default VMware Project North Star Thinstall will look for application upgrades in the same directory as the main executable file This option can be used to specify an alternate location to look for application upgrades Example This instructs VMware Project North Star Thinstall to probe for application upgrades under C Program Files MyAppUpgrades BuildOptions UpgradePath ProgramFilesDir MyAppUpgrades See also How upgrades work Upgrading applications on page 57 VirtualizeExternalOult VirtualizeExternalOutOfProcessCOM Controls whether external Out of process COM objects are run in the virtual environment Thinstalled applications can create COM objects that are registered in the virtual environment as well as COM objects from the host system This option determines how to treat Out of process COM objects that are not part of a VMware Project North Star Thinstall package and not registered in the virtual registry By default VMware Project North Star Thinstall will execute external out of process COM objects in the virtual environment so such COM objects cannot modify the host PC If you run into a compatibility issue with an exter
85. and select the Hard Disk device Click the Advanced button Click once to place a check mark in the Independent check box Select the Nonpersistent radio button CT x Vetual device node scsi 00 Hard Disk 1 Mode F independert Independant diks are not alfected by snapshots Persistent Changes are immediately and permanently written to the disk C Nonparsistert Changes to this disk are discarded when you power olf or restore a snapshot Click Ok to close the Advanced dialog Click Ok to close the Virtual Machine Settings dialog Changing the hard drive to Independent Nonpersistent causes all changes to the virtual machine s hard drive go to a separate temporary virtual disk file When the machine is powered off the file is discarded The benefit of this is the ability to always return to a clean machine state by simply power cycling the machine Additionally you power off the virtual machine rather than wait for shutting down without triggering a disk scan or corruption on the next boot VMware Inc 49 Step 11 Preserve your clean virtual machine Exit VMWare Server Console and create a backup copy of the virtual machine directory This will preserve the virtual machine at its clean state It is very easy to contaminate or otherwise break a virtual machine sometimes without even knowing it If you have a back up copy you won t have to wait through the windows installation once again Step 12 Adjust the virt
86. and various portable storage Because VMware Project North Star Thinstall can be loaded in milliseconds without a client component you can walk up to a PC and start running applications from a network share in seconds without messing around with any installation support and management of a client VMware Project North Star Thinstall is the ultimate in application portability m VMware Project North Star Thinstall works well with almost all Windows environments from NT up to 64bit Vista m VMware Project North Star Thinstall plays well with all system level software and doesn t conflict with various device drivers that may be added to your machines down the line Quick history of user mode Windows runs all code in one of two modes user mode and kernel mode also referred to as Ring3 and Ring0 respectively The two modes reflect two different security models that are enforced directly by your Intel AMD processor Code running in kernel mode has full machine access with no security controls for example it can write to raw device ports intercept and filter system wide file system activity read and write machine wide process and kernel memory and access any kernel or process objects without regards to security descriptors Kernel mode code is either a device drivers or the windows kernel itself User mode is where all applications run and has strict security policies applied at all times user mode code cannot do anything to a machin
87. ant to run from USB Flash and have my sandbox load and save to the same directory where the EXE is located How to accomplish Set SandboxPath in your package ini file in the BuildOptions section SandboxPath on page 112 Scenario My users have a mapped drive to store their files and I want the sandbox stored on the mapped drive How to accomplish Option 1 Use SandboxPath z Sandbox if the drive is always mapped to the same letter SandboxPath on page 112 Option 2 In the user login script set the environment variable THINSTALL_SANDBOX_DIR z Sandbox Any Thinstalled application run after setting this variable will use z Sandbox for it s sandbox storage location VMware Inc 66 Sandbox Structure This information is provided for understanding purposes we do not recommend modifications to the sandbox directory structure directly The sandbox is stored using a file structure nearly identical to the build project structure Macro names Folder Macros on page 148 are used for shell folder locations instead of hard coded paths This allows the sandbox to migrate to different PCs dynamically when the application is run from new locations Adobe Reader 8 Ele Edt Yew Favorites Took Help Qw O BD PP seach Foes E Address D C Documents and Settings Application Data ThinstallAdobe Reader 8 Folders x Thostal A G AppData 3 Adobe Reader 8 S E gt AppOsta s HED Aloa
88. app specific locations This feature allows applications to run in security restricted environment like Terminal Server and Vista Using VMware Project North Star Thinstall it s possible to take many older applications and convert them to Vista or multi user applications VMware Project North Star Thinstall Runtime embeds in packages Deployment cannot get any simpler and fool proof than using VMware Project North Star Thinstall VMware Project North Star Thinstall accomplishes it s zero footprint and no installation by embedded it s entire runtime in each executable that it packages Because the VMware Project North Star Thinstall runtime is super small 400k and package data is stored in a compressed state the overall disk footprint is usual 2X smaller than traditional deployments of the same application not using VMware Project North Star Thinstall VMware Project North Star Thinstall is loaded by Windows as a normal application The impact of deploying Thinstalled applications is the same as deploying any normal application from Window s perspective the EXEs generated by VMware Project North Star Thinstall are simple notepad like applications that run without external dependencies Other applications on the system are not effected by deploying Thinstalled applications VMware Project North Star Thinstall is small light weight amp fast VMware Project North Star Thinstall can be loaded into memory in a few millis
89. apre HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software Exact regfile tvr Datafile in VMware Project North Star Thinstall Virtual Registry file format HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software Optionally specifies the registry subkey to begin comparing If this is specified only subkeys at this level and below will be considered in the comparison Exact Optionally specifies that system comparison should print out all differences between the virtual registry and system registry If this option is not specified vregtool will not print out system registry keys that do not exist in the virtual registry if the virtual registry subkey is set to merged or writecopy isolation mode Chapter 4 Isolation Modes on page 61 but will print differences for subkeys with isolation mode set to Full This option is useful in finding differences between a working system registry and virtual registry file Example vregtool c tmp test tvr SysCompare HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software Adobe Deleting a registry subkey VREGTOOL regfile tvr DelSubkey HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software NoMark regfile tvr Datafile in VMware Project North Star Thinstall Virtual Registry file format HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software Specified the registry subkey to delete If the specified registry subkey has a space in the name your should specify the key using quotes like this HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software Key with space NoMark Optionally specifies that the subkey should be deleted
90. arameters sbmerge exe Apply Optional Parameters Optional Parameters ProjectDir PathToProject SandboxDir PathToSandbox Quiet Exclude ExcludeFile ini Main Operation Print will display sandbox changes This is anon destructive operation no modifications will be made to the sandbox or original project Apply will merge changes from the sandbox into the specified project The project registry and filesystem will be updated to reflect changes from the sandbox The sandbox directory will be deleted when this operation completes Optional Parameters ProjectDir specifies project directory default current directory SandboxDir specifies sandbox location default active sandbox Quiet will not print progess messages Exclude specifies an exclusion file which files amp keys to ignore Example Usage c myproject gt sbmerge Print Prints changes that are recorded in the sandbox c myproject gt sbmerge Apply Merges the changes from the sandbox into the project directory located at c myproject sbmerge uses the normal search order for sandbox probing VMware Inc 85 c somedir gt sbmerge Apply ProjectDir c myproject c somedir gt sbmerge Apply ProjectDir c myproject SandboxDir c documents and settings username application data thinstall myproject ThinReg ThinReg Thinstall Registration Tool ThinReg ThinReg exe is used to register VMware Project North Star Thinstall packages on a PC inclu
91. are You can optionally specify a registry subtree to export If no subtree is specified vregtool will export the entire contents of the tvr file If the specified registry subkey has a space in the name your should specify the key using quotes like this HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software Key with space NOTE Special note when exporting to reg format some information is lost so exporting and reimporting may cause a loss of information Information that can be lost includes 1 Filename macros are expanded on export if they are not converted back to macros on import information could be lost 2 Each Registry subkey in tvr format has a specified isolation mode because reg format does not have a concept of isolation modes or meta data for subkeys this information is lost 3 Registry values that cannot be represented in reg format for example a key which is REG_SZ cannot have more than one NULL character in reg format In such a case the registry value data will be prematurely truncated in reg format Another example where reg files cannot represent values accurately is a REG_SZ value which is not null terminated For these reasons it is preferable to export registry data to VMware Project North Star Thinstall registry directory format and then re import into the tvr file when you need to perform some processing on the data Example vregtool c tmp test tvr ExportReg c tmp test reg HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software Adobe Save For Web
92. berwill never change Since log entries are recorded in order of execution if two or more threads are recording data to the log file then you may need to use the thread ID to follow thread specific sequential actions myd11 d11 Indicates the DLL which is making the API call 4ad0576d Indicates the return address for the API call made by mydll dll Typically this will tell you the address in the code where the call is originating gt Indicates the call is being entered For call entry log element all of the input parameters are displayed in and in out parameters lt Indicates the call is returning to the original caller For call exit log entries all of the output parameters are displayed out and in out parameters kernel32 d11 TIndicates the DLL where the API call is landing 7c81b1f0 Indicates the address of the API inside of kernel32 where the call is landing If you disassemble kernel32 dll at address 7c81b1f0 you will find the code for the function SetConsoleMode gt BOOL 1h Indicates the API returned the value 1 and the return code has type BOOL Application Startup Information 000001 0a88 Logging started for Module C test cmd_test bin cmd exe Using archive PID 0xec CommandLine cmd 000002 0a88 Logging options CAP_LEVEL 9 MAX_CAP_ARY 25 MAX_CAP_STR 150 MAX_NEST 100 VMware Inc 76 VERSION 3 090 000003 0a88 System Current Directory C test cmd_test bin Virtual Current Directory C
93. ble to client PCs and send a link to end users to run the application directly for example server sharename application exe You can also create shortcuts on the end user s desktop which point to the centrally hosted EXE package s When the user clicks on the shortcut the application will automatically begin streaming to the client PC During the initial streaming startup process the VMware Project North Star Thinstall statusbar will inform the user of the progress Once enough of the application has been streamed that the application can begin running the status bar will slide down and the user can begin using the application As more parts of the application are required by the application they will be pulled from the streaming server VMware Project North Star Thinstall does not require any special server software to provide streaming capability any windows file share NAT device or SMB share can automatically provide this capability The amount of data that needs to be transferred before the application can begin running will vary widely Office 2003 requires only a fraction of the package contents to be streamed before the application can run VMware Project North Star s streaming is currently designed for LAN based environments with 100mb networks recommended For WAN and internet deployments where unexpected disconnects are more common we recommend either deploying using a URL or using a desktop deployment solution to push the pac
94. bridged networking this will allow the virtual machine to communicate with other PCs on your LAN Click Next f Network Type What type of network do you want to add The default of 8 0GB is adequate for most uses If you plan to capture large application installs you may want to increase this size to 20GB Uncheck to Allocate all disk space now VMware Inc 45 Step 7 Click Finish New Virtual Machine Wizard 7 xj Specify Disk Capacity How large do you wart this disk to be M Disk capacity This vatua disk can never be laeger than the maamum capacty that you set here Disk sze GB 30 4 I Alloosts al disk space now By allocating the full capacity of the vitual dsk you enhance performance of your vidual machine However the dick wall take longer to create and there must be enough space on the host s physical disk I you co not allocate disk space now your vetual disk files vil start snail then become laege as you add applications fles and data to your vitual machine I Spit dek into 2 GB fies ea OE es A directory containing several files is created at the location you specified earlier Defaults to C Virtual Machines If you examine the contents of this directory you will find two files of interest The machine configuration file Windows 2000 Professional vmx may be doubled clicked to launch and open VMWare Server Console Another file of interest is the virtual disk file Windows
95. can also obtain a free license to a similar product from Microsoft called VirtualPC We recommend VMWare over VirtualPC if you have a choice in selection Go to the VMWare web site At http www VMWare com you can register for a license download the installation package and access documentation for VMWare You can find a lot of helpful information about how to work with VMWare here Register for a VMWare Server license The first thing you will need to do is to register for a VMWare Server license Yes VMWare Server is free but you still need a license for it Go to http register VMWare com content registration html to register Make sure to retain the serial number provided at the bottom of the web page after submitting your registration since this is the only time it is provided Download the VMWare Server installer VMWare Server is available for free download at http www VMWare com download server Install VMWare Server Double click on the installer The installation steps are straight forward Just follow the on screen instructions selecting all defaults Setup Type Choose the setup type that best suits your needs Please select a setup type Complete ia ee ee ae re ee DRE Custom peta VD phic tae OERE COU TO E SA rS aY be installed Recommended for advanced users __ lt teck_ nets __ carcat__ If the installer warns you about Microsoft Internet Information Services IIS
96. cation dat VMware Inc Index VMware Inc 157 Thinstall Virtualization Suite 3 0 158 VMware Inc
97. ce strings Version XXXX on page 115 Don t show EULA for console processes running without visible console Fix creation of Exchange accounts in Outlook Added isolation options for Shared memory objects IsolatedMemoryObjects on page 104 and synchronization objects IsolatedSynchronizatio on page 105 Added ability to control sandbox path in Package ini SandboxPath on page 112 Added more documentation for Package ini options Chapter 8 Package ini format on page 95 Fixed issue where virtualized IE6 may lockup because of shared memory object with explorer exe Fixed issue where comct132 d11 was not able to load AVI files from virtual filesystem Fixed issue where IE6 crashes on startup on Vista still has a few other issues on Vista Fixed problem where SearchPath fails for paths that absolute paths that start with Fixed issue where options set in BuildOptions are not overwritten by options set in individual App exe sections Added RegConnectRegistry Fixed problem where SxS would load the incorrect version of system DLLs when policy redirects are in place Fixed issue where Outlook 2007 is unable to change signatures or stationary fonts Partial support for Debug API Fixed issue with Petrel 1 where DLL sections have both uninitialized and initialized flags set Fixed issue where single use out of process COM servers were not being unregistered after use Fixed issue where apps
98. ceive OLE objects 2 Pasting from Thinstalled application to System Application In this scenario the system application can receive any standard clipboard format and OLE objects will automatically be converted to standard the closest clipboard Printers Thinstalled applications have full normal access to any printer installed on the PC where it is running There is no difference in printing ability for Thinstalled applications and system installed applications Printer drivers themselves cannot be virtualized using VMware Project North Star Thinstall and must be installed normally on the PC Drivers Thinstalled applications have full normal access to any device driver installed on the PC where it is running There is no difference in access to installed device drivers for Thinstalled applications and system installed applications If an application requires a device driver this must be installed separately from the VMware Project North Star Thinstall package In some cases the application may function correctly but in a limited fashion without an associated driver for example Adobe Acrobat installs a printer driver which allows applications system wide to render PDF files through their print mechanism In that scenario Adobe Acrobat the application can be used to load edit and save PDF files without installation but other applications will obviously not see a new printer driver unless it is actually installed Access to local disk
99. cial groups like Administrator Because SID values are stored in packages for later validation this means a few different things 1 You must be connected to your AD domain during build and the Groups you specified must exists VMware Project North Star Thinstall will lookup the SID value during build If you delete a group and recreate it the SID may change so you will need to rebuild the package in order to authenticate against the new group When users go offline they can authenticate using cached credentials Assuming a user can log into their laptop VMware Project North Star Thinstall AD authentication will still work You can control the period of time cached credentials are valid using Group Policy Cached credentials may not refresh on clients until the next AD refresh cycle You can force a group policy ona client using the command gpupdate Sometimes the user may need to log off before AD credentials are recached Special groups like Administrators and Everyone have the same SID on every Active Directory domain and Workgroup Other groups you create will have a domain specific SID meaning a user cannot create their own local group with the same name to bypass authentication The option PermittedGroups Group1 Group2 Example Package ini files Example1 BuildOptions PermittedGroups Administrators 0fficeUsers App1 exe App2 exe In this example App1 and App2 with both inherit PermittedGroups from
100. controls the default isolation mode for the package This setting will apply to any registry keys that do not have an explicitly specified setting Examples WriteCopy isolation allows the application to read keys from the host PC but not write to it default Isolation RegistryIsolationMode WriteCopy Merged isolation allows the application to write to any key on the PC except where the package specifies otherwise Isolation RegistryIsolationMode Merged VMware Inc 109 PermittedGroups PermittedGroups Restricts usage of package to a specific set of Active Directory Groups Example Specify a list of AD Group names separated by BuildOptions can set default for apps in project that can be overwritten by individual App exe sections BuildOptions PermittedGroups Administrator 0fficeUsers AccessDeniedMsg You do not have permission to execute this application please call support 1 800 822 2992 Overwrite global PermittedGroups just this specific application App1 exe PermittedGroups Guest AccessDeniedMsg You do not have permission to execute this application please call support 1 800 822 2992 Inherit PermittedGroups from BuildOptions App2 exe While building of a package VMware Project North Star Thinstall will lookup the specified Group Names into SID values so the Group Names specified must be valid at the time of build VMware Project North Star Thinstall can resolve group ownership at r
101. cro Name Shfolder dll ID Ver Typical location ProgramFilesDir CSIDL_ PROGRAM FILES 5 0 C Program Files sCommon StartMenu s CSIDL COMMON _STARTMENU C Documents and Settings All Users Start Menu Common AppData CSIDL_COMMON_APPDATA C Documents and Settings All Users Application Data Local AppData CSIDL_ LOCAL APPDATA C Documents and Settings username Local Settings Application Data AppData CSIDL APPDATA C Documents and Settings username Applicati on Data Common Desktop CSIDL_ COMMON_DESKTOPDIRECTOR T C Documents and Settings All Users Desktop sDesktop CSIDL_ DESKTOPDIRECTORY C Documents and Settings username Desktop Common Startup CSIDL_ COMMON STARTUP C Documents and Settings All Users Start Menu Programs Startup sStartups CSIDL_ STARTUP C Documents and Settings username Start Menu Programs Startup Common Programs CSIDL_COMMON_PROGRAMS C Documents and Settings All Users Start Menu Programs Programs CSIDL_ PROGRAMS C Documents and Settings username Start Menu Programs Common Favorites CSIDL_COMMON_FAVORITES C Documents and Settings All Users Favorites bFavorites CSIDL_FAVORITES C Documents and settings username Favorites bSendTo CSIDL SENDTO C Documents and Settings username SendTo sTemplates CSIDL_ TEMPLATES C Documents and Sett
102. cx When the application queries for this value it will transparent expand back to C WINDOWS system32 Macromed Flash Flash9b ocx when running on Windows XP 2k3 Vista and C winnt system32 Macromed Flash Flash9b ocx when running on Windows 2k and NT Short pathname remapping VMware Project North Star Thinstall has unique support for handling short pathnames which allows applications to be installed to their default location and migrate across PCs For detailed information see Short Pathnames on page 21 Registry data remapping VMware Project North Star Thinstall intercepts all data written to the registry and sees if there are references to short pathnames or shell folders If there are it will internally store the registry data in macro format so that the data re expands to the correct location on other PCs This functionality is described in more detail in the Short Pathnames sections Short Pathnames on page 21 VMware Inc 20 Short Pathnames Short pathnames are DOS 8 3 compatible names that map into their long pathname equivalents For example C PROGR 1 is the short pathname version of C Program Files Short pathnames are important for most applications for several reasons m Short pathnames eliminate spaces Short pathnames eliminate spaces from paths which prevents some compatibility and security issues For example when executing the command C Program Files Microsoft Office OFFICE11 winword exe c Myfile doc
103. d when you upgrade an application the shortcuts continue to point to myapp exe If userl and user2 quit the original version 1 0 of myapp exe and reexecute it they will start using version 2 0 You can deploy version 3 0 of my app by placing it in the same directory with a higher number at the end Copy Version 2 0 of myapp exe to central share at server share myapp 2 Once myapp 1 becomes unlocked you can delete it but myapp exe should remain in place since the user shortcuts continue to point here VMware Project North Star Thinstall will always use the filename which has the highest version number so if you need to accomplish a roll back to an earlier version and the most recent version is still locked you need to copy the old version so it has the highest version number Sandbox considerations When you release an upgrade to an application you can control whether the user continues to use his or her old settings by keeping the sandbox name consistent in your package ini file By deploying a new application version with a new sandbox name each user will create a separate sandbox and start with a fresh install maintaining isolated settings If you deploy with the same sandbox name users will keep their old settings NOTE Security Implications Because apps can be upgraded by dropping in a new file in the same directory as the main application the directory and not just the file where an application is hosted should be read o
104. d the environment option that was entered 019133 0000075c MSVCR80 d11 78133003 lt nview d11l 1000058c GetProcAddress gt FARPROC Oh GetLastError returns 127 203 The specified procedure could not be found 019435 0000075c MSVCR80 d11 78136e08 lt dbghelp d1l 59a60360 GetFileType gt DWORD 0h xxx GetLastError returns 6 0 The handle is invalid 019500 0000075c MSVCR80 d11 78134481 lt nview d11l 1000058c GetProcAddress gt FARPROC Oh GetLastError returns 127 0 The specified procedure could not be found 019530 0000075c MSVCR80 d11 78131dcd lt dbghelp d11l 59a603a1 GetModuleHandleA gt HMODULE 0h GetLastError returns 126 0 The specified module could not be found Forensics Example To illustrate how Log Monitor Log Monitor on page 74 can be used to delve into application problems in this section uses an example to illustrate Here cmd exe is packaged with VMware Project North Star Thinstall and run with logging being recorded To simulate an application behaving incorrectly a simple invalid command is issued In this case we have requested cmd exe to execute the command foobar and cmd exe prints out the message foobar is not recognized as an internal or external command By viewing the resulting trace file we can dig into what cmd exe is doing in much greater detail and learn how it operates All applications will manifest misbehavior in diff
105. d11 7c81af14 GetConsoleMode gt BOOL 1h OUT LPDWORD 1pMode 13DDCCh gt A7h 000849 0a88 cmd exe 4ad05b74 gt 01e32 d11 774e03f0 GetFileType CIN HANDLE hFile 7h 000850 0a88 GetFileType 7 gt 0x2 000851 0a88 cmd exe 4ad05b74 lt 0le32 d11 774e03f0 GetFileType gt DWORD 2h 000852 0a88 cmd exe 4ad05b9d gt kernel32 d11 7c812f39 GetStdHandle IN DWORD nStdHand1le FFFFFFF5h 000853 0a88 cmd exe 4adQ5b9d lt kernel132 d11 7c812F39 GetStdHandle gt HANDLE 7h 000854 0a88 cmd exe 4adQ5baa gt kernel32 d11 7c81af14 GetConsoleMode IN HANDLE hConsoleHand1le 7h 000855 0a88 cmd exe 4adQ5baa lt kernel32 d11 7c81af14 GetConsoleMode gt BOOL 1h OUT LPDWORD 1pMode 13DA80h gt 3h 000856 0a88 cmd exe 4adQ5dec gt kernel32 d11 7c835484 WriteConsoleW IN HANDLE hConsoleOutput 7h IN const LpBuffer 4AD38BA0h IN DWORD nNumberOfCharsToWrite 2h IN LPVOID LpReserved Oh 000857 0a88 cmd exe 4adQ5dec lt kernel32 d11 7c835484 WriteConsoleW gt BOOL 1h OUT LPDWORD 1pNumberOfCharsWritten 13DAACh gt 2h 000858 0a88 cmd exe 4adQ1ba8 gt USERENV d11 769c03b9 GetEnvironmentVariableW IN LPCWSTR 1LpName 4AD34624h gt L PROMPT IN DWORD nSize 2000h 000859 0a88 GetEnvironmentVariable PROMPT gt P G 000860 0a88 cmd exe 4adQ1ba8 lt USERENV d11l 769c03b9 GetEnvironmentVariablew gt DWORD 4h OUT LPWSTR LpBuffer 4AD2BA20h gt L P G 000861 0a88 cmd exe 4ad01580 gt USERENV d11 769c0396 GetCurrentDirector
106. ddress on page 110 During virtual app startup register fonts installed by the app even if they were installed outside the Fonts directory Fix ini file handling on MBCS systems Improve handling of MS style short pathnames Pass service manager calls for other hosts on to Windows Handle MUI files on Vista Fix issue where services shutdown would get stuck in an infinite loop Fix issue where DLLs loaded with LOAD_WITH_ALTERED_SEARCHPATH_FLAG were not found 27 Version 3 210 Sept 11 2007 Added MSI Generation capability Chapter 7 MSI Generation on page 93 ThinReg updated to support unregistration via command line ThinReg updated to support specification of filetypes not captured in original package ThinReg fixed to support some file types associations that did not previously work Version 3 203 Sept 11 2007 Updated support for newer cygwin tools which use NtCreateFile NtReadFile directly Added ThinReg utility ThinReg on page 86 for automatic Shortcut amp File type associations Version 3 146 Aug 27 2007 Automatic configuration of Office using Office Customization Tool Added script function AddForced VirtualLoadPath which indicates VMware Project North Star Thinstall should load all DLLs in a directory instead of Windows even if the DLLs exist outside of the Package Fixed tlink vftool and vregtool so they don t pause when not run from a console Add Package ini setting to override version resour
107. ding m Creating StartMenu amp Desktop Shortcuts m Setting up File type associations m Adding uninstall information that can be executed from the system Control Panel m Unregistering previously registered packages Usage ThinReg exe Optional Parameters PackageName exe Package2 exe PackagesByWildcard Optional Parameters include a allusers Register package for all users by default package is registered only for the currently logged in user q quiet Don t output any information u unregister uninstall Unregister package If needed this will also remove the software from the Add Remove Programs control panel applet r reregister Re register package Normally ThinReg will detect if a package is already registered and will skip it if itis By using the r option you can force ThinReg to re register the package k keepunauthorized keep If ThinReg detects a registration for a package for which you re no longer authorized you are no longer part of the PermittedGroups specified in the packages Package ini it will remove the registration info for that package By specifying this option ThinReg won t remove the registration info noarp Don t create an entry in the Add Remove Programs control panel applet norelaunch This option has an effect on Vista only ThinReg will be launched on Vista without elevated privileges That means that standard users will be able to invoke ThinReg without a UAC pop
108. directories in package DirectorylsolationMode on page 101 ExternalDLLs Force some DLLs to be loaded by Windows ExternalDLLs on page 103 IsolatedMemoryObjects Lists specific shared memory objects to isolate from other applications IsolatedMemoryObjects on page 104 IsolatedSynchronizationObjects Lists specific synchronization objects to isolate from other applications IsolatedSynchronizatio on page 105 RegistryIsolationMode Controls default isolation for registry keys in package RegistrylsolationMode on page 109 MSI Generation MSIDefauLtInstal1lA1llUsers Set default installation mode of the MSI database MSIDefaultInstallAllUsers on page 105 MSIFilename Enable generation of an MSI database and specify its filename MSIFilename on page 106 MSTInstallDirectory Specify the final path component of the default installation directory MSIInstallDirectory on page 106 MSIManufacturer Specify the manufacturer to put in the MSI database MSIManufacturer on page 107 MSTProductCode Specify a product code for the MSI database MSIProductCode on page 107 MSTProductVersion Specify a product version number for the MSI database MSIProductVersion on page 107 MSTRequireElevatedPriviLeges Mark the MSI database as requires elevated privileges MSIRequireElevatedPri on page 108 MSTUpgradeCode Specify an upgrade code for the MSI dat
109. e objFSO CopyFile SourceFile DestFile TRUE End if End Function System registry example This script will add a value to the system registry We do this by creating a reg file and then executing regedit s as an external process so it will access the system registry instead of the virtual registry Function OnFirstParentStart We need to create the reg file in a place which has IsolationMode set to Merged so we can access it easily from both the virtual environment this script and the system environment regedit s One directory which has a Merged IsolationMode by default is the Personal directory so let s create the reg file there RegFileName ExpandPath Personal thin reg ExpandPath on page 122 Set fso CreateObject Scripting FileSystemObject Set RegFile fso CreateTextFile RegFileName true Construct the reg file RegFile WriteLine Windows Registry Editor Version 5 00 RegFile WriteBLankLines 1 RegFile WriteLine HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software Thinstall demo RegFile WriteLine chr 34 amp InventoryName amp chr 34 amp amp chr 34 amp GetBuildOption InventoryName amp chr 34 GetBuildOption on page 124 RegFile Close Enter the info into the system registry wait until it is done RegEditPid ExecuteExternalProcess regedit s amp chr 34 amp RegFileName amp chr 34 ExecuteExternalProcess on page 123 WaitForProcess RegEditPid WaitFo
110. e 61 on a per directory basis using Attributes ini files Attributes ini on page 150 Isolation modes enable you to specify whether the application is presented with a merged view of the virtual file system or only see virtual files Isolation modes also control what happens when an application tries to write to a directory Both the embedded and sandbox file systems uses Folder Macros Folder Macros on page 148 to enable file paths to dynamically expand at runtime VMware Inc 147 Folder Macros VMware Project North Star Thinstall uses macros to represent file system path locations that may relocate when running on different OSes or PCs The table below list the available macros When creating a new VMware Project North Star Thinstall project using Setup Capture these macros will automatically hard coded paths with macro forms A typical project root directory will look something like this Typical project structure used to build EXE file Typical Sandbox Directory holds runtime modifications D AppData B SoCommon AppDatas Common Programs O Desktop a drive_c O Fonts Local AppData O Personals O Profile 5 ProgramFilesLir O SystemRoot O SystemSystem s O AppData 5 Local AppData 5 ProgramFilesDir 5 40000075do00002h O 400000500003h Registry rvy ick Registry ra bwr Registry tvr backup VMware Inc 148 Chapter 16 Virtual Filesystem Ma
111. e VMware Project North Star Thinstall Virtual OS packaged with each EXE is designed to run with no dependencies from the local system and can run directly from a network share or removable storage device in restricted user accounts with no changes to the local registry or filesystem Because the Virtual OS is packaged directly into built applications there is no prior installation required and users can execute Thinstalled applications directly on clean or dirty installs of Windows In some cases VMware Project North Star Thinstall provides backwards compatibility and can allow applications to run on older operating systems however in general the original application will retain it s minimum system requirements when running under VMware Project North Star s Virtual OS For example if the original application does not natively support Windows NT because it relies on Windows XP specific features it will probably not execute under Windows NT using VMware Project North Star Thinstall Desktop Integration Thinstalled applications can interact with other applications installed on the desktop The various ways applications typically interact the other components on the desktop are discussed below Cut amp Paste 1 Pasting from System installed app to Thinstalled Application This scenario has no limitations the virtual application can receive any standard clipboard formats text graphics html etc as well the virtual application can re
112. e app was plugged in and out without safe remove SetupCapture with add a commented out section to run Internet Explorer for using IE plugins Fixed an issue where Thinstalled Internet Explorer would crash when McAfee Enterprise Anti virus script blocker was installed Added package ini option VirtualizeExternalOutOfProcessCOM default is 1 This allows you execute all Out of process COM objects on the system without being loaded into the virtual environment Now you can determine which version of VMware Project North Star Thinstall an application has been packaged by running with package exe ThinstallVersion Version 3 051 Feb 9 2007 VMware Inc Fixed problem where message Could not verify Thinstall License would appear on startup when running from Guest Accounts and sub processes Fixed problem where File Open dialog would not show files for Desktop and My Documents on Vista Fixed problem where Helppane exe was being launched on process shutdown for MFC apps on Vista By default network mapped drives and removable disk will not be sandboxed isolated you can change this with an option in package ini Chapter 8 Package ini format on page 95 Fixed problem with out of process single use COM objects 2nd instances were not being registered Added package ini option to specify specific COM object IDs which should be created on the system instead of virtual environment Version 3 043 Jan 30 2007 Fixed
113. e can support all platforms m Automatic migration for NT 2k gt XP and XP gt Vista Group Policy cannot be circumvented Because VMware Project North Star Thinstall has no kernel mode code it cannot violate machine Group Policy applied to user accounts This makes VMware Project North Star Thinstall safe to deploy in environments where security and stability are important VMware Project North Star Thinstall has no ability to give application elevated permissions to devices on the machine such as the real file system registry networking devices printers etc For companies that have invested a lot of time constructing account security policies they can rest assured that the Microsoft OS team is fully responsible for implementing a secure environment and VMware Project North Star Thinstall does not bring any file system filters which might modify that Runs in restricted user accounts Because VMware Project North Star Thinstall requires no device drivers it can run application in Guest User accounts without any previous install Allows apps requiring Admin rights to run without additional privileges Many applications fail to run without Admin rights because they expect to be able to write to global locations like HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and c program files Using sandbox technology VMware Project North Star Thinstall makes applications believe they have the ability to make global changes when they are actually writing to usert
114. e started and stopped by application like real services m Primarily for service based license systems m Support for packaging services and deploying as real Windows services started at boot time Scripting m Embed and execute vbs in your EXEs m Can pre launch and shutdown m Exposes VMware Project North Star Thinstall runtime API m Access to any COM scripting provider m Execute commands in virtual or real environment m Can be used set application use time outs authenticate with LDAP or database VMware Inc 14 Active Directory Authentication Tie application access to AD Groups Dynamically add remove users to AD groups to control access Prevent access from users not connected to domain Supports offline cached credentials for off line usage Packaging runtimes VMware Project North Star Thinstall allows you to package any runtime you want to use directly with your application and eliminate pre install requirements Some examples include NET 1 1 2 0 3 0 Java Perl Crystal Reports COM amp ActiveX controls Easy to deploy stream or push in EXE or msi format Support for zero footprint execution and streaming Easy desktop integration with filetypes and shortcuts using ThinReg Ability to generate self registering msi files MSI Generation on page 93 enabling easy integration with desktop management products Packaging suites of applications Support for Reference EXEs Reference EXEs only take 3
115. e that would directly cause it to crash or violate applied security policies For example user mode code cannot access files owned by other users unless file system permissions allow it As well user mode code cannot make network connections unless the group security policy enables them to do so 80386 Pentium and higher processors enforce a specific security policy on user mode application by prohibiting them from executing instructions that talk to device ports directly preventing access to memory in other processes and by preventing execution of kernel mode without first going through specific controlled entry points User mode kernel mode are different from Administrator Guest For user mode code Windows supports many different sets of security policies based user accounts for example Administrator and Guest accounts are user based security policies Administrators typically have nearly full permission to access any system objects they want while Guest are fairly restricted and cannot read other user s files or write to global locations on the computer Both Administrators and Guest will run applications in user mode but switch to kernel mode when making system calls to access objects Kernel mode code will then consult security descriptors to see if the user has access to the objects they request Because Administrator accounts with full permission are a dangerous thing from a security perspective in Windows Vista Microsoft reduced the rights
116. econds even over network and quickly loads the application in question In some cases VMware Project North Star Thinstall can actually load applications faster than Windows The entire VMware Project North Star Thinstall runtime occupies 400k on disk Setup Capture VMware Project North Star s Setup Capture program makes conversion of traditional apps to virtual apps a very simple process Setup Capture can be used to take two snapshots of a machine before and after an application is installed and generate a VMware Project North Star Thinstall project directly from these changes The process is simple enough that it can be used by IT staff with a wide variety of skill levels Setup Capture s snapshot process is the fastest in the industry it can scan a clean version of Windows XP in VMware Inc 11 approximately 20 seconds Setup Capture supports continuation after reboot Command line tools allow you to print out differences between two machine snapshots and the snaphost process can be integrated into other tools or as part of your testing verification process Setup Capture can be run directly from a network share on clean machine without any installation enabling you to capture untainted images of machines Virtual short path names VMware Project North Star Thinstall is the only solution that sits above the windows loader and file system and the only solution to properly handle short pathnames DOS 8 3 file names Short Path
117. ed using OpenSemaphore amp CreateSemaphore m Events accessed using OpenEvent amp CreateEvent By default VMware Project North Star Thinstall will not isolate Synchronization objects You can specify a list of synchronization objects to isolate from other applications not running in the same virtual namespace A namespace is defined by the location of the application s sandbox If two applications share the same sandbox path they will have the same namespace for isolated SynchronizationObjects If two applications have the same sandbox name but the path to the sandbox is different the applications will have separate namespaces IsolatedSychronizationObjects accepts a list of entries that are separated using the character Each entry can have wildcards characters and to match variable patterns Example Isolate two synchronization objects matching anything with outlook in the name and one matching exactly My Shared Object BuildOptions IsolatedSychronizationObjects outlook My Shared Object See also Isolated MemoryObjects on page 104 This option requires VMware Project North Star Thinstall 3 133 or higher LogPath LogPath Controls where to store trace files when logging Example This directs VMware Project North Star Thinstall to store log files in c ThinstalLLogs NOTE Unlike most paths in VMware Project North Star Thinstall LogPath cannot contain macros such as AppData or Temp
118. el mode code cannot For this reason Microsoft recommends companies purchase user mode solutions when possible and put user mode as a requirement in purchase RFPs http technet microsoft com en us windowsvista aa906021 aspx Also note MS reports user mode solutions will help reduce your security risk Running in standard user mode gives customers increased protection against inadvertent system level damage caused by shatter attacks and malware such as root kits spyware and undetectable viruses Better security by reducing attack surface VMware Project North Star Thinstall is implemented 100 in user mode and is only visible to a single application on the machine Other solutions use device drivers which will intercept calls from every application on the system if only to decide whether to filter the call or ignore it and pass on to windows Because of this the attack surface for VMware Project North Star Thinstall for security vulnerabilities is much smaller vulnerabilities can only be exploited from the virtualized process and there is no possibility that non virtualized Internet Explorer could represent a security threat because of low level device drivers VMware Project North Star Thinstall keeps security policies intact Because VMware Project North Star Thinstall runs 100 in user mode it has the same rights and permissions as any other application a specific user would have VMware Project North Star Thinstall
119. entExit Called when the first parent process exits If a parent process executes a child process and quits this callback will be called even if the child process continues to execute VMware Inc 117 OnLastProcessExit Called when the last process owning the sandbox exits If a parent process executes a child process and quits this callback will be called when the last child process exits example vbs Function OnFirstSandboxOwner msgbox The sandbox owner is GetCurrentProcessName End Function Function OnFirstParentExit msgbox Quiting application GetCurrentProcessName End Function msgbox This code will execute for all parent and child processes Examples Timeout an application on a specific date timeout example on page 118 Runa bat file from a network share inside the virtual environment bat example on page 118 Modifying the Virtual Registry Registry Modify on page 119 Import reg file at runtime reg example on page 119 Stopping a virtual service when the main application quits Stopping Service on page 119 Copying an external system configuration file into the virtual environment on startup copyfile example on page 119 How to use an example 1 Save contents to a plain text file with the vbs extension in the same directory as your package ini file produced by SetupCapture NOTE It doe
120. erent ways so there is no one set way to track down issues c C WINDOWS system32 cmd exe cmd gt test cad_test bin gt cad Microsoft Windows Version 5 1 2688 lt C gt Copyright 1985 2681 Microsoft Corp nmd_test bin gt foobar is not recognized as an internal or external command gt progran or batch file end_test bin gt The first place to check in a log file is the section near the end labeled Potential Errors Detected VMware Inc 80 In this section you can find all the API functions in which the GetLastError code was modified The paths highlighted in bold indicate locations that cmd exe was looking for foobar and paths in red indicate locations in the virtual file system that were probed for these file system probes Potential Errors Detected xx Unable to determine if any services need to be auto started error 2 001550 FindFirstFilew C test cmd_test bin foobar gt INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE failed system probe C test cmd_test bin foobar gt ffffffFFh no virtual or system matches xxx FindFirstFilew gt HANDLE ffffffffh GetLastError returns 2 203 The system cannot find the file specified xxx FindFirstFilew C test cmd_test bin foobar gt INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE failed FS missing in view O fs entry not found drive_C test cmd_test bin foobar fs entry not found xdrive_C test cmd_test bin xxx FindFirstFileW C WINDOWS system32 f
121. eturned Example Package ini contains BuildOptions DemoOption DemoValLue Value GetBuildOption DemoOption Value DemoValue GetFileVersionValue Function GetFileVersionValue Filename Value This function returns Version information value from a specific DLL EXE OCX etc This function can be used to determine the internal version number of a DLL or retrieve information about the DLL s Copyright owner or Product name associated with the DLL Parameters Filename in The name of the filename where the version information is to be retrieved Value in The name of the Value to retrieve from the version information section of the specified file The following values can be retrieved from most DLLs Comments InternalName ProductName CompanyName LegalCopyright ProductVersion FileDescription LegalTrademarks PrivateBuild FileVersion OriginalFilename SpecialBuild Returns This function returns a string value If the requested Filename does not exist or the specified Value cannot be located in the file the value of is returned VMware Inc 124 Example FileVersion GetFileVersionVaLue c windows system32 kerneL32 d1L FileVersion if FileVersion 1 0 0 0 then MsgBox This is Version 1 0 End if GetCommandLine Function GetCommandLine This function allows you to access the command line parameters passed to the current running program Returns This function returns a
122. eturns Integer process ID the process ID can be used with WaitForProcess WaitForProcess on page 128 Example ExecuteExternalProcess cmd exe c copy c systemfile txt c newsystemfile txt Execute a command which requires quotes in the command line ExecuteExternalProcess regsvr32 s amp chr 34 amp c program files my ocx amp chr 34 ExecuteVirtualProcess Function ExecuteVirtualProcess CommandLine This function executes a command inside of the virtual environment It can be used if you need to make changes to the virtual environment Parameters CommandLine in CommandLine represents the application and commandline parameters to execute outside of the virtual environment Returns Integer process ID the process ID can be used with WaitForProcess WaitForProcess on page 128 Example ExecuteVirtualProcess cmd exe c copy c systemfile txt c virtualfile txt Execute a command which requires quotes in the command line ExecuteVirtualProcess regsvr32 s amp chr 34 amp c program files my ocx amp chr 34 VMware Inc 123 GetBuildOption Function GetBuildOption OptionName This function returns the value of a setting specified in the BuildOptions section of the Package ini file used for Thinstalling Parameters OptionName in Name of the setting Returns un This function returns a string value If the requested OptionName does not exist an empty string is r
123. execute applications inside or outside of the virtual environment Examples Specify that default behavior is to create child processes as virtual default VMware Inc 99 BuildOptions ChildProcessEnvironmentDefault Virtual ChildProcessEnvironmentExceptions AcroRd exe notepad exe Specify that default behavior is to create child processes outside of the virtual environment BuildOptions ChildProcessEnvironmentDefauLt External CommandLine CommandLine Specify command line arguments for a shortcut executable For shortcut executables you can specify the command line which is passed to the virtual app You should include the app name as the first parameter Examples Pass SomeOption SomeParameter as command line arguments MyShortcutApp exe Source ProgramFiLesDir Myapp MyShortcutApp exe Shortcut HostApp exe CommandLine ProgramFilesDir Myapp MyShortcutApp exe SomeOption SomeParameter CompressionType CompressionType Controls what type of compression is used VMware Project North Star Thinstall supports 3 different compression models None Fast and Small None None is the default when capturing a package This option is useful for building your application quickly for testing purposes No compression also improves application startup time on older PCs or when the application is launched multiple times On subsequent executions of the same application the Windows disk cache can provide data faster w
124. following values Value 1 for Windows Me Windows 98 or Windows 95 Windows 95 based OS Value 2 for Windows Server 2003 Windows XP Windows 2000 or Windows NT Windows NT based OS OS_STRING Represents additional information about the OS such as Service Pack 2 Example if GetOSVersion 5 1 0 2 Service Pack 2 then MsgBox You are running on Windows XP Service Pack 2 endif GetEnvironmentVariable Function GetEnvironmentVariable Name This function returns the environment variable associated with variable name Name Parameters Name in The name of the environment variable for which the value is to be retrieved VMware Inc 126 Returns This function returns the string value associated with the environment variable name Example MsgBbox The package source EXE is GetEnvironmentEnvironment TS_ORIGIN RemoveSandboxOneExit Sub RemoveSandboxOnExit YesNo This function set toggles whether to delete the sandbox when the last child process exits If you set the package ini option RemoveSandboxOnExit 1 the default clean up for the package with be Yes In this case you can change the clean up to No by calling RemoveSandboxOnExit with the value of 0 If you did not modify the package ini option RemoveSandboxOnExit 1 the default clean up for the package with be No In this case you can change the clean up to Yes by calling RemoveSandboxOnExit with the value of 1 Parame
125. for deploying VMware Project North Star Thinstall with an application is approximately 400kb versus 4 Gigabytes needed to deploy a virtual machine VMware Project North Star Thinstall does not emulate or translate any application instructions so they run at full native speed The memory impact from running a Thinstalled application will vary depending on how many DLLs are loaded but in general you should expect the application to require approximately 2MB of RAM over the original requirements Q Does the size of the package effect how quickly it starts up or how much memory it consumes A No VMware Project North Star Thinstall uses block based streaming Block based Streaming on page 53 to load only the required parts of an application into memory as needed A two gigabyte package can start executing in less than a second and consume less than 10MB of RAM The size of the package has no correlation to the amount of memory or startup time required Q How do control application use and maintain license compliance A You can currently control access to Thinstalled package through a few different mechanisms m Active Directory Chapter 11 Access Control using Active Directory on page 131 In the package ini file you can specify which users groups are able run a specific package Then using AD you can centrally add and remove people to groups as needed m VB Scripts Chapter 9 Scripting on page 117 This allows yo
126. g isolation mode settings see Understanding Isolation Modes on page 62 Any disk writes to directories that are set with WriteCopy or Full isolation will be redirected to the sandbox For more information about the location of the sandbox see Chapter 5 Sandbox Overview on page 65 B Office 2003 Visio P Package ini Notepad oe ee Fle Edt Format View Hep Package ini rsalation D AppData Directory lsolatiormode writecop O Common AppData O Common Programs O Desktop ttattributes ini a O drive_c B Fonts O Local AppData O Personal Attributes ini 7 d O ProgramFilesDir I Common Files P Attributes ini Notepad Fie Edt Format View Help Isolation DirectoryIsolationmMode mer ged z ID Microsoft Office P Attributes ini Notepad Attributes ni E Ble Edt Fams yew Hep BAs o Isolat on oSystemRoat DirectoryIsolationmMode Full O SystemSystem The following Isolation modes can be applied to subdirectories and registry subkeys VMware Inc 61 WriteCopy m System elements at this location will be visible to application If a system element and virtual element exist at the same location the application will see the virtual element Modifications to virtual elements go to sandbox Modifications to system elements go to sandbox m New elements will be created in the sandbox Merged m System elements at this locat
127. g as their application process and subprocesses are running If an application is hosted in a central location and run by many users this file lock means you cannot replace a packaged EXE with a new version until all users have released their locks on the file This is not always easy to accomplish without using VMware Project North Star Thinstall VMware Inc 57 Upgrade Mechanism VMware Project North Star Thinstall has an upgrade mechanism that allows you to deploy application upgrades even while older version are still in use by users This mechanism is as simple as copying the new version into the old deployment directory with a 1 2 3 filename extension Example 1 Deploy Version 1 0 of myapp exe Copy application to central share at server share myapp exe c program files myapp myapp exe is also another typical location Push a desktop start menu shortcut to user s desktop which points to shared EXE location at server share myapp exe 2 After some time 2 users userl and user2 have launched myapp exe and continue to use it 3 Now you d like to deploy Version 2 0 of myapp exe but you can t because the file is locked by 2 users The solution Copy Version 2 0 of myapp exe to central share at server share myapp 1 After step 3 anytime a new user executes server share myapp exe it will automatically relaunch using the package data in myapp 1 In this fashion users shortcuts do not need to be update
128. gger will not be aware of virtual DLLs If you are investigating code running at a specific address you can use dll_dump to convert this address into a virtual DLL name and base address Using log monitor you can generate a trace and convert this to text format In the report near the end you ll find a section labeled Modules loaded This section lists all DLLs that were loaded by the application over the course of its execution history DLLs that are described as SYSTEM_LOADED are loaded by Windows from the host PC these will include all the basic OS DLLs like kerne132 d11 DLLs that are described as MEMORY_MAPPED_ANON are loaded by VMware Project North Star Thinstall and completely isolated from Windows For Adobe Reader you should see something like this PRELOADED_BY_SYSTEM 00400000 00410000 C Program Files Adobe Acrobat 7 0 Reader AcroRd32 exe PRELOADED_MAP 00400000 00410000 C Program Files Adobe Acrobat 7 0 Reader AcroRd32 exe SYSTEM_LOADED 00400000 00410000 C thinstest 1072 Adobe Reader 7 0 bin Adobe exe SYSTEM_LOADED 77dd0000 77e6b000 C WINDOWS system32 ADVAPI32 dLL SYSTEM_LOADED 76fd0000 7704f000 C WINDOWS system32 CLBCATQ DLL SYSTEM_LOADED 5d090000 5d127000 C WINDOWS system32 comct132 d1l MEMORY_MAPPED_ANON 5000000 05085000 C Program Files Adobe Acrobat 7 0 Reader ACE d11 MEMORY_MAPPED_ANON 3000000 038c9000 C Program Files Adobe Acrobat 7 0 Reader AcroRd32 d11 MEMORY_MAPPED_ANON 60
129. gistries Preventing conflicts when Isolation is used Ina virtual environment where the application is isolated from the PC the normal file system will not be aware of short pathnames that a virtualized application wants to use For example consider the following scenario A desktop PC has Microsoft Office Installed installed natively no virtualization In this case Microsoft Office occupies the short pathname c progra 1 micros 1 On this same desktop a virtual version of Microsoft Visual Studio application begins running In this case Visual Studio needs to use a different short pathname other than c progra 1 micros 1 since this is in use The application must reserve the short pathname c progra 1 micros 2 when short pathname is allocated by the Windows filesystem A problem arises if a 3rd Microsoft application is installed while Visual Studio is running will it get microso 3 or microso 2 In the later case it will conflict with the virtual application and the virtual application may fail VMware Inc 23 VMware Project North Star Thinstall does not use filter drivers and does not depend on the Windows file system for the allocation of short pathnames VMware Project North Star Thinstall prevents conflicts between short pathnames between virtual applications and system applications by using it s own short namespace which will not collide with system applications Since each virtual application is isolated from all other virtu
130. hanges Ability to run multiple versions of application simultaneously on the same server without conflicts using registry and filesystem isolation m Ability to update applications Upgrading applications on page 57 without having to stop currently running copies m Eliminates most problems with legacy applications relating to security permissions to the file system and registry Sandboxing m Application EXE remains read only at all times m Stores application modifications on a per user and per application basis m Prevents apps from messing up machines m Allows most non Terminal Server apps to run on Terminal Server m Allows most non Vista apps to run on Vista m Enables IT to maintain locked down desktops m Reset applications by deleting sandboxes Virtual File system Only solution with no package size limits supports packages over 4GB in size Supports sandboxing isolation and system merge modes for specific registry sub trees Sandboxed files can be scanned blocked by anti virus software File system is stored in macro format remapping shell folders on the fly Filesystem shell folder remapping on page 20 File system automatically migrates SXS from XP to Vista Virtual Registry VMware Inc EXE contains read only image of registry Virtual registry is visible app only not entire system Virtual registry is merged onto system registry 13 m App specific registry sub trees are a
131. hat registry keys which do not already exist will have isolation mode set to Full NoReplace Do not replace or modify existing registry values If this option is not selected when a tvr already contains a value specified in the reg file this value will be overwritten with the value specified in the reg file VMware Inc 89 NoMacros Do not perform macro substitution for registry values that contain paths to short pathname or shell folders When this flag is not set the values contained in tvr will be replaced with macro versions of paths For example if the reg file contains a string registry value of C windows system32 kerne132 d11 the tvr file will contain the value systemsystem kerne132 d11 When the application requests the value of this registry key it will receive the value C windows system kerne132 d11 when running on Windows 98 ME and XP If the application runs on NT or 2k it will receive the value C winnt system32 kerne1l32 d11 Usually macro substitution is preferable however in some unusual cases you may want to disable this and store a hard coded path in the registry Exporting registry data to regedit format VREGTOOL regfile tvr ExportReg filename reg HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software regfile tvr Datafile in VMware Project North Star Thinstall Virtual Registry file format regedit reg The reg file to export to The file produced will be in REGEDIT 5 0 format unicode text HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Softw
132. hort pathname or shell folder location If it does VMware Project North Star Thinstall will store it internally in macro format which encodes both the shell folder location and the long pathname value for a short pathname At runtime when the application queries the same registry value it will receive the original value it wrote to the registry If the application moves to a different PC where the short pathnames are different it will obtain an automatically adjusted value For example if you look at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE txt for a capture of Microsoft Office you ll see some entries that look like this isolation_full HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software Classes CLSID 03B54468 0899 42 33_ 8689 623FFFC295EE InprocServer32 Value REG_SZ ProgramFiLesDir 0032 Common Files Microsoft Shared Smart Tag IETAG DLL 2300 Value ThreadingModel REG_SZ Apartment 2300 In this case the registry value is encoded to expand to the shell folder location c program files plus common files microsoft shared smart tag ietag d11 like the following expression GetShortPathName ExpandMacro ProgramFilesDir Common Files microsoft shared smart tag ietag d11 Because VMware Project North Star Thinstall performs this macro expansion and collapse for every registry operation it has been highly optimized to require very little CPU overhead The expansion and collapse occurs dynamically at runtime so there is no startup overhead time for applications with large re
133. i on page 108 If you re going to deploy the installer machine wide set the value to 1 This will result in UAC prompts if you have them enabled even if you force a per user installation by using the ALLUSERS commandline option By setting the option to 0 you won t get a UAC prompt but the install will fail if you then try to install it machine wide Handling Upgrades A MSI database contains a number of codes among which a ProductCode and an UpgradeCode When rebuilding a package it is recommended that the UpgradeCode is kept the same This can be specified using the MSIUpgradeCode option MSIUpgradeCode on page 108 You can change the ProductCode via the MSIProductCode option MSIProductCode on page 107 if desired The advantage of changing the ProductCode is that it is easier to install a newer version If the ProductCode of the new version is the same as the ProductCode of the old version the install will prompt you to remove the old version using Add Remove Programs first If the ProductCode is different the install will silently uninstall the old version and then install the new version If you don t specify a MSIProductCode option MSIProductCode on page 107 a different ProductCode will be generated for each build automatically VMware Inc 94 Package ini format The Package ini file contains one BuildOptions and one or more individual Application exe sectio
134. ices 0 Stop virtual services when the last non service application exits default BuildOptions AutoShutdownServices 1 See also AutoStartServices on page 98 AutoStartServices AutoStartServices Controls wheter to automatically start virtual service when the first application starts By default VMware Project North Star Thinstall will automatically start virtual services that were installed with the startup type of Automatic The virtual services are started when the first parent process is executed by the user This option can be used to disable auto starting of virtual services Examples Don t start virtual services BuildOptions AutoStartServices 0 Start virtual services when first process is launched default BuildOptions AutoStartServices 1 VMware Inc 98 See also AutoShutdownServices on page 98 BlockSize BlockSize Controls this size of compression blocks used when compressing files during build Using a larger block size can achieve higher compression however larger block sizes can have negative impact on performance m The build process slows down with larger block sizes m Startup time and file reads for applications will be slower with large block sizes m More memory is required at runtime when larger block sizes are used BlockSize can be specified in two places 1 Package ini file in this case the block size becomes the default for all files in the project unless othe
135. ies dialog from the windows shell typically this includes Copyright Trademark and Version number information By default VMware Project North Star Thinstall will copy all version information from the source EXE specified using Source Source on page 113 This option can be used to strip version information from the resulting application Example usage This will generate a target application with no version information app exe Source ProgramFiLesDir myapp app exe StripVersionInfo 1 See also Version XXXX on page 115 Source Source Points to the EXE file which will be initially loaded by VMware Project North Star Thinstall Source is specified on a per executable basis If an application suite has 3 accessible user entry points for example Winword exe Powerpnt exe and Excel exe your package ini will list 3 application entries and each entry will have a different Source entry Examples Create an user accessible entry point for C Program Files Myapp app1 exe app1 exe Source ProgramFiLesDir Myapp app1 exe Create an user accessible entry point for C Program Files Myapp app2 exe app2 exe Source ProgramFiLesDir Myapp app2 exe Shortcut Shortcut Points to the name of the VMware Project North Star Thinstall generated EXE which will host the package data Example Create a shortcut application that references HostApp exe HostApp exe should be listed somewhere in the package
136. if it exists but not marked as deleted When a subkey is marked as deleted applications running under VMware Project North Star Thinstall will not see the specified subkey even if it exists on the local system NOTE When NoMark is not used vregtool will mark the subkey as deleted whether or not it originally exists in the tvr file Example vregtool c tmp test tvr DelSubkey HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software Adobe Save For Web 3 0 TLink TLINK package ini OutDir OutputDirectory VMware Inc 91 MSI Generation VMware Project North Star Thinstall can optionally generate auto registering msi files during the build process fee ee O Mormon Aedes O omon Pogues ns Mon Sates D Sestop l n AOS T Capture O Moers Build TEET ETT ATTS O Sesoni can Coo Ciee ete Manager ee O Sopars o Aho O Shenae Om When to consider building an MSI You may consider building an MSI database when you need to deliver VMware Project North Star Thinstall packaged applications through traditional desktop management systems to remote locations and have shortcuts and filetype associations automatically created msi packages provide a very simply way to do this Most systems including plain Active Directory Group Policy provide simple methods to push and execute msi packages What is included in a MSI database created by VMware Project North Star Thinstall 1 A copy of all the Thinstalled EXE files for a
137. iles Thinstall Snapshot ini Location where Snapshot exe is run from See the default Snapshot iniin the C Program Files Thinstal1l Snapshot ini for more details about customizations that can be performed VMware Inc 142 Virtual Registry VMware Project North Star Thinstall Registry information exists in 3 forms Build format This is unicode text files such as HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE txt the build process converts this format into the embedded format m Embedded format read only This is compressed and stored inside the application EXE file in a binary format m Sandbox format read write This stores the differences from the embedded format as the application makes registry writes Packaged Compiled Format After you build a package all registry values and files will exist in a read only image inside of the EXE you are distributing At runtime the read only image presents a view of the registry for new users of a package As the application modifies the registry these changes will be saved in the sandbox persistent file with the extension tvr The VRegTool utility VREGTool on page 89 can be used to list and modify data contained ina tvr file Build Format This is what registry data looks like after you perform setup capture In this format each registry subkey will map directly to a directory on your build filesystem Each registry value also maps directly to a file An example view looks like this c mypac
138. in the VMware Project North Star Thinstall project and the application may fail to run on other PCs where the files do not exist Another positive aspect of using a clean PC is that SetupCapture can scan the PCs filesystem and registry very quickly when it is clean typically in 15 seconds for a clean PC but may take several minutes to an hour for non clean PCs What is a clean PC A clean PC is a PC which has Windows base OS installed and nothing else In a corporate environment where you have a base desktop image the base desktop image is your clean PC In such cases the back desktop PC may already have some components and libraries installed for example NET 2 0 When you capture a package on a PC which has NET 2 0 already installed NET 2 0 will not be included in your package and the application will then only run on PCs which have NET 2 0 already installed We have a guide for installing VMWare Server a free product Installing VM Server on page 41 which can provide you with a clean environment any time you need it for capturing and testing purposes What version of Windows should I use for capturing We recommend capturing on the lowest platform you plan to support for your users In most cases this will be WIndows 2000 or Windows XP Most packages captured on XP will work on 2k however in some cases Windows XP comes with some DLLs which Windows 2k does not have and they will be excluded from the package if the applicati
139. ine which version of a DLL should be used VMware Project North Star Thinstall then loads the correct version of the DLL from the virtual path contained inside the package VMware Project North Star Thinstall supports management of runtime activation contexts as well so it knows which version of DLLs to load from dynamic dll loads Natively without VMware Project North Star SXS is only supported on xp w2k3 and vista but not 2k and NT This means if you want to support 2k and NT without VMware Project North Star you need to install into 2 locations automatically done by MSI installer 3 0 1 c winnt system32 or application directory 2 SXS path location c winnt winsxs Location 1 is required to support nt 2k and location 2 is required in order to meet MS s Designed for Windows guidelines which state the app must continue to work if the OS is upgraded from 2k gt xp Because VMware Project North Star Thinstall has its own SxS processing all SxS technology is available for both nt 2k and xp w2k3 vista in the Thinstalled environment That s right we bring modern OS technology and make it work on older platforms On Windows Vista Microsoft has changed the path locations and file path name mangling algorithm for SxS DLLs VMware Project North Star Thinstall automatically moves SxS DLLs captured for XP w2k3 and moves them to the correct location in virtual space for Windows Vista at runtime when the app starts so the
140. ings Isolation DirectoryIsoLationMode WriteCopy Merged Full Chapter 4 Isolation Modes on page 61 example DirectoryIsolation WriteCopy If isolation is not specified it will be inherited from parent directory Compression CompressionType None Fast Small BlockSize 64k 128k 256k 512K 1M BlockType Fixed Rolling FileList ExcLudePattern tmp obj FullName VMware Inc Frequently Asked Questions Q When I complete the capture process and build why are there are no EXE files generated A Setup Capture uses shortcuts installed during installation to determine which EXEs to build Package ini generation on page 72 The most common reason for this problem occurs if you instruct the installer not to write any shortcuts during capture or in some case applications specifically do not install any shortcuts for these applications you need to manually edit the package ini file Package ini generation on page 72 Q Can VMware Project North Star Thinstall applications interact with other applications printers drivers etc A Yes for the most part there is no difference between a Thinstalled application and system installed application See Desktop Integration on page 56 for more details Q What is the performance overhead running when a Thinstalled application A VMware Project North Star Thinstall is an application level Virtualization solution The total disk footprint
141. ings username Templates sRecent CSIDL RECENT C Documents and Settings username My Recent Documents NetHoods CSIDL_NETHOOD C Documents and Settings username NetHood sFonts CSIDL_ FONTS c Windows Fonts My Pictures CSIDL_MYPICTURES C Documents and Settings username My Documents My Pictures My Videos CSIDL_MYVIDEO C Documents and Settings username My Documents My Videos Personal CSIDL_PERSONAL C Documents and Settings username My Documents sProfile CSIDL_ PROFILE C Documents and Settings username sProfiles CSIDL_ PROFILES C Documents and Settings S Ver VMware Project North Star Thinstall uses shfolder d11 to obtain the location of Shell folders Older versions of shfolder d11 do not support some Macro Names if there is a requirement for a specific version of shfolder d11 on the host OS this has been listed VMware Inc 149 Thinstall Virtualization Suite 3 0 Special processing for SystemRoot When running in a Terminal Services environment there are 2 Windows directories a shared Windows directory e g C Windows and a private Windows directory e g C Documents and Settings User Windows For Terminal Services environments VMware Project North Star Thinstall will use the user specific directory for Systemroot Attributes ini 150 This file controls per directory sett
142. ion will be visible to application If a system element and virtual element exist at the same location the application will see the virtual element Modifications to virtual elements go to sandbox Modifications to system elements go to system m New elements will be created on the system m System elements at this location will not be visible to application Modifications to virtual elements go to sand box m System elements cannot be read or modified m New elements will be created in the sandbox Q How do I change the isolation mode for a directory A Edit the Attibutes ini file in your package located in the directory where you want to modify the default isolation mode Q How do I change the isolation mode for a registry subtree A Edit the HKEY_XXXXXX txt file Each registry subtree will begin with the isolation mode NOTE VMware Project North Star Thinstall caches the isolation modes for the registry and filesystem at runtime in the sandbox If you change the isolation mode for your project and then rebuild the EXE file you may need to delete the sandbox in order for the change to take effect Understanding Isolation Modes VMware Project North Star Thinstall s Isolation Modes help solve the following classes of problems Problem 1 Application fails to run due to previous or future versions existing simultaneously or not uninstalling correctly Solution VMware Project North Star Thinstall hides hos
143. ional files in the SourcePath tree and have them resolve imports against virtual DLLs AddForcedVirtuaLLoadPath SourcePath ExitProcess Sub ExitProcess ExitCode This function quits the current process and sets the specified Error Code Parameters ExitCode in The error code to set This information may be available to a parent process Typically a value of 0 is used to indicate no error Example Exit the process and indicate success ExitProcess 0 NOTE As the process exits the scripting system will receive its Function OnEndProcess callback Also any DLLs loaded will run their termination code so they can properly clean up ExpandPath Function ExpandPath InputPath This function converts a path from macro format to system format Parameters InputPath in A path in macro format Returns The expanded macro path in system format VMware Inc 122 Example Path ExpandPath ProgramFilesDir Myapp exe Path c program files myapp exe NOTE All macro paths must escape the and characters by replacing these characters with 25 and 23 ExecuteExternalProcess Function ExecuteExternalProcess CommandLine This function executes a command outside of the virtual environment It can be used if you need to make real system changes Parameters CommandLine in CommandLine represents the application and commandline parameters to execute outside of the virtual environment R
144. irectly crash a system and it can be easily killed with the task manager if it hangs There is no other impact on the system Windows will automatically clean up after crashed or killed user mode applications by closing open file handles freeing allocated memory and discarding created resources Kernel mode applications have no protection at all from crashing or leaked resources A kernel mode crash results in the dreaded blue screen though often times the problem is a thread dead lock and the machine appears to be frozen or performs very badly for no apparent reason Diagnosing kernel mode bugs is an art left to very expensive consultants and many companies find it cheaper to abandon faulty device drivers that crash systems rather than try to diagnose and resolve the problem Deployment to locked down accounts without security elevation Perhaps one of the biggest advantages of being a user mode solution is that you can run applications directly from locked down accounts without pre installing a device driver or granting the user elevated security privileges This has proved tremendously valuable for companies that have change management processes in place that prohibit the installation of device drivers or other system changes without a careful study pilot program and roll back capability Because VMware Project North Star Thinstall has no device drivers it VMware Inc 17 enables deployment of applications with zero footprint on the desktop
145. is stored in native intel order little endian so no special processing needs to be performed for binary data MACRO_VALUE_DATA Specifies value data which should be macro expanded prior to use by the application For example the value AppData will be expanded at runtime to the location of the user s Application Data directory If value data is not macro expanded the application would receive the literal string AppData when queries this registry value Macro expanded data is only supported for string value types REG_SZ REG_EXPAND_SZ and REG_MULTI_SZ Examples REG_SZ AppData Represents the value of the Application Data folder on the host PC where VMware Project North Star Thinstall is running The length of this registry value will change depending on what machine it runs on REG_SZ 23AppData 23 Represents the value of the actual value AppData This value will always be the literal string AppData regardless of the current shell folder location isolation_full HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software Classes CLSID 047a9a40 65 7e 11d3 8d5b 00104b35e7ef InprocServer32 Value ThreadingModel REG_SZ Both 00 Value REG_SZ SystemSystem mscoree d11 00 Attributes ini This file controls per registry subkey settings RegistryIsoLationMode WriteCopy Merged Full Chapter 4 Isolation Modes on page 61 example RegistryIsolation writeCopy If isolation is not specified it will
146. isableTracing Prevents trace file generation when Log Monitor is running VMware Project North Star Thinstall s Log Monitor utility Log Monitor on page 74 can be used to produce a trace file for applications run by VMware Project North Star Thinstall This option can be used to disable the ability to produce trace files for specific applications Examples This prevents an application from creating a trace file even if Log Monitor is running BuildOptions DisableTracing 1 This allows Log Monitor to create a trace file default BuildOptions DisableTracing 0 VMware Inc 101 It may be desirable to turn off trace file generation capabilities for several reasons m For security purposes it may be preferable to hide execution history from prying eyes m During testing it may be useful to turn off tracing for specific Thinstalled applications that are known to work since producing extra trace files represents a waste of disk space and CPU time Disabled DisablLed Indicates that a build target is a placeholder and thus should not generate an EXE Example This disables generation of the app exe file during build by changing Disabled to 0 or removing the line one can enable generation of app exe Lapp exe Source ProgramFiLesDir myapp app exe Disabled 1 ExcludePattern ExcludePattern Allows you to exclude specify files to exclude during the build process This option can be used to exclude
147. istrators if the user does not have permission to install on a per machine bases NOTE by suppling command line arguments to msiexec you can force a per user machine install For example msexec exe mymsi msi ALLUSERS BuildOptions MSIFilename mymsi msi MSIDefaultInstallAllUsers 2Availability This option requires VMware Project North Star Thinstall version 3 210 or higher MSIFilename MSIFilename Enable generation of an MSI database and specify its filename If set this option causes the build to produce a Windows Installer with the specified filename in the output directory For more information see Chapter 7 MSI Generation on page 93 Example This directs VMware Project North Star Thinstall to generate an MSI during build replace mymsi msi with your own filename BuildOptions MSIFilename mymsi msi Availability This option requires VMware Project North Star Thinstall version 3 210 or higher MSlinstallDirectory MSTInstal1lDirectory Specify the final path component of the default installation directory This option has an effect only when generation of a Windows Installer database is requested via the MSIFilename option MSIFilename on page 106 By default packages will install in ProgramFilesDir lt InventoryName gt Thinstalled fora per machine install You can change the last component in the default install path by using the MSIInstallDir option For example if you set M
148. it may be desirable to run as a real windows service on system boot up rather than when an application is launched by a user To install a Thinstalled packaged EXE as a real service the general procedure looks like this 1 Remove virtual registry keys from your VMware Project North Star Thinstall project relating to services 2 Add real system registry keys for the associated service which point to your VMware Project North Star Thinstall packaged EXE More specific instructions using Apache web server as an example 1 After capture delete all services registry keys from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE txt HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SYSTEM CurrentControlSet Services 2 On target machine where you want to run the service write real registry keys where ImagePath points to your Thinstalled EXE like this c path_to_thinstalled_apache httpd exe k runservice You can write the registry values using a reg file or as part of an installation process 3 You may need to reboot before the service will show up in the service control panel Start gt Run gt services msc Once it shows up you can test starting and stopping the service directly by using the control panel NOTE rebooting isn t required to use the service it s just to have the service control panel refresh it s list of available services Below are the registry keys one would delete from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE txt for the apache web server VMware Inc 25 isoLation_fullL HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
149. ithout compression enabled Fast This option is recommend for most packages Fast compression has a very fast rate of decompression so it has very little impact on application startup time it also has very little impact on memory consumption at runtime Fast compression achieves similar compression ratios as the ZIP algorithm Sma11 This option is recommend when startup time is less important than package size Small compression can achieve compression ratios slightly better than BZIP2 Sample compression ratios and startup times for Office 2003 package running from a local hard drive None Fast Small Size 448 616k 257 373k 228 235k Compression ratio 100 57 50 Startup time 1st execution 6 sec 6 sec 19 sec Startup time 2nd execution 0 1 sec 1 sec 17 sec Build Time 1st build 3 mins 19 mins 13 mins Build Time 2nd build 2 mins 1 2mins 1 1 mins CompressionType can be specified in two places 1 Package ini file in this case the compression type becomes the default for all files in the project unless otherwise specified 2 Attributes ini in this case the compression type overrides the compression algorithm for the present directory and all subdirectories In the manner you can use different compression algorithms for different directories within a single project VMware Inc 100 Examples No Compression for fastest build time and fastest load time default Compression CompressionType None Fa
150. kage HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software ApplicationxX Valuel txt c mypackage HKEY_CLASS_ROOT txt Registry subkey amp value name gt Filename mapping Because registry subkeys and value names can have some characters which do not map to filenames any unmappable character must be escaped in the filename like this Registry Subkey HKEY_CLASS_ROOT Maps to filename c mypackage HKEY_CLASS_ROOT 42 42 Because the character is not a valid filename character it has been escaped as 42 Because is used to escape characters it must also be escaped To represent a default value the filename default is used NOTE FAT32 versus NTFS FAT32 has severe limits on maximum filename lengths it is highly recommend that you store all build registry data either on a NTFS drive or use a short parent directory name to store registry build data At runtime FAT32 limitations will not impact the registry VMware Inc 143 Registry Value data Registry files are saved as plain txt or Unicode text Unicode text files start with the two byte sequence hex ff hex fe Notepad and Wordpad will automatically text unicode ansi text files TYPE VALUE TYPE can be one of the following REG_NONE REG_SZ REG_EXPAND_SZ REG_BINARY REG_DWORD REG_DWORD_LITTLE_ENDIAN REG_DWORD_BIG_ENDIAN REG_MULTI_SZ REG_RESOURCE_LIST REG_FULL_RESOURCE_DESCRIPTOR REG_RESOURCE_REQUIREMENTS_LIST If type is string data REG_SZ REG_EXPAND_SZ or R
151. kage in the background and only allow execution once the entire package has been downloaded This will reduce failures and eliminate scenarios where unstreamed portions are required by the application during a network outage A company with many branch offices would typically designate one application repository at each branch office which mirrors a central shared folder to optimize local performance for clients located at that branch For best security it is recommended that a central shared directory be made read only so users can read the package contents but they cannot tamper with the executable contents As multiple users stream a package from a shared location changes made by the application will be stored in the user s sandbox The user s sandbox location defaults to AppData Thinstal1 APPLICATION_NAME but can be configured at runtime or package time Chapter 5 Sandbox Overview on page 65 A common setup is to have the user s sandbox be located on another central storage device so the user can walk up to any PC and retain their individual application settings centrally When packages are being streamed from a central share they will remain locked until all users have exited the application VMware Project North Star Thinstall provides a mechanism for updating applications while they are still running to address this scenario Upgrading applications on page 57 Some common questions about VMware Project North Star
152. king the button to the right Output report Files This file will be generated when you click Generate text trace report The file should be viewed with a text editor that supports unix style line breaks such as Msdev Wordpad or Word not notepad See Tips and tricks for locating errors in trace files Locating Errors on page 75 VMware Inc 74 Locating Errors VMware Project North Star Thinstall logging functionality created using Log Monitor Log Monitor on page 74 provides a large amount of information Here are a few tips you can follow to more easily zoom in on problems to investigate Tip 1 Use TextPad to view your log files as it can handle fairly large files Most text file viewers cannot handle large log files and VMware Project North Star Thinstall trace files can easily be larger than 100MB If your trace file exceeds 200MB you may need to chop off the beginning of the file using a utility like tail exe Tip 2 Look at Potential Errors section first The most important part of the log for diagnosing problems comes at the end of the log in the section labeled Potential Errors Detected You ll find this at the very bottom of your txt trace file Many entries listed in the potential errors section are innocent and do not actually indicate an error VMware Project North Star Thinstall list each Win32 API call where the windows error code changed and most of these do not i
153. l My Application 1 0 When upgrading an application the Sandbox name plays an important role in determining if the user will retail their previous personal settings or use new settings By changing the Sandbox Name with new deployments one can decide whether the user will create a new Sandbox with different settings or retain the same Sandbox SandboxPath SandboxPath Controls the path where VMware Project North Star Thinstall will create a new sandbox by default Examples This creates the default Sandbox in the same directory as the EXE BuildOptions SandboxPath This creates the default Sandbox in a subdirectory under where the EXE is located BuildOptions SandboxPath LocalSandbox Subdir1 This creates the default Sandbox in the user s AppData folder under the subdirectory Thinstall BuildOptions SandboxPath AppData ThinstalLlL This creates the default Sandbox on a network mapped drive BuildOptions SandboxPath Z Sandboxes If an application is meant to run only from portable media such as USB Flash devices SandboxPath can be used to force the application to use a local sandbox It is also possible to control the default location of the Sandbox using environment variables or by creating a Thinstall directory Environment variables and a local Thinstall directory will take precedence over the path specified by SandboxPath See Chapter 5 Sandbox Overview on page 65 for more details on Sandbox creation a
154. l Scan Confirm Location to save project and Click Save Results gt gt VMware Project North Star Thinstall will suggest a name for the project If the application installed multiple components you may need to adjust the suggested name m e e e oe e DOD OBA TO M commen La Wjackson SharedThinstall VS Captures Adobe Reader 7 0 8 oe 38 Switch to dev PC with VMware Project North Star Thinstall VS installed and execute build bat This will execute the virtual registry compiler virtual filesystem packager and runtime linker to produce one or more EXE files in the bin directory under your project If you installed VMware Project North Star Thinstall VS to a location other c Program Files Thinstal11VS you need to set the environment variable THINSTALL_BIN before executing the build bat file VMware Project North Star Thinstall VS can be run from a shared network location so it does not need to installed locally Adobe Reader 7 0 8 Ele Gor View Favortes Took Help Q h gt S 7 Search fp Fakers E D Ciitestiadobe Reader 7 0 8 gjo Folders x Name a A C Adobe Reade 7 0 8 A Common Desktop O AppDete O tomman StartMeau E Commen AppData D 6Profie O Commer Desktop CI 6ProgremFilesDir E D Comnmen RartMeru CO SystemRoot E Profies CO SypstemSystemn E D ProgranFiesDir bn i C SSystemrocks CHKEY_CURRENT_USER E O Systemdystem es NE 4 Eth build bat v C HKEY CORRENT USE
155. laying Icons VMware Project North Star Thinstall supports packages of unlimited sizes however on some Windows platforms the windows shell explorer exe has limitations on how it displays icons and may not display the icon for an EXE file once it reaches a certain size Explorer exe tries to map the entire EXE file into memory so it can access the Icon resources If there is not enough available virtual memory address space this file mapping operation will fail Typically an application will have a maximum of 2GB of address space though DLLs the process heap and other objects will break up the virtual address space so a smaller maximum block is actually available On most computers Windows XP will not display icons for EXE files larger then 600MB Windows Vista does not appear to have this limitation Luckily there is a very easy work around for this problem When building a large package you can create two files m One large file containing the package data m One small file containing Icon Information VMware Inc 155 Thinstall Virtualization Suite 3 0 156 Example Before package ini LargeApplication exe Source ProgramFiLesDir LargeAppLication exe ReadOn1lyData bin Package ro tvr Example After package ini LargeApplication dat Source ProgramFiLlesDir LargeAppLication exe ReadOn1lyData bin Package ro tvr LargeApplication exe Source ProgramFiLesDir LargeAppLication exe Shortcut LargeAppli
156. lem where applications did not run on Windows Vista Added new text registry output format for setup capture This format is fast to generate and process as well as easy to edit and review Added support for Outlook 2003 may crash amp chew CPU on quit Added support Oracle 10g client Oracle 10g still needs better shortcut EXE generation Added sandbox locking mechanism to prevent problems where 2 computers try to write to the same virtual registry over a network simultaneously if multiple computers try to create sandboxes at the same location they will create a unique directory with their computer name Made Desktop Merged Isolation Chapter 4 Isolation Modes on page 61 by default allowing users to save files to their desktop previously went to desktop Added support for compressed packages still needs compression for VOS amp Virtual Registry 34 Getting Started This walk thru assumes you have installed VMware Project North Star Thinstall to your development PC using the MSI provided in your online account 1 VMware Inc Setup a clean PC if you do not already have one Using a Clean PC for Capturing on page 41 Installing VM Server on page 41 Share your ThinstalVS directory and launch SetupCapture on a clean PC We recommend launching Setup Capture directly from a network share to ensure no changes are made to the local PC except by the installed application In order to create a full capture of
157. les 0 39 ms on log entry 580771 VMware Inc 79 Potential Errors The potential errors is a collection of all log entries which have in their string VMware Project North Star Thinstall marks entries that could potentially be a problem by adding to the log entry output See Locating Errors for more tips on interpreting this section Potential Errors Detected 006425 0000075c LoadLibraryExw C Program Files Adobe Reader 8 0 Reader Microsoft Windows Common Controls DLL flags 2 gt failed 006427 0000075c LoadLibraryExwW C Program Files Adobe Reader 8 0 Reader Microsoft Windows Common Controls Microsoft Windows Common Controls DLL flags 2 gt 0 failed 006428 0000089c nview dll 1005b94b lt kernel132 d11 7c80ae4b LoadLibraryW gt HMODULE 7c800000h GetLastError returns 2 0 The system cannot find the file specified 007062 0000075c LoadLibraryExwW C Program Files Adobe Reader 8 0 Reader en US Microsoft Windows Common Controls DLL flags 2 gt O failed 010649 0000075c LoadLibraryExw C Program Files Adobe Reader 8 0 Reader en US Microsoft Windows Common Controls Microsoft Windows Common Controls DLL flags 2 gt failed 019127 0000075c MSVCR80 d11 781348cc lt msvcrt dll 77c10396 GetEnvironmentVariableA gt DWORD Oh OUT LPSTR lpBuffer Oh lt bad ptr gt GetLastErrorQ returns 203 0 The system could not fin
158. lities If an application has built in auto updating capabilities then it s update mechanism will still function when running under VMware Project North Star Thinstall If the application downloads and runs an installer patching program this will run inside of the virtual environment and all of the changes made by the update software will be written to the sandbox When the application restarts it will use the version of the EXE in the sandbox not from the original package VMware Inc 153 Thinstall Virtualization Suite 3 0 For example if you package Firefox 1 5 and run it it will ask if you want to upgrade to Firefox 2 0 if you click yes it will download updates and write them to the sandbox and prompt you to restart If you run the application it again you will be running Firefox 2 0 By deleting the sandbox it will revert back to version 1 5 Thinstall s Sandbox Merge utility sbmerge on page 85 can be used to merge changes made by an application s update mechanism back into the original package structure in order to build an EXE to redeploy to end user machines VMware Project North Star Thinstall opens new possibilities for updating applications dynamically without requiring Administrator rights For example NET based applications that download new DLL files from the internet as part of their update process need to execute ngen exe to generate Native Image assemblies in order to improve startup performance Norm
159. ller startup screen will appear 5 x Ble Ect View Host VM Power Snapshot Windows Help D Windows 2006 Professional E vmware Starts n F12 for Network Boot ESC for Boot Menu Viwore Server 1 0 2 6 Oo To interact with the virtual machine you need to click in the virtual machine s desk top This will cause the virtual machine to capture the keyboard and mouse as input devices All further keystrokes and mouse clicks will be delivered to the virtual machine not to your physical machine To release the keyboard and mouse at any time press the Control and Atl keys simultaneously If you see a No operating system found message or No bootable CD dialog then you need to Power Off the virtual machine Power gt Power off and change the CD configuration or try a different installation CD No bootable CD floppy or hard dsk wa detected To install an operating system insert a bootable CD or floppy and restart the virtual macine by clicking the Reset button Make sure the connect at power on check box is selected or try the legacy emulation check box see step 7 If all goes well you should see the Windows installer appear and start asking you to make decisions Follow the on screen instructions to install the operating system you have selected Typically this involves creating a new disk partition formatting this partition providing replies to the installation program and waiting around for the i
160. m32 OLEAUT32 d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 771b0000 7727efff C WINDOWS system32 WININET d11 IAPPED_ANON 46800000 46873fff C Program ins ImageViewer API SYSTEM_LOADED 773d0000 774d2ffFf c03 comct132 d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 774e0000 7761cfff C WINDOWS system32 ole32 d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 77690000 776b0fff C WINDOWS system32 NTMARTA DLL SYSTEM_LOADED 77920000 77a12fff C WINDOWS system32 SETUPAPI d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 77b40000 77b61fff C WINDOWS system32 appHelp d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 77c00000 77c07fff C WINDOWS system32 VERSION d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 77c10000 77c67fff C WINDOWS system32 msvcrt d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 77dd0000 77e6afff C WINDOWS system32 ADVAPI32 d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 77e70000 77f00ffF C WINDOWS system32 RPCRT4 d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 77f10000 77f56fff C WINDOWS system32 GD1I32 d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 77f60000 77fd5ffF C WINDOWS system32 SHLWAPI d11 SYSTEM_LOADED 77fe0000 77ffOfff C WINDOWS system32 Secur32 d11 MEMORY_MAPPE D_ANON 78130000 781caffFf Files Adobe Reader Files Adobe Reader Files Adobe Reader Files Adobe Reader Files Adobe Reader Files Adobe Reader Files Adobe Reader Files Adobe Reader Files Adobe Reader Files Adobe Reader Files Adobe Reader Files Adobe Reader _Microsoft Windows Common Controls_6595b64144ccf1df_6 0 2600 2982_x ww_ac3f9 78 C WINDOWS WinSxS x86_Microsoft VC80 CRT_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8 0 50727 163_x ww_681e29fb msvcr80 d11 MEMORY_MAPPED_ANON 7c420000 7c4a6f ff C WINDOWS WinSxS x86_Microsoft VC8
161. n a string that represents the command line arguments passed to the current running program including the original exe Example MsgBox The command line for this EXE was GetCommandLine GetCurrentProcessName Function GetCurrentProcessName This function allows you to access the full path name of the current process Returns This function returns an a string that represents the full EXE pathname inside of the virtual environment Typically this will be c program files even though the package source may be running from a network share Example MsgBox Running EXE path is GetCurrentProcessName GetOSVersion Function GetOSVersion This function returns information about the current version of Windows No Parameters Returns This function returns a string in the following format MAJOR MINOR BUILD_NUMBER PLATFORM_ID OS_STRING MAJOR is one the following values VMware Inc 125 Windows Server 2003 5 Windows XP 5 Windows 2000 5 Windows NT 4 0 4 Windows Me 4 Windows 98 4 Windows 95 4 Windows NT 3 51 3 MINOR is one of the following values Windows Server 2003 2 Windows XP 1 Windows 2000 0 Windows NT 4 0 0 Windows Me 90 Windows 98 10 Windows 95 0 Windows NT 3 51 51 BUILD_NUMBER is the build number of the OS Windows Me 98 95 The low order word contains the build number of the operatingsystem The high order word contains the major and minor version numbers PLATFORM_ID is one of the
162. n be scanned quickly it will load the remainder of the application data from the original source location You can disable this default behavior by adding the package ini option If your application is small in size or you know that SAV is not installed on the desktops you are deploying to you may want to turn off NetRelaunch for better first time launch performance Examples This will disable relaunching of the application locally on a fixed disk BuildOptions NetReLlaunch 0 If launched from a network drive re launch using a local stub default BuildOptions NetRelaunch 1 NoRelocation NoRelocation Strips relocation information from the resulting executable Windows executables can optionally contain base relocation information which enables Windows to load the EXE image at an alternate starting memory address If the base address is above 0x40000 the executable will always be loaded at its specified base address so relocation information is not needed and can be safely stripped out of the resulting image Relocation information is typically fairly small on disk so removing this information will not have a big impact on the size of the EXE files generated Example This will strip relocation information from the generated EXE file app exe Source ProgramFiLesDir myapp app exe NoRe Location 1 RegistrylsolationMode RegistryIsolationMode Controls default isolation mode for registry keys in package RegistryIsolationMode
163. n drivers Java etc These components will be included in the captured project If these dependencies already existed on the system prior to starting the capture process the package will not include them and they must be pre installed on all machines on which the application will run m You can install application plugins at this point VMware Project North Star Setup Capture Version 3 345 x Setup Capture a vmware wy Next Steps TS 1 Install target application 2 Click Post Install Scan F If application install requires a reboot Axes i i capture will automatically resume Post Install Scan gt gt Step 4 Do a final scan and select a directory to save project VMware Project North Star Setup Capture Version 3 345 E x Setup Capture E vmware Select directory where project while be saved C Program Files VMware North Star Captures cmd Step 5 Once the project has been saved you can generate Thinstalled EXE files by running build bat in the project directory NOTE Ifthe application did not install any shortcuts you may need edit pacakge ini to tell VMware Project North Star Thinstall what EXEs you want to generate Package ini generation on page 72 VMware Inc 71 Package ini generation How Setup Capture decides which EXE will be included in a generated package ini file Most larger applications will install many different EXE files during installati
164. n the host PC The injected DLL can intercept windows messages This has been used to steal or spy on keyboard and mouse input from other applications VMware Project North Star Thinstall will silently ignore requests made by applications trying to install Global Hook dlls via SetWindowsHookEx VMware Inc 59 Thinstall Virtualization Suite 3 0 60 VMware Inc Isolation Modes Isolation modes can be controlled on per directory and per registry subtree basis By default Setup Capture will produce projects that are configured for a locked down desktop model as shown below In a locked down PC environment the user will typically have write permission only to their Desktop their My Documents folder network shares and removable disks The default isolation mode for the project can be controlled in package ini this property will be inherited by child directories unless they explicitly override the isolation mode For non locked down desktop models setting the default isolation mode in Project ini to Merged instead of WriteCopy allows the user to save files directly to the host filesystem at any location The main risk for changing the default isolation mode to Merged is that there is potential for the application to leave behind residue when executing For example many shareware applications try to leave first execution markers in random locations on the PC as part of their licensing system For more details about understandin
165. n to sift through in the trace file If you kill the application immediately after it has an error chances are good that you can look at the end of the trace and scan upwards to see the source of the problem VMware Project North Star Thinstall s Log Monitor utility has a handle Kill button to help you do this Tip 7 You can generate txt versions of trace files while an application is still running If needed you can convert a trace file into a text report while the application is still running Tip 8 Narrow your focus on calls originating from a specific DLL and thread VMware Project North Star Thinstall s log format Log Format on page 76 lets you see which DLL and thread is making a call When tracking back from the source of an error you can usually ignore other threads and often ignore calls from system DLLs Log Format General API Log Message Format The general format for API calls looks like this 000257 0a88 mydll dll 4ad0576d gt kernel132 d11 7c81b1f0 SetConsoleMode IN HANDLE hConsoleHandle 7h IN DWORD dwMode 3h 000258 0a88 mydll dll 4ad0576d lt kernel32 d11 7c81b1f0 SetConsoleMode gt BOOL 1h 000257 Indicates the log entry number Each log entry will have a unique number The Potential Errors Detected will refer back to individual log entries using its log entry number 0a88 Indicates the currently executing thread ID If the application has only one thread this num
166. nal COM object running in the virtual environment this option can be used to allow such objects to be created by and run on the host system If you want to run only specific COM objects outside of the virtual environment you can list each COM object s CLSID explicitly using ExternalCOMObjects ExternalCOMObjects on page 102 Examples This instructs VMware Project North Star Thinstall to execute all external out of process COM objects in the system context not in the virtual environment BuildOptions VirtualizeExternalOutOfProcessCOM 0 This instructs VMware Project North Star Thinstall to execute all external out of process COM objects in the virtual environment default BuildOptions VirtualizeExternalOutOfProcessCOM 1 VirtualDrives VirtualDrives Specifies additional drive letters that should be available to the application at runtime Virtual drives can help solve issues in which applications rely on hard coded paths to specific drive letters which may or may not be available on the client PCs you are distributing to For example some legacy applications may be designed to expect that the D drive is a CDROM and that various data files will be available at D media Virtual drives are visible only to applications running in the virtual environment they do not have any impact on the real Windows environment Isolation modes Chapter 4 Isolation Modes on page 61 for virtual drives will be inherited from the pr
167. names on page 21 Other virtualization solutions fail to work when applications are not installed to DOS 8 3 compatible paths and then moved to other computers For example applications like Microsoft Office has a large number of registry values that contain entries like C PROGR 1 MICROS 3 however on other computers the virtual files may actually appear to exist at C PROGRA 1 MICROS 4 and because of this various COM components fail to work at runtime Because of this other solution require you to capture applications installed to DOS 8 3 compatible paths like c OFFICE The issue is that many applications will not install or run properly when their non default path is used VMware Project North Star Thinstall elegantly eliminates the need to worry about short paths by using dynamic macro expansion for all registry and filename information At runtime VMware Project North Star Thinstall will filter registry and filename data to replace short paths with macro versions that re expand to the correct location on new computers In the scenario above registry values will automatically re adjust to point to the correct locations when the package is run on a different computer For more information see Short Pathnames on page 21 Easy Package editing amp builds VMware Project North Star Thinstall uses a directory based structure to store captured projects allowing for easy browsing search editing and modification using standard file
168. nd probing works This option requires VMware Project North Star Thinstall 3 133 or higher SandboxNetworkDrives SandboxNetworkDrives Determines if network mapped drives will have sandboxing applied By default VMware Project North Star Thinstall allows users to write directly to network mapped drives without applying sandboxing Examples This will prevent the user from writing directly to network mapped drives instead changes go to the sandbox BuildOptions SandboxNetworkDrives 1 This allows users to write directly to network mapped drives without changes going to the sandbox default BuildOptions S9andboxNetworkDrives 0 SandboxRemovableDisk SandboxRemovable Determines if removable drives will have sandboxing applied VMware Inc 112 By default VMware Project North Star Thinstall allows users to write directly to removable drives without applying sandboxing Removable disks include USB Flash and removable hard drives Examples This will prevent the user from writing directly to removable disk instead changes go to the sandbox BuildOptions SandboxRemovabLeDisk 1 This allows users to write directly to removable disks without changes going to the sandbox default BuildOptions SandboxRemovableDisk 0 StripVersionInfo StripVersionInfo Removes all version information from the source EXE when building the target application Version information in an executable can be found in the Propert
169. ndicate a real problem which you need to focus on Red Flags m Exceptions Many applications generate exceptions while they are running exceptions do not always indicate an error or fault but are generally a good indicator Exceptions have different types C NET Floating point Access Violation Data Execution Prevention etc The trace file will record the type of exception generated and the DLL which generated the exception If the application threw an exception from self generating code as is sometimes the case for NET and Java applications the trace will indicate unknown_module example trace entry for an exception Exception EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION on read of 0x10 from unknown_module 0x7c9105f8 NOTE VB6 applications throw many floating point exceptions during their normal execution you can ignore these Once you find an exception look higher in the trace file to see if you can locate the source of the exception m MSI error messages The MSI system will often kick in for applications that are not installed correctly and will try to perform self repair Unless a feature was installed using on demand install it usually indicates that there is something wrong in the environment Luckily MSI provides good indicators and error messages in the trace file before it starts self repair Search your trace file for calls to FormatMessage this will also give you important information from the MSI installer
170. nfig ini and copy it to the virtual filesystem location c program files my application config ini By putting this code in the OnFirstParentStart function it will only be called once per execution Otherwise it will be executed for every child process as well Function OnFirstParentStart TS_ORIGIN is set by VMware Project North Star Thinstall to indicate the full path to the Thinstalled EXE package Origin GetEnvironmentVariable TS_ORIGIN We want to chop off the filename from TS_ORIGIN so find the last backslash and remove everything after this LastSlash InStrRev Origin SourcePath Left Origin LastSlash VMware Inc 119 The source file to copy into the virtual environment is the package path plus config ini SourceFile SourcePath Config ini The location we want to copy to may be in a different location on different computers if the Program Files directory is mapped to a different location than c The following call will let VMware Project North Star Thinstall expand a macro to get the correct location for the local PC DestFile ExpandPath ProgramFilesDir MyAppLlication Config ini Use the FileSystemObject to check to make sure the Source file exist Set objFSO CreateObject Scripting FileSystemObject If objFSO FileExists SourceFile Then If the source file exists copy it into the virtual filesystem we are assuming the virtual directory ProgramFilesDir MyAppLication already exists in the packag
171. nly for normal users Downloading upgrades NOTE If you are a software developer and want to download new versions of your application from the Internet you should store the temporary download files in a separate filename directory until the download completes Once the download has finished you can use an atomic MoveFile operation to move the file from the temporary location to the application s directory so that the next time the application restarts it will use the newer version You must use an atomic operation because applications using MoveFile in the virtual environment may have sandboxing WriteCopy applied VMware Inc 58 Limitations VMware Project North Star Thinstall does not support 100 of applications and in some cases application functionality may be degraded Before attempting a major application it is often useful to check Thintalk https thinstall com account index php our online discussion forum to find out what experience others have had with the same application Most people only post to Thintalk when they have problems so if you don t find any information there is a good chance the application is compatible with VMware Project North Star Thinstall VMware Project North Star Thinstall engineers address many compatibility issues with each new version so it s a good idea to try out the latest version if you run into problems Some known limitations are listed below Device Drivers Applicati
172. not installed click OK to continue formare serer x s Setup has detected that Microsoft Internet Information Services IIS ether is not installec or is improperly configured on this machine Ne pesar lal eich hn ere ose Interface If you intend to install and use the VMware Management Interface you should stall and configure ITS on this machine before you install VMware Server If you wart to install the VMware Management Interface please press the Cancel button to edt then install and configure IS on this machine Once you have done so you zan run setup again and continue installing VMware Server hs Aa ea srl hance Nh tor co st R OE omc ib etching tine Co J coat VMware Inc 42 Step 5 Step 6 If the installer warns you about CD DVD autorun being enabled check the disable box When the installer reaches the Customer Information panel enter the serial number obtained earlier in the Serial Number field You may skip this step and enter the serial number later on when you want to use VMWare Server You may have to restart to complete the installation Launch the VMWare Server Console Launch the VMWare console program with the VMWare Server Console icon that was placed on the desktop Alternately use the menu Start gt All Programs gt VMWare gt VMWare Server gt VMWare Server Console In the Connect to Host dialog select the Local radio button and click Ok YMware Server Co
173. ns The BuildOptions apply to all applications and any options set in this section will be inherited by individual applications unless the application section specifically overrides these settings General Options CompressionType Controls what type of compression is used CompressionType on page 100 DisableTracing Prevents trace file generation when Log Monitor is running DisableTracing on page 101 UpgradePath Location to probe for new versions of the application UpgradePath on page 114 AddPageExecutePermission Used to fix applications that don t work in DEP environments AddPageExecutePermi on page 98 NetReLaunch Controls whether to relaunch an application from the local disk when running from a net share or removable disk NetRelaunch on page 108 AutoStartServices Determines if virtual services are automatically started when the first application starts AutoStartServices on page 98 AutoShutdownServices Determines if virtual services are automatically stopped when the last application process exits AutoShutdownServices on page 98 LogPath Controls where to store trace files when logging LogPath on page 105 VirtualDrives Specifies additional drive letters that should be available to the application at runtime VirtualDrives on page 114 Sandbox Control SandboxName Sets name of directory where sandbox is created and stored SandboxName
174. nsole Connect to Host VMware Server Console Select the VMware host that you want to connect to To access virtual machines on the local computer you are using select Local host To access virtual machines on a networked host select Remote host and enter the host name and a valid user name and password Local host Remote host Host nare 7 User narte SSSA You now should have the VMWare Server Console running with no virtual machines open Create a new virtual machine Click New Virtual Machine to bring up the New Virtual Machine Wizard Alternately use the menu File gt New gt Virtual Machine menu item Click Next Select a Typical virtual machine configuration VMware Inc 43 Click Next Select the Appropriate Configuration How would you prefer to configure your new virtual machine Select the operating system that you will be installing on the virtual machine This should be the earliest operating system that you want to run your thinstalled application on In this example Windows 2000 professional will be used This will allow a thinstalled application to run on W2K WXP W2K3 and Vista Select Microsoft Windows and Windows 2000 Professional Click Next Enter a display name and disk location for the virtual machine directory such as Win2K_Clean VMware Inc 44 Click Next Name the Virtual Machine What name would you like to use for this vittual machine Select Use
175. nsoleMode gt BOOL 1h OUT LPDWORD 1pMode 13DD50h gt A7h 001526 0a88 cmd exe 4adQbb9c gt kernel32 d11 7c81b18f GetConsoleOutputCP 001527 0a88 cmd exe 4adQbb9c lt kernel132 d11 7c81b18f GetConsoleOutputCP gt UINT 1B5h 001528 0a88 cmd exe 4adQbbad gt kernel132 d11 7c812e76 GetCPInfo CIN UINT CodePage 1B5h 001529 0a88 cmd exe 4adQbbad lt kernel32 d11 7c812e76 GetCPInfo gt BOOL 1h COUT LPCPINFO 1pCPInfo 4AD33BAOh gt struct UINT MaxCharSize 1h char 2 DefaultChar OOh char 12 LeadByte 00h OOh OOh OOh OOh OOh OOh OOh OOh OOh OOh 00h 001530 0a88 cmd exe 4ad01680 gt kernel32 d11 7c81b258 SetThreadUILanguage no prototype available 001531 0a88 cmd exe 4ad01680 lt kernel32 d11 7c81b258 SetThreadUILanguage no prototype available 001532 0a88 cmd exe 4adQ1bQd gt kernel32 d11 7c80acOf SetErrorMode IN UINT uMode 0h 001533 0a88 cmd exe 4adQ1bOd lt kernel132 d11 7c80acOf SetErrorMode gt UINT 0h 001534 0a88 cmd exe 4ad01b13 gt kernel132 d11 7c80acOf SetErrorMode IN UINT uMode 1h 001535 0a88 cmd exe 4ad01b13 lt kernel32 d11 7c80acOf SetErrorMode gt UINT 0h O 001536 0a88 cmd exe 4ad01b24 gt IMM32 DLL 7639039b GetFullPathNameW IN LPCWSTR 1pFileName 1638COh gt L IN DWORD nBufferLength 208h 001537 0a8 amp 8 amp GetFullPathNameW gt 20 buf C test cmd_test bin file_part bin 001538 0a88 cmd exe 4ad01b24 lt
176. nstall accomplishes Zero Installation by presenting a virtual environment to the running application making it appear as if all of its files registry entries environment variables COM ActivexX controls services etc have already been installed on the PC even though in reality no changes have been made The virtual environment presented to the application is a merged view of files installed by the application and files already existing on the PC For example consider a host PC which has a filesystem that looks like this Filesystem as seen by Windows Explorer S Local Disk C 5 Documents and Settings 3 Program Files H O Common Files O ComPlus Applications O Internet Explorer O Messenger microsoft Frontpage Microsoft Office creates various directories during it s installation process including C Program files Microsoft Office C Program files Microsoft Works When running a thinstalled version of Microsoft Office the application would see all of the original files on the PC plus the additional directories installed by Microsoft Office If the user used the File Open dialog he or she would see the following VMware Inc 51 Filesystem as seen by Thinstalled Office Se Local Disk C Documents and Settings O Program Files E O Common Files D ComPlus Applications O Internet Explorer O Messenger E O microsoft frontpage B Q Microsoft Office H Document Themes 12
177. nstallation to complete When in doubt use the default settings suggested by the installer Usually the installation will finish by restarting the machine Once the machine has restarted resist the temptation to use the machine or change any settings You want to preserve at least one copy of the machine just after installing VMware Inc 48 Step 9 Install VMWare Tools VMWare Tools is a set of drivers and services that allow the virtual and physical machines to interact smoothly together Select the VM gt Install VMWare tools menu to start the installation of VMWare tools This will temporarily connect a CD drive to the virtual machine with an installation CD For Windows 2000 the installer automatically launches on the virtual machine If it does not appear navigate to the new CD drive locate and launch the VMWare Tools installer something like D setup exe Accept all defaults from the installer and restart the virtual machine Once installed VMWare tools allows you to size the monitor to your liking drag drop and copy paste between the virtual machine and physical machine Step 10 Note This step is optional it will cause your virtual machine to revert back to the clean state each time it is powered off Make the hard drive Independent Nonpersistent Use the virtual machine s Start gt Log Off menu to shutdown the virtual machine Once the virtual machine has shutdown Select the VM gt Settings menu item
178. nstration Manual 8 VMware Inc Introduction The following links are useful to have VMware Inc Chapter 2 Getting Started on page 35 A quick walk thru of how to capture and build virtualized applications Features on page 10 A list of a few key features in VMware Project North Star Thinstall Flash walk thru demos How to Thinstall an Application http thinstall com demos vs_beta_intro Takes you through the process of virtualizing an application with VMware Project North Star Thinstall How to Thinstall IE based Java applets http thinstall com demos java_applet Learn how to Thinstall the Java Runtime Environment and the host PC s Internet Explorer to run web applets without installation How to Thinstall a NET 2 0 Application http thinstall com demos dnet20 Learn how to Thinstall a NET 2 0 application See how VMware Project North Star Thinstall can be used to package the NET framework 10 min Thinstalling ActivePerl http thinstall com demos perl Learn how to Thinstall ActiveState ActivePerl plus a perl script into a single EXE and have it run with a click and no installation http thinstall com thintalk VMware Project North Star Thinstall Discussion forum Find out what apps other users have tested Post your results Request features Ask general questions about VMware Project North Star Thinstall Various tips amp tricks direct from the VMware Project North Star
179. o regression testing a major cost in application deployment can be eliminated or drastically reduced Much of the cost for application deployment relates to testing new applications against other applications deployments Some other Virtualization solutions make registry and file system changes virtual to the entire system temporarily or permanently so regression testing continues to be needed and application roll outs still have the possibility for breaking other applications on the desktop Multiple simultaneous client versions VMware Project North Star Thinstall is the only virtualization technology which supports multiple concurrent running copies of the client on the same PC This means you can package Application A using VMware Project North Star Thinstall 3 066 and deploy it to 500 user desktops Later you may upgrade to VMware Project North Star Thinstall 3 500 to take advantage of some new features You can deploy a new Application B using VMware Project North Star Thinstall 3 500 without affecting previously deployed Application A This is especially critical when multiple divisions in a company want to use the technology independently and do not need to synchronize around a central version In fact VMware Project North Star Thinstall has been used to deploy application over 100 million desktops around the world through various software developers and publishers These applications will continue to operate independently of VMware Pr
180. oblem where My Pictures and My Music would be placed in sandbox instead of on host PC by default Fixed problem with registered out of process COM objects being using as in process objects Added support for executing cmd files Version 3 031 VMware Inc Fixed Installer Package for Windows Vista Generated EXE and Shortcut EXEs are smaller because we only include the first icon you can force all icons to be included RetainAlllcons on page 111 You can now specify a ico file for an application icon in addition to an EXE file You can also use NULL for no icon Icon on page 103 Optimized Registry access applications that use a lot of registry keys will start faster Fixed problem where Outlook 2003 crashes on exit 32 Fixed startup issue for Outlook XP Edition Added better support for handling application with a large number of files vftool should comfortably handle applications with 100 000 files Fix where Skype would get stuck in endless loop during connection Version 3 023 LogMonitor File Open dialog now shows trace files Fixed package ini option WorkingDirectory SetupCapture will automatically add this entry for shortcuts which specify a working directory Fixed registry bug where Skype did not work may fix some network apps as well This change required a virtual registry format change so previously deployed apps will lose their Sandbox data if you upgrade the EXE and don
181. oft Windows CurrentVersion Explorer Browser Helper Objects 139 Thinstall Virtualization Suite 3 0 140 VMware Inc Snapshot exe Typically you do not need to use snapshot exe directly it is invoked by SetupCapture This documentation is for advanced users and system integrators who are building VMware Project North Star Thinstall functionality into other platforms Command Line Usage NOTE all parameters are case insensitive snapshot CaptureFile snapshot BaseDirectory1 BaseDirectory2 BaseRegistry1 BaseRegistry2 Config ConfigFile ini snapshot Original snapshot Diff NewEnvironment snapshot OutputDirectory Config ConfigFile ini Quiet snapshot Original snapshot DiffPrint NewEnvironment snapshot Config ConfigFile ini snapshot can be used for 2 purposes saving a snapshot and creating a VMware Project North Star Thinstall project from 2 previously captured snapshots Saving a snapshot Snapshot can capture a snapshot of a computer s filesystem and registry which is then used later to create a VMware Project North Star Thinstall project If no additional parameters Snapshot will scan and save a copy of m All file information for all local drives Directories Filenames File Attributes File Sizes and File modification dates Acomplete copy of the registry trees HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and HKEY_USERS because HKCR and HKCU are subsets of HKLM and HKU there is no need to scan them Example
182. og entry 195836 438 total calls 7847975891 total cycles 2809 64 ms sprof ts_load_internal_module 764794646 cycles 273 80 ms on log entry 21753 426837866 cycles 152 81 ms on log entry 191955 408570540 cycles 146 27 ms on log entry 193969 228790905 cycles 81 91 ms on log entry 188438 224240114 cycles 80 28 ms on log entry 190209 209789307 cycles 75 11 ms on log entry 197416 200287437 cycles 71 70 ms on log entry 189394 198429210 cycles 71 04 ms on log entry 194646 190612618 cycles 68 24 ms on log entry 190812 180322247 cycles 64 56 ms on log entry 195836 94 total calls 4451728477 total cycles 1593 76 ms sprof ts_lookup_imports 544327945 cycles 194 87 ms on log entry 21758 385149968 cycles 137 89 ms on log entry 193970 187246661 cycles 67 04 ms on log entry 190210 173617241 cycles 62 16 ms on log entry 194647 173481875 cycles 62 11 ms on log entry 19065 148587579 cycles 53 20 ms on log entry 195837 133165053 cycles 47 67 ms on log entry 189395 126806624 cycles 45 40 ms on log entry 197417 125894370 cycles 45 07 ms on log entry 200296 121213253 cycles 43 40 ms on log entry 200657 34 total calls 1099873523 total cycles 393 76 ms sprof new_thread_start 561664565 cycles 201 08 ms on log entry 151922 531551734 cycles 190 30 ms on log entry 152733 1619002 cycles 0 58 ms on log entry 72875 1554448 cycles 0 56 ms on log entry 637896 1481627 cycles 0 53 ms on log entry 72881 1091972 cyc
183. oject s default isolation mode unless you specific override it as shown below If a virtual drive is setup with IsolationMode Merged any writes to that drive will fail if it does not exist on the real system VMware Inc 114 Projects created by Setup Capture Setup Capture on page 69 will automatically list virtual drive information for drives that were present at the time of capture VirtualDrives is specified as a single string which can hold information for multiple drive letters and optional parameters for those drive letters The format for VirtualDrives should look like this VirtualDriv es Drive A Serial 12345678 Type REMOVABLE Drive B Serial 9ABCDEFO Type FIXED The is used to separate drive letters and is used to separate parameters for individual drive letters Drive single character between a and z Serial 8 digit hex number Type FIXED The drive has fixed media for example a hard drive or internal flash drive REMOVABLE The drive has removable media for example a floppy drive thumb drive or flash card reader CDROM The drive is a CD ROM drive RAMDISK The drive is a RAM disk Examples The simplest usage is to specify a single virtual Drive letter by default it will be assigned a serial number and type of FIXED Build 1Drives Drive M This specifies 3 virtual drive letters X D and Z Drive X will appear to be a Removable disk with Serial number ff797828
184. oject North Star Thinstall Other Virtualization solutions only support one version of their client ona single PC at any time and since any application deploying new versions is equivalent to deploying a major service pack to all of your PCs companies can only afford to upgrade once or twice a year at a significant cost Because of VMware Project North Star s ability to support multiple concurrent client versions VMware Project North Star Thinstall has a very fast product release cycle once a month and customers can take advantage of new features immediately without impacting previously deployed applications Instant Portable Deployment USB Flash CDROM VMware Project North Star Thinstall can easily convert standard applications like Microsoft into portable applications which run from USB Flash or CDROM For USB deployment s VMware Project North Star s portable mode redirects application registry and filesystem changes intended for the host PC to files stored on the portable device Because VMware Project North Star Thinstall has no device drivers and runs in Guest Restricted user accounts you can use Thinstalled portable applications on kiosk PCs even if they are locked down and do not permit any installation Wide Platform support m Windows NT 2k XP w2k3 Vista VMware Inc 10 m Terminal Server amp Citrix Metaframe m Windows PE Preinstalled Environment m 16 and 32bit apps on 64 bit Vista amp XP m Single packag
185. ompatibility for running FlexLM and SafeDisc Version 3 010 Added initial support for virtual services Added support services based COM objects Added support for Active Directory authentication Chapter 11 Access Control using Active Directory on page 131 Fixed problem where installing an application update overwriting the original EXE may prevent the app from running again Added Icon option on package ini to allow you to specify an alternate icon Currently this is limited to pointing to an EXE but later we ll add support for ico files Fixed problems where some COM creation calls failed on Windows Vista Added status update print for tlink for large builds Turned on compression of VOS so it takes 340k on disk instead of 1MB We ve added a blog https thinstall com account index php and discussion forum http thinstall com thintalk for beta users Version 3 007 Fixed problem where some apps would crash and consume 100 CPU on exit Fixed problem where setup capture would not continue after reboot during the capture process Active Directory integration environment variables and command line arguments didn t make it into this release we are still working out a few problems and were occupied with Citrix iForum this week These will likely be in next Friday Updated documentation about controlling sandbox locations Chapter 5 Sandbox Overview on page 65 Version 3 003 VMware Inc Fixed prob
186. on however not all of the EXE files installed are meant to be used directly by users During the Setup Capture process VMware Project North Star Thinstall will look to see which Desktop and Start Menu shortcuts were created and use these links to generate VMware Project North Star Thinstall EXEs during build For example Office 2003 installs 44 different EXEs TA WISPTIS EXE S MSTORE EXE W WINWORD ExE Ipptico exe A MSOICONS EXE E dwwin exe QMISCANPST EXE P p55m ExE S o1s Exe P cagicon exe FJunbndico exe Ga MSOXMLED EXE WINWORD EXE GJouTLOOK EXE SJEXCEL EXE GJOUTLOOK EXE Imisc exe P wordicon exe SmartTagins P DW20 ExE SPFINDER EXE JPOWERPNT E mspicons exe xlicons exe F JOSE EXE Simspview Exe WMcRaPH ExE slPPTVIEW EXE Joisicon exe yow20 ExE MSOHELP EXE DFUICOM EXE f msontme ZEIPROFLWIZ EXE F opwicon exe DWTRIGZO ExE Inotepad exe CNFNOTS2 EXE F mstorpe exe F wavToasr F8jouticon exe fPJOINFOP11 ExE P verclsid exe QAMISCANOST EXE However Office 2003 only installs Start Menu entries for 13 of these 44 EXE files Most of the EXE files are probably not intended to invoked directly by the user Gl Digital Certificate for VBA Projects 8 Microsoft Clip Organizer Microsoft Office 2003 Language Settings Microsoft Office 2003 Save My Settings Wizard soft Office Tools E Microsoft Office Excel 2003 Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 3 Windows Messenge
187. on normally installs these DLLs I m a developer and my application changes every time I rebuild do need to recapture it every time No Once you have created the VMware Project North Star Thinstall project structure you can overwrite files in the project with newer versions and then rebuild the application without the capture process The process of compiling the application copying updated files and building a VMware Project North Star Thinstall EXE can be easily automated using batch files Installing VM Server When creating a VMware Project North Star Thinstall project using SetupCapture we recommend using a clean install of Windows If you don t already have a clean PC sitting around for this purpose we recommend using a product like VMWare to maintain a clean image of Windows With VMWare you can install Windows into a virtual machine one time and take a snapshot of the entire machine in its clean state no application installed Then after you have used VMware Project North Star s Setup Capture application to capture an application s install you can use VMWare to discard your changes and revert the virtual machine to a clean state where it is ready to capture a new application VMware Inc 41 Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 The guide below shows how to install and configure VMWare Server with a base clean OS As of this writing VMWare Server is available for free from VMWare MSDN subscribers
188. ons that require device drivers will not work when packaged with VMware Project North Star Thinstall unless those device drivers are natively installed on the host PC For this reason Antivirus VPN clients personal firewalls and disk volume mounting related utilities are usually not good candidates to be Thinstalled In addition applications that make their functionality available by inserting a fake or real printer driver will lose such functionality when Thinstalled Shell integration Some applications may have reduced functionality when Thinstalled because they are no longer integrated with other applications on the system For example applications that provide shell integration will lose this functionality Network visible DCOM services Because VMware Project North Star Thinstall isolates COM and DCOM from the outside world applications that install network accessible DCOM services will only be accessible on the local PC by other Thinstalled applications running in the same sandbox VMware Project North Star Thinstall supports virtual DCOM and COM on the same PC it is only network DCOM that is affected Plugins and Addins A different strategy for deploying and using Plugins and Addins Plugins and Addins on page 154 should be considered since Thinstalled applications are isolated from other components on the PC Global Hook DLLs Some applications use the API function SetWindowsHookEx to inject a DLL into all processes o
189. oobar gt INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE failed system probe C WINDOWS system32 foobar gt ffffffffh no virtual or system matches xxx FindFirstFilew C WINDOWS system32 foobar gt INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE failed FS missing in view O fs entry not found SystemSystem foobar xxx FindFirstFileW C WINDOWS foobar gt INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE failed system probe C WINDOWS foobar gt ffffffffh no virtual or system matches xxx FindFirstFileW C WINDOWS foobar gt INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE failed FS missing in view OJ fs entry not found SystemRoot foobar xxx FindFirstFilew C WINDOWS System32 Wbem foobar gt INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE failed system probe C WINDOWS System32 Wbem foobar gt ffffffffh no virtual or system matches xxx FindFirstFilew C WINDOWS System32 Wbem foobar gt INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE failed FS missing in view O fs entry not found SystemSystem wbem foobar xxx FindFirstFileW c program files subversion bin foobar gt INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE failed system probe c program files subversion bin foobar gt ffffffffh no virtual or system matches xxx FindFirstFileW c program files subversion bin foobar gt INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE failed FS missing in view O fs entry not found ProgramFilesDir subversion bin foobar fs entry not found ProgramFilesDir subversion bin xxx FindFirstFilew c Program Files Microsoft SQL Server 90 Tool
190. option can set the CWD Current Working Directory for individual applications The CWD setting is applied before the application starts The CWD value does not need to exist on the system Example Set s the current working directory to C Program Files My Application Application exe WorkingDirectory ProgramFilesDir My Application 116 VMware Inc Scripting Scripting allows you to execute custom code before starting an application packaged with VMware Project North Star Thinstall or after an application exits Callback functions Callback functions on page 117 allow you to specify when blocks of code will execute API functions Chapter 10 API functions on page 121 allow you to execute VMware Project North Star Thinstall specific functions and interact with the VMware Project North Star Thinstall runtime Q How do add scripts to my application A Create a ansi text file with the vbs file extension in the root project directory for an application i e the same directory where package ini is located During the build process VMware Project North Star Thinstall will add all of the script files to your EXE file and then at runtime it will execute each of these script files Q My script is executing too many times how can I execute it only once A Many applications will create child processes and scripts will execute for child process as well To execute code only in the main parent process use
191. ory Fixed installer to support NT4 Fixed registry handle leak Support command line arguments for 16bit apps Fixed problem where some directories were not visible to 16bit apps as 8 3 paths Some fixes for Outlook 2007 on vista Fixed issue where fonts registered during install may not be visible Resolves unicode issue with registry values and subkeys Improved support for msi installer service Version 3 111 June 6 2007 Fixed problem where deleting system file using a shortname will cause a subsequent create operation to fail Fixed issue where Could net verify license message box appears for some child processes Fix for Autodesk DWG Trueview 2007 Version 3 104 May 23 2007 VMware Inc Added Sandbox Merge Utility sbmerge on page 85 allows you to merge sandbox modification back into a project Fixed issue with Photoshop CS3 may fix some other adobe products Experimental support for Win3 1 16 bit applications full support with 3 2 Fixed out of process COM issues MSI Installer service is disabled for this release we ll have better support in the next release Fixed problem where logging would lock up on Vista Fixed Thread local storage problem Fixed issues with SQL Express 2005 29 Version 3 085 May 3 2007 m Fixed issues with MSDE m Fixed problem with launching Outlook control panel m Fixed problem where there is a 20 second pause when services do not startup m Fixed problem where ini files may be
192. p ODh QAh 000825 0a88 cmd exe 4ad069d1 gt ADVAPI32 d11 77dd038f FormatMessageW IN DWORD dwFlags 1800h IN LPCVOID LpSource Oh IN DWORD dwMessageId 2334h IN DWORD dwLanguageId 0h IN DWORD nSize 2000h IN Arguments 13DD40h gt 000826 0a88 FormatMessageW FORMAT_MESSAGE_FROM_HMODULE FORMAT_MESSAGE_FROM_SYSTEM Line_width unlimited lpSource 0x0 dwMessageId 0x2334 dwLanguageId 0x0 gt 0x29 C Copyright 1985 2001 Microsoft Corp 000827 0a88 cmd exe 4ad069d1 lt ADVAPI32 dll 77dd038f FormatMessageW gt DWORD 29h COUT LPWSTR lpBuffer 4AD38BAOh gt L C Copyright 1985 2001 Microsoft Corp ODh OAh 000828 0a88 cmd exe 4ad08d01 gt kernel32 d11 7c835484 WriteConsoleW IN HANDLE hConsoleOutput 7h IN const lpBuffer 4AD38BAOh IN DWORD nNumberOfCharsToWrite 29h IN LPVOID lpReserved 0h 000829 0a88 cmd exe 4ad08d01 lt kernel32 dll 7c835484 WriteConsoleW gt BOOL 1h OUT LPDWORD lpNumberOfCharsWritten 13DD24h gt 29h 000830 0a88 cmd exe 4ad048f4 gt msctfime ime 755c039b GetModuleHandlew IN LPCWSTR lpModuleName 4AD0498Ch gt L KERNEL32 DLL 000831 0a88 GetModuleHandleW KERNEL32 DLL gt 7c800000 000832 0a88 cmd exe 4ad048f4 lt msctfime ime 755c039b GetModuleHandleW gt HMODULE 7c800000h 000833 0a88 cmd exe 4ad04907 gt AcGenral DLL 6f880364 GetProcAddress IN HMODULE hModule 7c800000h IN LPCSTR lpProcName 4AD04980h gt CopyFileExW 000834 0a88 GetProcAddress mod 7c800000 C WINDOWS system32 kernel32
193. pecific registry values or file system locations For default projects created by setup capture some registry subtrees and directories will be setup with full isolation Chapter 4 Isolation Modes on page 61 Full Isolation prevents the application from seeing host PC registry keys or files so the application may not be see plugins that exist on the host PC If you are not sure which registry subtrees or directories are used to locate and load plugins VMware Project North Star Thinstall s Log Monitor Log Monitor on page 74 can help you track down that information By changing the isolation mode from full to writecopy or merged you enable the application to see and load plugins from the host PC Application Host Registry amp File system Thinstall package Scenario want a system installed version of an application to load plugins from a Thinstalled package without installation This scenario is can be achieved by capturing the install of a plugin by itself and building a cmd exe package The virtualized cmd exe can then be used to launch a system installed application The system installed application will run inside of the virtualized environment and see and load your virtualized plugins You can also launch the system installed application automatically by running cmd exe c c myapp exe Cmd exe Host Registry amp PAS Thinstall package Large Packages Windows Shell Limitations for disp
194. plication See Application Updates on page 153 Q How do create a file type association and shortcut A Using the ThinReg utility ThinReg on page 86 Q Do Thinstalled applications work on my Citrix server A Yes VMware Project North Star Thinstall runs on Citrix and Terminal Server exactly the same single user Desktop environments Q What does the sandbox do and how do I control the sandbox location A See the help topic Chapter 5 Sandbox Overview on page 65 Q What are isolation modes and how do I control them A Isolation modes allow you to control what an application can read and write on the local PC Read isolation can allow system installed and virtual VMware Project North Star Thinstall packages to run simultaneously without conflicting with each other Write isolation allows VMware Project North Star Thinstall packages to believe they have global write permissions while they really only modify the sandbox directory More information about isolation modes can be found here Understanding Isolation Modes on page 62 Q Does VMware Project North Star Thinstall decompress package data to disk when it runs the first time How does compression work and what is the penalty VMware Project North Star Thinstall uses block based streaming Block based Streaming on page 53 to decompress file data from disk directly into memory a block at a time as requested by the application Because
195. pp exe Icon ProgramFilesDir myapp app2 exe 1 VMware Inc 103 Specify application icon using a ico file myapp exe Source ProgramFiLesDir myapp app exe Icon ProgramFilesDir myap myicon ico See also RetainAlllcons on page 111 NOTE The Windows Shell has limitations regarding display of icons for large EXE files an easy work around can be found here Large Packages on page 155 InventoryName InventoryName Optional string that is used for package indentification by inventory control systems Example usage InventoryName is typically a version independent string that tracks a specific resource of interest to inventory scanning applications BuildOptions InventoryName Microsoft Office 2003 InventoryName is meant to be a version independent string that can be used to track a VMware Project North Star Thinstall package with inventory scanning software When deploying new versions of an application it may be desirable to change the SandboxName so that the new version will have isolated user settings however InventoryName can be left constant across versions of the same application InventoryName is not used by VMware Project North Star Thinstall during build or execution lsolatedMemoryObjects IsolatedMemoryObjects List specific shared memory objects to isolate from other applications Shared memory objects are created by applications using CreateFileMapping and OpenFileMapping Shared memo
196. pplications and system installed applications By default all registry writes from Thinstalled applications will be saved in an isolated sandbox and the system remains unchanged This can be configured Networking amp Sockets Thinstalled applications have full normal access to networking functionality they can bind to local ports and make remote connections assuming the user has access permissions to do these operations normally Shared memory Named Pipes Thinstalled applications can interact with other applications on the system using shared memory named pipes mutexs and semaphores VMware Project North Star Thinstall has the ability to isolate shared memory objects and synchronization objects so they are not visible to other applications and other applications objects are not visible to your Thinstalled application COM DCOM and Out of process COM Thinstalled applications can create COM controls both from the virtual environment and the system If the system has a COM control installed as out of process COM these controls will be executed as virtual processes when used by a Thinstalled application enabling you to control modifications made by these applications COM objects provided by virtualized applications will not be visible to other applications on the system unless the application is running in the same virtual environment It is possible to execute system applications inside of virtual environments so they can access CO
197. r Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2033 fi Microsoft Office W Microsoft Office Word 2003 A Outlock Express s Remote Assistance Windows Media Player Microsoft Office Application Recovery Microsoft Office Document Imaging 0g OFF 0 Turn OFF Computer a Microsoft Office Document Scanning E Microsoft Office Picture Manager For a standard capture of Office 2003 VMware Project North Star Thinstall generates a package ini which contains entries to generate EXEs for only the shortcuts installed by Office like this EXCEL EXE Source ProgramFilesDir Microsoft Office OFFICE11 EXCEL EXE ReadOn1lyData bin Package ro tvr OUTLOOK EXE Source ProgramFiLlesDir Microsoft Office OFFICE11 OUTLOOK EXE Shortcut EXCEL EXE POWERPNT EXE Source ProgramFilesDir Microsoft Office OFFICE11 POWERPNT EXE Shortcut EXCEL EXE WINWORD EXE Source ProgramFiLlesDir Microsoft Office OFFICE11 WINWORD EXE Shortcut EXCEL EXE NOTE For each entry in the package file there is a Source option which specifies which application will be launched when building the package In this case EXCEL EXE is set up to host all of the package file registry data by using ReadOnlyData while all the other EXE files simply reference the package data from EXCEL EXE using Shortcut VMware Inc 72 When building this packaging using build bat you ll see the following appear in your bin directory
198. rProcess on page 128 Clean up fso DeleteFile RegFilLeName End Function VMware Inc 120 API functions AddForcedVirtualLoadPath Forced DLLs located outside the package to be loaded as virtual DLLs AddForcedVirtualLoadPath on page 121 ExitProcess Immediately quits the current process ExitProcess on page 122 ExpandPath Expands a path which is in Macro format ExpandPath on page 122 ExecuteExternalProcess Executes a command on the system outside of the virtual environment ExecuteExternalProcess on page 123 ExecuteVirtualProcess Executes a command inside of the virtual environment ExecuteVirtualProcess on page 123 GetFileVersionValue Returns version information from a DLL or EXE GetFileVersion Value on page 124 GetCommandLine Returns the full commandline and parameters passed to the current process GetCommandLine on page 125 GetCurrentProcessName Returns the full path name of the current process inside the virtual environment GetCurrentProcessName on page 125 GetOSVersion Returns a description of the current Windows OS version GetOSVersion on page 125 GetEnvironmentVariable Retrieves a system environment variable GetEnvironmentVariable on page 126 RemoveSandboxOnExit Tells VMware Project North Star Thinstall to delete the sandbox directory when the last process exits RemoveSandboxOnExit on page 127 SetEnvironmen
199. rd applications to VMware Project North Star Thinstall projects which can then be built into Thinstalled EXEs Before you use Setup Capture a few planning steps to consider 1 You should capture applications using a clean install on Windows Using a Clean PC for Capturing on page 41 NOTE It s okay to install VMware Project North Star Thinstall on your clean machine for capturing purposes it will not affect the snapshots VMware Inc 69 2 During installation if given the option to install Shortcuts by the installer select Yes Step 3 Install the target application and configure it as you want the user see it on page 71 3 If your machine has background services running like anti virus it s a good a idea to stop them If background applications create files or write registry values during the capture process these changes will be included in the capture Having extra data in a package generally does not cause a problem for applications but it can increase the package size Because Thinstalled applications are isolated from the system and VMware Project North Star Thinstall does not actually modify the registry and file system at runtime having extra data in a package will not harm a system as with MSI based deployment systems 4 Ifthe application requires a reboot during installation Setup Capture will automatically continue the capture process Reboot continue on page 73 Step 1 Select which drive
200. re Setup Capture now has a space in the filename for better readability Version 3 076 m Fixed program in 3 066 where virtual file deletes would not work when located in shell folders m Fixed issue where Textpad 5 0 showed plus signs for normal files m Setup Capture amp log monitor use XP manifest and look nicer on XP m Update for CreateProcess to set correct error code on failure m Fixed issues with DWG Trueview 2007 m Fixed installer error Oxabba0205 which resulted if old files were left behind Version 3 070 m Added InventoryName to package ini Chapter 8 Package ini format on page 95 this will be used by desktop management and license control systems Default value is the same as the sandbox name VMware Inc 30 Added ChildProcessEnvironmentDefault and ChildProcessEnvironmentExceptions to package ini allowing you to control what happens to child processes run as system or virtual Vregtool updated to support exporting tvr registry files back to text format Virtual registry text files can also mark registry subkeys and values as being deleted Environment variable changes were accidently being excluded from snapshots in previous builds this is now fixed Version 3 067 Mar 13 2007 Fixed an issue where application may lock up if application threads do not quit and a force kill occurs Fixed an issue where logging will lock up if an application probes a registry key with more than 128K of data Version
201. really got it this time Fixed problem where winamp would not remember ini setting changes if an ini was included in the original package Added Work around for running on systems with TestComplete installed TC has a bug that will sporadically hang processes with multiple threads on shutdown Added some COM related logging Fixed problem with SafeCast work around that could crash File Open dialog on Windows 2000 Version 3 017 Fixed problem where File Open dialog may crash from 3 015 Fixed problem for Trillian Fixed problem where some captured MSI packages on w2k did not work on xp outlook 2003 you will need to recapture the package to get this fixed Version 3 015 VMware Inc SetupCapture will now include environment variables in the capture the PATH variable is treated special Chapter 12 Application PATH and Environment Variables on page 133 Fixed bug where many NET 2 0 would not work there are not any known NET 2 0 issues now Fixed bug in services which were causing some apps built with 3 010 to crash 33 Improved services support DeleteService EnumServices EnumDependentServices etc CreateProcess now supports bat files Improved out of process COM for Vista Fixed problem where registry last modified time stamps may return invalid dates Fixed OpenFile problem for Adobe Acrobat 4 0 Log monitor will now exclude more entries from the potential errors section which are not actually errors Added c
202. rt Pathnames 21 Virtual Services 24 Change Log 26 2 Getting Started 35 Using a Clean PC for Capturing 41 Installing VM Server 41 3 How VMware Project North Star Thinstall Works 51 Block based Streaming 53 Supported OSs amp Apps 55 Desktop Integration 56 Upgrading applications 57 Limitations 59 4 Isolation Modes 61 Understanding Isolation Modes 62 5 Sandbox Overview 65 Sandbox Structure 67 6 Utilities and Automation Tools 69 Setup Capture 69 Package ini generation 72 Reboot continue 73 Log Monitor 74 Locating Errors 75 Log Format 76 Forensics Example 80 sbmerge 85 ThinReg 86 snapshot 87 dll dump 88 VREGTool 89 TLink 91 VMware Inc Thinstall Virtualization Suite 3 0 7 MSI Generation 93 8 Package ini format 95 AccessDeniedMsg 97 AddPageExecutePermi 98 AutoShutdownServices 98 AutoStartServices 98 BlockSize 99 ChildProcessEnvironme 99 ChildProcessEnvironme 99 CommandLine 100 CompressionType 100 DirectorylsolationMode 101 DisableTracing 101 Disabled 102 ExcludePattern 102 ExternalCOMObjects 102 ExternalDLLs 103 Icon 103 InventoryName 104 IsolatedMemoryObjects 104 IsolatedSynchronizatio 105 LogPath 105 MSIDefaultInstallAllUsers 105 MSIFilename 106 MSIInstallDirectory 106 MSIManufacturer 107 MSIProductCode 107 MSIProductVersion 107 MSIRequireElevatedPri 108 MslIUpgradeCode 108 NetRelaunch 108 NoRelocation 109 RegistrylsolationMode 109 PermittedGroups 110 Reser
203. rt and ending snapshot snapshot c start snapshot echo Please install application and press ENTER when installation is complete pause snapshot C end snapshot s napshot C start snapshot SuggestProject c end snapshot c SuggestedProject ini VMware Inc 87 rem at this point a GUI app can look at SuggestedProject and ask the user what EXEs they want to be accessible from package ini snapshot C SuggestedProject ini GenerateProject c ProjectLocation del C start snapshot del C end snapshot del C SuggestedProject ini dil_dump C Program Files Thinstall VS gt d11_dump exe Usage dll_dump ADDRESS show DLL amp process which has this address loaded dll_dump SUBSTRING shows DLLs loaded by VMware Project North Star Thinstall processes where name matches SUBSTRING dll_dump shows DLLs loaded by all VMware Project North Star Thinstall processes dll_dump fp show DLL full path not just filenames dll_dump ADDRESS SUBSTRING only show processes matching SUBSTRING where ADDRESS is loaded One of the most useful purposes for d11_dump is to list all running Thinstalled applications on a PC If you use a spy program like Process Explorer on a Thinstalled app you will not see DLLs which are loaded by VMware Project North Star Thinstall since they have been virtualized and Windows does not really know they exist Likewise if you attach a debugger to a running VMware Project North Star Thinstall process the debu
204. rver no longer point to the correct location m MSI is executed to reinstall the application even though it was fully installed VMware Inc 22 msi d11 performs an integrity check for all msi installed components requested by the application If msi dll notices a DLL or data file is not located at the same location as it was originally installed to it will kick off a reinstall procedure to try to correct the problem m Failure to execute child processes Many child process applications are executed using registry values that point to short pathnames If the values do not point to the correct location the child process will fail to launch This will often render the application unusable Application fails to load Applications may crash or fail to load because the cannot locate there installation path or shared DLL paths using registry data m Application complains of missing data files The application may display error messages relating to missing files because it can no longer locate a file using a short pathname pointer from the registry How VMware Project North Star Thinstall solves short pathname Migration VMware Project North Star Thinstall uses a combination of dynamic registry data expansion and virtual short pathnames to enable applications to instantly migrate from one PC to another When an application writes a value to the registry VMware Project North Star Thinstall will scan the data to see if it references a s
205. rwise specified 2 Attributes ini in this case the block size overrides the block size for the present directory and all subdirectories In the manner you can use different block sizes for different directories within a single project Example The default block size is 64k Compression BlockSize 64k other block size options follow BlockSize 128k BlockSize 256k BlockSize 512k BlockSize 1M See also CompressionType on page 100 ChildProcessEnvironme ChildProcessEnvironmentExceptions Enable exceptions to the default child execution policy See ChildProcessEnvironme on page 99 for usage and example ChildProcessEnvironme ChildProcessEnvironmentDefault Determines if child processes are run in the virtual environment by default VMware Project North Star Thinstall s default behavior is to create all child processes inside the virtual environment this option allows you to change VMware Project North Star Thinstall s behavior so that new child processes are created outside of the virtual environment If there are specific processes that don t match the default you can use ChildProcessEnvironmentExceptions ChildProcessEnvironme on page 99 to change the execution behavior for subsets of applications You can also use the Script API function ExecuteExternalProcess ExecuteExternalProcess on page 123 and ExecuteVirtualProcess ExecuteVirtualProcess on page 123 to
206. ry objects can be named or anonymous when the objects are named they will be visible to other applications running in the same user account Sometimes it is desirable to isolate shared memory objects so that virtual applications cannot see system objects and vice versa By default VMware Project North Star Thinstall will only isolate shared memory objects used by embedded Internet Explorer instances because there is a known conflict with between explorer exe and iexplore exe when they map sandboxed files You can use this option to isolate additional named shared memory objects so they are visible only to other virtual applications using the same sandbox IsoaltedMemoryObjects accepts a list of entries that are separated using the character Each entry can have wildcard characters and to match variable patterns Example Isolate two shared memory objects matching anything with outlook in the name and one matching exactly My Shared Object BuildOptions IsolatedMemoryObjects outLook My Shared Object See Also IsolatedSynchronizatio on page 105 This option requires VMware Project North Star Thinstall 3 133 or higher VMware Inc 104 lsolatedSynchronizatio IsolatedSynchronizationObjects List specific synchronization objects to isolation from other applications Windows has several different named Synchronization objects m Mutex accessed using OpenMutex amp CreateMutex m Semaphore access
207. s and registry hives to scan VMware Project North Star Setup Capture Version 3 345 E 7 T Setup Capture E vmw Q r O Filesystem base directories to scan Root P Volume Label li File system cA IBM_PRELOAD NTFS O es FAT Registry hives to scan HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE HKEY_USERS HKEY_CURREN Pre Install Scan gt gt Step 2 Scan the machine to create an initial snapshot VMware Project North Star Setup Capture Version 3 345 E Setup Capture E vmware Scan may take several minutes to complete For best and fastest results use a clean install of Windows gt If you do not use a clean Windows install to capture your application install some files and registry keys previously installed may not be captured and the resulting project may not run correctly on other computers Saving snapshot c Documents and Settings Leigh Chang Local SettingssApplication Data Mozilla Fi Cache VMware Inc 70 Step 3 Install the target application and configure it as you want the user see it m If you execute the application after the installation completes the capture will include per user data settings HKEY_CURRENT_USER Documents amp Settings When a user executes the application he or she will inherit these settings but any additional changes made by the application at runtime will be saved to a user specific sandbox m You can install required dependencies like NET ODBC connectio
208. s binn foobar gt INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE failed system probe c Program Files Microsoft SQL Server 90 Tools binn foobar gt fffffFFFh no virtual or system matches xxx FindFirstFilew c Program Files Microsoft SQL Server 90 Tools binn foobar gt INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE failed FS missing in view O fs entry not found ProgramFilesDir Microsoft SQL Server 90 Tools binn foobar fs entry not found ProgramFilesDir Microsoft SQL Server 90 Tools binn xxx FindFirstFilewW c bin foobar gt INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE failed system probe c bin foobar gt ffffffffh no virtual or system matches xxx FindFirstFilewW c bin foobar gt INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE failed FS missing in view OJ fs entry not found drive_c bin foobar fs entry not found drive_c bin xxx FindFirstFilew C Program Files Microsoft Visual Studio Common Tools WinNT foobar gt INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE failed system probe C Program Files Microsoft Visual Studio Common Tools WinNT foobar gt ffffffffh no virtual or system matches xxx FindFirstFilew C Program Files Microsoft Visual Studio Common Tools WinNT foobar gt INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE failed FS missing in view O fs entry not found ProgramFilesDir Microsoft Visual Studio Common Tools WinNT foobar fs entry not found ProgramFilesDir Microsoft Visual Studio Common Tools WinNT xxx FindFirstFilew C Program Files Microsoft Visual Studio Common M
209. s streaming Q If have a large package will it take a long time to load over a network A No not necessarily The size of the package has no effect on the startup time of an application If you add an extra 20GB file to your package which is not used at runtime it will load at the same speed as before If the application opens and reads 32k of data from the 20GB file only 32kb of data is sent across the wire Q There is no client and no server how is streaming possible A The client is built into the EXE package but it is very small 400k so the load time of the client across a network is only a few milliseconds Once the client is loaded into memory on the client PC it decides which blocks of data are further required from the server and reads them based on application activity When compressed VMware Project North Star Thinstall EXEs are placed on a network share or USB flash the contents from the EXE file will automatically stream to client PCs in a block based fashion As the application request specific parts of data files this information is read in the compressed format over the network using the standard windows file sharing protocol After the data has been received on the client PC data is decompressed directly into memory and provided to the application Because no data needs to written to disk during the entire process the process is very fast and client PCs need only minimal disk space to host VMware Inc
210. second case the manifest file for app exe would be called app exe manifest VMware Inc 18 The manifest resolution algorithm is fairly complex and I won t get into all the details here but it can include among other things searching based on the user s locale i e Look for French German version first As well to eliminate security disasters like what happened with gdiplus d11 SxS DLLs have a force upgrade mechanism implemented as separate security policy files also XML files This mechanism allows Microsoft to override version number request by applications in the case where some gaping security hole is discovered ina shared library that effects thousands of applications For example an application manifest may say I want version 1 0 0 0 of xyz dll but Microsoft can push a policy file update that says redirect all request of version 1 0 0 0 to 1 0 0 5 VMware Project North Star Thinstall has built in support for SxS and manifest policy file handling so if you capture the installation of an application that installs SxS dlls it works perfectly on every platform with zero installation If the application normally installs DLLs to c windows winsxs this will be reflected in the capture and show up in your project under systemroot winsxs At runtime VMware Project North Star Thinstall will examine the application s manifest file from the resource section or separate manifest virtual file and determ
211. ses it may be desirable to wipe the slate clean each time the application exits This option instructs VMware Project North Star Thinstall to delete the sandbox directory when the application exits If the application creates child processes the sandbox will not be deleted until all child processes exit In some cases applications may leave children behind by design this can stop the clean up operation from occurring For example Office 2003 leaves behind a process called ctfmon exe It may be necessary to use a script to kill ctfmon exe and similar children in order to force this cleanup operation to occur NOTE You can also decide dynamically at runtime whether to delete the sandbox on exit by using the Script API function RemoveSandboxOnExit RemoveSandboxOnExit on page 127 Examples This instructs VMware Project North Star Thinstall to delete the sandbox when the application exits BuildOptions RemoveSandboxOnExit 1 This instructs VMware Project North Star Thinstall to leave sandbox behind when the application exits default BuildOptions RemoveSandboxOnExit 0 SandboxName SandboxName Sets the name of directory where the sandbox is created and stored Example BuildOptions SandboxName My Application 1 0 VMware Inc 111 The SandboxName is used when creating a new Sandbox for the example above the default sandbox path would be C Documents and Settings USERNAME Application Data Thinstal
212. sh this SetupCapture uses a special value called VirtualPath to store the portions of the PATH variable that changed during setup capture This VirtualPath will be prepended to the local system PATH during program execution VMware Inc 134 Tips and Tricks Visit our beta blog for more tips and tricks http thinstall com blog Use volume license keys where available this usually eliminates problems where apps refuse to run ona machine different from the packaging machine Applications that use with per machine network activation may not work when run captured on one machine and run on a different machine When packaging applications that bind to specific host don t run application prior to snap shot finalization this will allow the application to activate on each individual desktop Some applications may store hard coded path information in data files and may operate incorrectly when roaming to anew computer Packaging NET Applications Precaptured NET Because the capture process can be time consuming and requires several steps we have made available pre captured versions of the NET Framework This simple guide is targeted towards software developers and IT Admins who want to deploy a NET application without installing the NET Framework What you can do with the pre captured versions of the NET Framework m You can build a cmd exe application which is capable of running NET applications from the host PC even
213. sn t matter what filename you use all vbs files will be added to the package at build time and run 2 Rebuild the application bat example m This script will execute an external bat file from a network share inside of the virtual environment m The bat file can make modifications to the virtual environment by copying files deleting files or apply registry changes using regedit s regfile reg m We need to make sure we only execute this for the first parent process otherwise each copy of cmd exe will execute the script and we ll have infinite recursion Function OnFirstParentStart Set Shell CreateObject Wscript ShelL Shell Run jcdesk2 test test bat End Function timeout example This script will prevent an application from being used after the date March 20 2007 NOTE This check is performed on the parent process startup as well as any child process startup ExpirationDate CDate 03 20 07 if Date gt ExpirationDate then msgbox This application has expired please contact Administrator ExitProcess 0 VMware Inc 118 end if Registry Modify This example modifies the virtual registry at runtime so that an external ODBC driver can be loaded from the same directory where the package EXE is located Get path to package EXE files Origin GetEnvironmentVariable TS_ORIGIN Find last slash in path and grab just the characters before this LastSlash InStrRev Origin SourcePath Left Origin La
214. specific files or directories from a project determined dynamically at build time The list of patterns is specified with a comma separator where matches 0 or more following characters and matches exactly one character similar to the DOS dir command Unlike DOS dir command syntax wild characters can be applied to both directories names and filenames ExcludePattern can be specified in two places 1 Package ini file in this case the pattern exclusion will apply to the entire directory structure 2 Attributes ini in this case the pattern exclusion will be added to the current list of exclusions and apply only to this directory and sub directories In this manner you can have different exclusion list for different directories in your project Example FileList Exclude any path that ends with bak or msi ExcLudePattern bak msi Exclude any directories called svn or cvs and all subdirectories NOTE because of starting character this pattern will not match filenames or directories that contain svn or cvs in the middle of their string ExcLudePattern svn cvs ExternalCOMObjects ExternalCOMObjects Controls whether a specific COM object CLSID will be created by VMware Project North Star Thinstall or by Windows By default VMware Project North Star Thinstall creates all COM objects inside of the virtual environment instead of Windows COM supports out of process EXE servers as well as
215. ssociated settings to migrate across different versions of Windows Instant Side by Side DLL migration Windows XP Side by Side DLLs are migrated to Windows Vista Side by Side DLLs automatically depending on the platform you are running on If you capture an application that uses SxS DLLs on NT 2k XP w2k3 it will install SxS DLLs to a path location differently than when installed on Vista VMware Project North Star Thinstall dynamically moves these SxS during the application startup if the platform has changed Using VMware Project North Star Thinstall s Dynamic Path relocation you can create one package that works on all platforms Filesystem shell folder remapping Many applications will access files using Shell folder locations for example applications typically call GetWindowsDirectory to obtain the path to c windows instead of using a hard coded path On different versions of Windows the system directory will be located in different locations For example c winnt is used for NT and Windows 2000 by default as well the user can select an alternate directory during installation of Windows Applications will also typically use shfolder d11 to obtain the path various shell folder locations like c program files and c documents and settings username For a complete list of shell folder paths see Folder Macros on page 148 An example is Macromedia flash which installs to c windows system32 macromed flash At runtime flash
216. st Compression for slow build time good compression ratio and fast load time Compression CompressionType Fast Small Compression for medium build time great compression ratio but slow load time Compression CompressionType Smal11 See Also BlockSize on page 99 DirectorylsolationMode DirectoryIsolationMode Controls default isolation mode for directories in package DirectoryIsolationMode controls the default isolation mode for the package This setting will apply to any directories that do not have an explicitly specified setting For example consider a package that looks like the following ThinstallProject Package ini ProgramFilesDir MyApp Attributes ini Here Package ini sets the default isolation mode for the project but individual Attributes ini may change the isolation mode for specific directories and their children Any directories that have not been specified such as C myfolder will inherit the isolation mode from the package ini file Directories that are created under C Program Files myapp will inherit the isolation mode from the Attributes ini file Examples WriteCopy isolation allows the application to read from the host PC but not write to it default Isolation DirectoryIsolationMode writeCopy Merged isolation allows the application to write to any location on the PC except where the package specifies otherwise Isolation DirectoryIsolationMode Merged DisableTracing D
217. stSlash Form a new path to the ODBC DLL file located outside of the package DriverPath SourcePath tsodbc32 d11 Now modify the virtual registry so that it points to this location this will cause the application to load the DLL from an external location Set WSHShell CreateObject Wscript Shell WSHShell Regwrite HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE ODBC ODBCINST INI Transoft ODBC Driver Driver DriverPath reg example This script will import the registry values from an external reg file into the virtual registry at runtime Function OnFirstParentStart ExecuteVirtualProcess regedit s c tmp somereg reg End Function Stopping Service This script will stop a virtual or real service when the main application quits Function OnFirstParentExit Set WshShell CreateObject WScript Shell WshShell Run net stop iPod Service End Function copyfile example The following scripts demonstrates how you can copy a configuration file located in the same directory as your Thinstalled EXE into the virtual filesystem each time the application starts one use for this is to allow you to have an external configuration file which is easy to edit after deployment because the copy occurs each time you run the application any edits to the external version will be reflected in the virtual version For example if your Thinstalled EXE is running from server share myapp exe this script will look fora config file located at server share co
218. stall s Sandbox merge utility Approach 3 Apply patches to already captured project If you only need to update a small set of specific files or registry keys you can simply replace the files in your captured project This approach is well suited for software developers who can integrate VMware Project North Star Thinstall builds into their normal make process Plugins and Addins Many application have the ability to install plugins or load external components VMware Project North Star Thinstall provides flexibility on plugins can be packaged together or separately from an application Scenario want to deploy a virtualized application plus Add Ins in a single package This scenario is the simplest To create a single Thinstalled application which contains both the main application and it s Add in s simply install the add in s at the same time as the application during the capture process The virtualized application will be able to load and use the add in s as if they were installed on the host PC Application Thinstall package 154 VMware Inc Chapter 17 Frequently Asked Questions Scenario want to have a virtualized application load plugins from the host PC This scenario may require specific knowledge on how the application works and tweaks to the package to allow the virtualized application to see plugins installed on the host PC For example it is common for applications to load plugins based on s
219. system tools like explorer and Windows search There are not complicated new user interfaces to learn If you know how to browse your file system you know how to edit VMware Project North Star Thinstall projects Because VMware Project North Star Thinstall projects are simply directory with no absolute path information they can be easily copied from computer to computer or be hosted and compiled directly from network shares The VMware Project North Star Thinstall build process is similar to a compiler amp linker and should be familiar to most IT and development shops Text based projects and settings integrate with source control systems Except for application files which are stored as normal binaries all VMware Project North Star Thinstall files and settings are stored as simple ini files so VMware Project North Star Thinstall projects can be managed using source control technologies like SourceSafe CVS and Perforce Source control systems can easily merge compare and revert changes to VMware Project North Star Thinstall projects with no special steps Another advantage of the ini file format is that it is simple to read and modify from any programming language Compression VMware Project North Star Thinstall is the only solution to provide block based streaming decompression Block based Streaming on page 53 directly into memory which means compressed data does not need to be first decompressed to disk m You can
220. t PC files registry keys from the application when the host PC files are located in the same directories subkeys created by the application s installer VMware Project North Star Thinstall calls this Full Isolation Chapter 4 Isolation Modes on page 61 for directories and subkeys that have Full Isolation the application will not be aware of any of the host PC s files that might exist and the application sees only virtual files and subkeys at fully isolated locations Problem 2 Application fails because it was not designed or tested for multi user environments and expects it can modify files and keys without impacting other users Problem 3 Application fails because it expects write permission to global locations and was not designed for locked down desktop environments found in corporate environments or Windows Vista VMware Inc 62 Solution VMware Project North Star Thinstall makes copies of registry keys and files written by the application and performs all the modification in a user specific sandbox VMware Project North Star Thinstall calls this WriteCopy Isolation Chapter 4 Isolation Modes on page 61 for directories and subkeys that have WriteCopy isolation the application can see both the host PC s files and virtual files however all write operations will convert host PC files into virtual files in the sandbox VMware Project North Star Thinstall has 3 different isolation modes Chapter 4 Isolation
221. t names with an extension Timeout sooner on service implemented COM object creation Exclude Thinstall directory from SetupCapture so we won t be including snapshot files in the package Fixed problem with SxS manifests on Vista Fixed problem where Crystal Reports would display an error message Can t find module Improve support for editing of OLE embedded objects Fixed problem with memory mapped files which caused Autodesk Revit 2008 to crash during startup Have thinreg remove intermediate directories on uninstall Fixed problem where captured files on extra drives may not be visible on other machines Fixed problem where permission is denied during registry snapshot Prevent unnecessary copying of exe files to the sandbox by ShellExecute Make tlink search its own directory for thinreg exe when generating msi files Add support for REG_QWORD in the build tools Enable window theming by apps which use SetWindowsHookex for this Added documentation for BlockSize BlockSize on page 99 and ExcludePattern ExcludePattern on page 102 Version 3 300 Oct 30 2007 VMware Inc Move BuildCache to local appdata so it won t be copied on login logout for roaming profiles Fix launching of external document viewers from Outlook Added SetFileSystemIsolation SetFileSystemIsolation on page 127 and SetRegistrylsolation SetRegistrylsolation on page 128 API functions Added ReserveExtraAddressSpace option ReserveExtraA
222. tVariable Sets an environment variable for the current process changes are inherited to child processes SetEnvironmentVariable on page 127 SetFileSystemIsolation Sets the isolation mode of a directory SetFileSystemIsolation on page 127 SetRegistryIsolation Sets the isolation mode of a registry key SetRegistrylIsolation on page 128 WaitForProcess Waits until a specified process has completed exeuction WaitForProcess on page 128 AddForcedVirtualLoadPath Function AddForcedVirtualLoadPath Path This function instructs VMware Project North Star Thinstall to load all DLLs from the specified path as virtual DLLs even if they are not located in the package This should be used if the application needs to load external DLLs that have dependencies on DLLs located inside the package VMware Inc 121 Parameters Path in The filename or path for DLLs to load as virtual Example This sample script will load any DLL located in the same directory as the EXE as a virtual DLL TS_ORIGIN is the path where the EXE is running from Origin GetEnvironmentVariable TS_ORIGIN We want to chop off the filename from TS_ORIGIN so find the last backslash and remove everything after this LastSlash InStrRev Origin SourcePath Left Origin LastSlash Tell VMware Project North Star Thinstall to load all DLLs in the same directory or deeper from where the source EXE is This allows us to drop addit
223. tar Thinstall version 3 215 or higher VMware Inc 110 RetainAlllcons RetainAllIcons Indicates all of the Source EXEsoriginal icons should be retained in the generated Thinstalled EXE file By default TLink will construct anew EXE using a source executable To reduce disk space the new EXE image will contain only icons viewable from the system shell while all other icons are stored inside of the package and are still accessible to the application while it is running The icons that are accessible by the system cannot be compressed so their disk size is larger In some cases it may be desirable to have all of the application s original icons visible to the system shell Examples Instruct Tlink to retain all of the application s original icons app exe Source ProgramFilesDir myapp app exe RetainALlIcons 1 Instruct Tlink to strip out unused icons from the system visible portion of the EXE file default app exe Source ProgramFilesDir myapp app exe RetainALlIcons 0 See also Icon Icon on page 103 RemoveSandboxOneExit RemoveSandboxOnExit Resets the application by deleting the sandbox when the last child process exits All application modifications to registry and filesystem locations that have isolation modes set to WriteCopy or Full will go to a Sandbox directory By default the sandbox directory is left behind so that settings will be persistent across multiple executions of the application In some ca
224. tar Thinstall will export the entire contents of the tvr file If the specified registry subkey has a space in the name you should specify the key using quotes like this HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software Key with space Importing registry data from VMware Project North Star Thinstall registry directory format VREGTOOL regfile tvr ImportDir input_directory regfile tvr Datafile in VMware Project North Star Thinstall Virtual Registry file format input_directory Input directory where registry data will be read from Example vregtool c tmp test tvr ImportDir C jc code VOS2 thinstall setup_capture Debug Captures 05 07 2006 01 14 Importing registry data from regedit format VREGTOOL regfile tvr ImportReg regedit reg Merged WriteCopy Full NoReplace NoMacros regfile tvr Datafile in VMware Project North Star Thinstall Virtual Registry file format regedit reg The reg file to import entries imported will be added to the specified tvr file This file can be in REGEDIT 4 0 ansi text or 5 0 unicode text format Isolation Mode options if no isolation mode is specified WriteCopy is used Merged specifies that registry keys which do not already exist will have isolation mode set to Merged Chapter 4 Isolation Modes on page 61 WriteCopy specifies that registry keys which do not already exist will have isolation mode set toWriteCopy Chapter 4 Isolation Modes on page 61 Full specifies t
225. ters YesNo in Do you want to clean up when the last process shuts down 1 Yes 0 No Example This will turn on cleanup RemoveSandboxOnExit 1 This will turn off cleanup RemoveSandboxOnExit 0 SetEnvironmentVariable Sub SetEnvironmentVariable Name Value This function set the value of an environment variable Parameters Name in The name of environment variable where the value is to be stored Value in The value to be stored Example SetEnvironmentVariableC PATH C Windows system32 SetFileSystemlsolation Sub SetFileSystemlsolation Directory IsolationMode This function sets the isolation mode Chapter 4 Isolation Modes on page 61 of a directory Parameters Directory in Full path of the directory whose isolation mode is to be set VMware Inc 127 IsolationMode in Isolation mode to be set 1 WriteCopy 2 Merged 3 Full Example Set the isolation mode of the temp directory to Merged SetFileSystemIsolation GetEnvironmentVariable TEMP 2 Availability This option requires VMware Project North Star Thinstall version 3 215 or higher SetRegistrylsolation Sub SeiRegisirylsolation RegistryKey lsolationMode This function sets the isolation mode of a registry key Chapter 4 Isolation Modes on page 61 Parameters RegistryKey in The registry key whose isolation mode is to be set Start with HKLM for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE HKCU for HKEY_CURRE
226. the same location VMware Inc 63 Registry as seen by Thinstalled Visio 2007 samm 2 12 0 H Access Connectivity QJ Common J Registration H User Settings aA Visio 10 0 11 0 8 0 9 0 E Common Delivery E Live Meeting E Outlook H PowerPoint E Visio VMware Inc 64 Sandbox Overview The sandbox holds runtime modifications that applications make as they are running The original EXE that you have built never changes so it can be placed in a shared folder with read only access The name of a sandbox GSANDBOXNAME is specified in the package ini file prior to build Chapter 8 Package ini format on page 95 Under normal circumstances the sandbox is stored under AppData Thinstal L SANDBOXNAME On Windows XP this path would be C Documents and Settings USERNAME Application Data SANDBOXNAME During startup VMware Project North Star Thinstall searches for an existing Sandbox in the following locations in the order listed below If a sandbox already exists VMware Project North Star Thinstall will use the existing sandbox rather than creating a new one Search using an application specific environment variable 1 SANDBOXNAME_SANDBOX_DIR ComputerName Example If SANDBOXNAME Mozilla Firefox 1 0 then the environment variable Mozilla Firefox 1 0_SANDBOX_DIR ComputerName is consulted 2 SBNAME SANDBOX_DIR Search using a global environment variable that applies to
227. to it s captured state By default the sandbox is located in the users AppData directory i e c documents and settings username AppLlication Data Thinstall Using Active Directory the user s AppData is often mapped to a shared network drive to allow for easy backups When this is the case users can log in on any machine and retain their application settings VMware Project North Star Thinstall transparently remaps registry and file data while the application is running to enable shared application profile information to instantly migrate to different OSes For example if the application registers DLLs to c winnt system32 while running on w2k the user can quit the application and login on an XP box On the XP box the files will automatically appear to exist at c windows system32 and all related registry keys will automatically point to c windows system32 On Windows Vista VMware Project North Star Thinstall automatically moves Windows SXS Side by Side DLLs and policy information to match Vista versus XP file path styles This functionally allows most applications to instantly migrate to newer or older operating systems VMware Project North Star Thinstall provides SXS support for applications running on Windows 2000 even though the underlying operating system does not this enables most applications captured on XP to run on w2k without changes VMware Inc 40 NOTE Only one computer may be actively using a shared sandbox
228. tories as needed Attachments By default Outlook creates a directory where it stores attachments when you open an attachment for viewing This directory will normally be something like C Documents and Settings lt username gt Local Settings Temp Temporary Internet Files OLKxxxx where the last xxxx is replaced by something randomly chosen This works fine when the viewing application runs in the same virtual sandbox as Outlook However when you want to use an external application an application not running in Outlooks virtual sandbox the external application won t be able to find the file it is supposed to show This is because Outlook will store the file in the sandbox To solve this the isolation mode of the directory where the attachments are stored needs to be set to Merged The next problem then is that we don t know what the name of that directory is the last part of the name was randomly chosen To solve this add a value to HKEY_CURRENT_USER txt which sets the name of attachment directory isolation_full HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software Microsoft O0ffice 11 0 Out Look Security Value Out LookSecureTempFolder REG_SZ Profile Local Settings Out LookTempxxxx 2300 The 11 0 in the key name is for Outlook 2003 use the appropriate version number for your version of Outlook For slightly increased security replace the last 4 xxxx characters by something random Next create a directory Profile Local Settings OutlookTempx
229. tream and Visual Studio 2005 forces this on you if you want to use the Version 8 C Runtime libraries With SxS technology applications can install DLLs to version specific directories tell Windows what version of the DLL should be used when they load a DLL by that name For example Office 2007 installs MFC80 8 0 50727 42 to the following path SystemRoot WinSxS x86_Microsoft VC80 MFC_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8 0 50727 42_x ww_dec6ddd2 mfc80 d11 If you wonder about the weird path it contains information about the DLL version The algorithm for producing this path is purposefully unpublished by Microsoft so the only way to place files here is by using the MST installer technology Because MSI is responsible for putting SxS Dlls in the correctly location Microsoft was free to tinker with the path format in Windows Vista So a installed SxS dll will go to different locations on Windows XP and Windows Vista Because users might migrate their existing XP installations to Vista the upgrade process will automatically move the DLLs to their new home on Vista Windows OSes which have SxS will look for an application s manifest information to determine which version to load from SxS A manifest is a fairly simple XML description of all the SxS DLLs that might be loaded by the application and which version to use The manifest can either be embedded in the application EXE DLL file as a resource or stored separately on the filesystem as a manifest file In the
230. tup Type Manual then VMware Project North Star Thinstall will not start the service until a host application specifically starts the service using service API calls OpenService StartService If you want to prevent virtual service from being automatically started when the first parent process is launched you can use the AutoStartServices option AutoShutdownServices on page 98 Stopping virtual services Virtual Services that are started during application startup will be automatically shutdown when the last non service application exits You can force virtual service to continue running until the user logs off using the AutoShutdownServices option AutoShutdownServices on page 98 running until the currently logged in user logs out unless the application explicitly tells the service to stop See Stopping Service on page 119 script for an example of how to explicitly stop virtual services when the main application exits NOTE This behavior may change in future version of VMware Project North Star Thinstall 2 Areal Real Windows Service m Packaged as a separate Thinstalled EXE file which can be run directly m Runs on boot up m Runs under the account specified by the service m Will be directly visible to the control panel services manager m Can be started and stopped by any application m Requires global system registry change Running Thinstalled EXE as Real Windows Services For some applications
231. u to roll your own system VB Script gives you a lot of power and you can easily build hard coded package times with a simple script We have posted a simple sample VB script which will expire packages on a specific date you could also easily check for a specific machine registry key before allowing the user to run the application http thinstall com thintalk viewtopic php t 205 VB Script can easily call any COM component that is registered in the virtual environment so you can also write a C DLL that is called and executed by vb script before the program starts and after it shuts down We will also have a webserver based license management system available in April 2007 VMware Inc 151 Thinstall Virtualization Suite 3 0 152 http thinstall com thintalk viewtopic php t 207 Q Can VMware Project North Star Thinstall packages be signed A Yes Thinstalled EXE files can be signed using standard Microsoft Internet Digital Signatures Authenticode http www microsoft com technet archive security topics secaps authcode mspx mfr true For Software publishers signed executable gives end users assurance that the executable has not been modified after it was signed System Administrators can also use the Internet Explorer Administration Kit http technet microsoft com en us ie bb219517 aspx IEAK Configuration Wizard to prevent user groups from downloading running unsigned code Q How do apply patches and updates to an ap
232. ual machine to suit your environment You may need to change some setting to fit your work place environment such as network connection settings Remember to keep the virtual machine in Independent Nonpersistent mode until you know the changes you are make work Then Power down the machine remove the Independent Nonpersistentmode Power up make the changes Shut down the machine and return to Independent Nonpersistent This technique will minimize the impact of using the machine while not in Independent Nonpersistent mode Remember to use Start gt Log Off not Power off while not in Independent Nonpersistent mode since this may trigger a disk scan upon the next boot VMware Inc 50 How VMware Project North Star Thinstall Works VMware Project North Star Thinstall works by using a build process to link the Virtual Operating System VOS with a compressed embedded filesystem and registry into a single EXE file The EXE file can run with zero installation and without decompressing files to disk from any data source including a user s desktop a network path or removable storage like USB Flash and CDROM VMware Project North Star Thinstall enables applications to run directly from slower speed storage devices such as USB flash or network shares in an efficient manner by using block based streaming with transparent decompression Block based Streaming on page 53 VMware Project North Star Thi
233. untime using cached creditials so laptop users can continue to be authenticated even when they are offline If the user does not have access to execute the package the AccessDeniedMsg AccessDeniedMsg on page 97 can be customized to instruct the user ReserveExtraAddress ReserveExtraAddressSpace Indicates how much extra address space needs to be reserved for the Thinstalled executable Normally TLink will set the SizeOflmage field in the generated executable based on the SizeOfImage field of the source executable The SizeOfImage field is used by the Windows loader to determine how much virtual address space to reserve for the executable In special circumstances when you re building a package based on a source executable which is not included in the package you can reserve extra virtual address space by specifying the ReserveExtraAddressSpace option The value is the number of extra bytes to reserve Optionally you can follow the number by K to indicate kilobytes or M to indicate megabytes The default value is 0 don t reserve extra address space Examples Tell the Windows loader to reserve 512KB of extra address space app exe Source ProgramFilesDir myapp app exe ReserveExtraAddressSpace 512K Tell the Windows loader to not reserve any extra address space default app exe Source ProgramFiLesDir myapp app exe ReserveExtraAddressSpace 0 Availability This option requires VMware Project North S
234. up When ThinReg detects that it does need more privileges those privileges are required for the allusers option it will relaunch itself as a privileged process causing a UAC pop up to show The norelaunch option will prevent the relaunch and instead the registration will just fail The standard usage of ThinReg would be to register a number of packages stored in a directory probably on a file server during login processing ThinReg server share dir exe This will automatically take care of PermittedGroups specifications registering and unregistering packages as needed It is also quite fast During testing we found that first time registration of the Office 2003 suite took 0 55 sec Second time registration where ThinReg didn t need to perform any action took only 0 13 sec By contrast reregister is relatively expensive at 5 40 sec so you should probably not use that in a login script VMware Inc 86 Example usage This will register just Winword for the currently logged in user ThinReg exe server share Microsoft Office 2003 Winword exe This will register just Winword for all users on the system requires Admin Rights ThinReg exe a server share Microsoft Office 2003 Winword exe This will register all Office applications in the specified directory for the currently logged in user ThinReg exe server share Microsoft Office exe This will unregister register just Winword for the current user Registrations for e g
235. up Capture from a network share instead of the host PC it is possible the local PC will try to launch Setup Capture prior to the network becoming fully initialized in this case you may need to manually run Setup Capture from the network share and it will prompt you to continue the capture process as shown below Setup capture has been restarted automatically Load previously stored starting snapshot and continue installation process Delete previous original snapshot and start with a new capture process 0B33550D 27FB 4044 BC83 BE 34D 79C97ED snapshot VMware Inc 73 Example 1 2 3 4 5 6 Run Setup Capture Start installation of Application XYZ installer displays must reboot to complete installation Reboot computer amp Log in Setup Capture should restart as shown above click Load previously stored starting snapshot Finish any final installations steps Click Post Install Scan on the Setup Capture dialog Log Monitor Log Monitor allows you to record detailed information about any application s execution history for later review A few things that are recorded Win32 API calls made by applications running in the VMware Project North Star Thinstall VOS along with parameter and result information A list of potential errors exceptions and security events within the application A list of all DLLs loaded by the application and address ranges Log monitor can be found in your VMware Project North
236. usage snapshot c Capture snapshot Captures a complete snapshot of local drives and registry to the file c Capture snapshot snapshot c Capture snapshot c e Captures a complete snapshot of the drives c and e no registry information is captured snapshot c Capture snapshot c HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software Classes Captures a complete snapshot of the drive c and all of the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT registry subtree Creating a VMware Project North Star Thinstall project from 2 previously captured snapshots Snapshot can be used to generate a VMware Project North Star Thinstall project directory by comparing 2 snapshots Example usage snapshot c Original snapshot Diff c NewEnvironment snapshot c MyProject VMware Inc 141 Compares the two specified projects and generates a resulting VMware Project North Star Thinstall Project in the directory c MyProject Displaying Differences between 2 previously captured snapshots snapshot Original snapshot DiffPrint NewEnvironment snapshot DiffPrint is similar to Diff except that is does not have an output directory and all changes detected are printed to the console Config Files The Config file allows you to specify directories and subkeys to be excluded from a scan of created projects If no config file is specified Snapshot will attempt to load it s config file from the locations 1 Application Data Thinstal1 Spanshot ini User s AppData directory 2 C Program F
237. utomatically isolated from the host PC to prevent conflicts with locally installed versions m Sandbox stores runtime modifications as diffs m Registry can contain per user data HKEY_CURRENT_USER m Registry can contain SID specific user data m Registry can be reset to captured state by deleting sandbox m Virtual registry is shared by all apps in the same sandbox m Automatic backup and restore on disk corruption common USB flash m Dynamic Path Relocation Dynamic Path Relocation on page 19 applied to all registry read amp writes allowing instant OS and PC migration Virtual COM m Support for In process COM from virtual DLLS m Nosystem registration m No extracting DLLs or OCXs to filesystem m Support for Out of process COM DCOM m Use EXE based COM without install m Support for Services based COM m Use service based COM with virtual services Dynamic Remapping Registry and file system dynamically re adjust for instant migration across OSs Dynamic Path Relocation on page 19 User profile data and sandbox dynamically remaps on the fly allowing not just app migration but setting migrations Dynamic Remapping enables execution from USB flash from PC to PC Handles shell folders and short pathnames Virtual Services Virtual Services on page 24 m Applications that require a service can be Thinstalled m Virtual services auto start when app is launched m Virtual services can b
238. veExtraAddress 110 RetainAllIcons 111 RemoveSandboxOnExit 111 SandboxName 111 SandboxPath 112 SandboxNetworkDrives 112 SandboxRemovableDisk 112 StripVersionInfo 113 Source 113 Shortcut 113 UpgradePath 114 VirtualizeExternalOut 114 VirtualDrives 114 Version XXXX 115 WorkingDirectory 116 4 VMware Inc Contents 9 Scripting 117 Callback functions 117 Examples 118 bat example 118 timeout example 118 Registry Modify 119 reg example 119 Stopping Service 119 copyfile example 119 System registry example 120 10 API functions 121 AddForcedVirtualLoadPath 121 ExitProcess 122 ExpandPath 122 ExecuteExternalProcess 123 ExecuteVirtualProcess 123 GetBuildOption 124 GetFileVersionValue 124 GetCommandLine 125 GetCurrentProcessName 125 GetOSVersion 125 GetEnvironmentVariable 126 RemoveSandboxOnExit 127 SetEnvironmentVariable 127 SetFileSystemIsolation 127 SetRegistrylsolation 128 WaitForProcess 128 11 Access Control using Active Directory 131 12 Application PATH and Environment Variables 133 13 Tips and Tricks 135 Packaging NET Applications 135 Precaptured NET 135 Reducing size 136 Tips and Tricks for Specific Applications 137 Office 2007 137 Outlook 137 Explore exe 138 Java Runtime Environment JRE 139 14 Snapshot exe 141 15 Virtual Registry 143 Virtual Registry Text Format 144 Attributes ini 145 16 Virtual Filesystem 147 Folder Macros 148 Attributes ini 150 VMware Inc 5
239. will fail on XP SP1 Microsoft extended the length for ShellExecute in SP2 Considering the user is likely to use a filename from their My Documents folder and the filename may be significantly long if you don t use short pathnames there is a very high chance of failure For example this command exceeds 128 characters 168 chars C Program Files Microsoft Office OFFICE11 winword exe c documents and settings Greogory Appleblaught My Documents Draft 34 April 6 2006 Master License Agreement doc The same path is much smaller using short pathnames 85 characters C Progra 1 Micros 3 OFFICE11 winword exe c docume 1 Greogo 1 MyDocu 1 Draft3 1 doc The use of Short pathnames in the registry is very common for example Office installs hundreds of short pathname references in the registry Below you can see a few examples from an Office 2003 install Registry Editor Ble Edt Yew Favorites Help E 00108906 8789 413 adb lt 48F5051 1b3af Al Nome Type Data c E 00152EF2 080 4406 8F0A A2E1AAA8061D aD Defaut REG_SZ C IPROGRA I ICOMMON 1 MICROS 1MOOT 1 1 0MSPCORE DLL REA E ThreadngModel REG_SZ Both og ammable By 00289607 2E 10 438F AF 1E 40E6A96F1EE4 v Gay 00220F07 0469 49ff B0D4 192C0102F5C6 C PROGRA 1 COMMON 1 MICROS 1 MODI 11 0 MSPCORE DLL gt gt lt My Computer HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE Classes CLSID 001S2EF2 E060 4405 6F04 AZE L AAASDB1D InprocServer32 Out of process COM HKEY_CLASSES_R
240. with DEP enabled would be terminated by Vista when exceptions occur Added VirtualDrives support VirtualDrives on page 114 this is automatically added to projects by SetupCapture Version 3 128 July 11 2007 VMware Inc Fix account creation wizard in Outlook Also fixes some MSI installer popups on first run of Office apps Fix hang of Adobe Reader 8 1 on machines which don t have NET installed 28 Auto start virtual services even when those services are installed on the physical system too Version 3 127 July 9 2007 Improved GUI for selecting user accessible EXEs to build Setup Capture will pickup application command line parameters and alternate icon automatically Fixed outlook lock up issue Fixed issue with cygwin stack Added AutoShutdownServices BuildOption for Package ini NOTE the default behavior is now to shutdown services when the last non service process exits the old behavior was to keep services running If you want the old behavior add AutoShutdownServices 0 to the BuildOptions section in your Package ini file Fixed issue where Outlook 2003 would show an error Can t find Outlook today on Windows 2003 Fixed hang of Adobe Reader 5 when running as Guest on Windows 2000 Don t hardcode C Program Files in the Setup Capture generated build bat use the correct localized directory Version 3 118 June 23 2007 Fixed issue where net 2 0 ngen images would crash when relocated in mem
241. writecopy HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion writecopy HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion ExpLorer writecopy HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion ExpLorer Shell Folders writecopy HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion ExpLorer User Shell Folders writecopy HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software ThinstaLlL full HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software Thinstall ProcessList full HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software Thinstal1l RuntimeObjects full HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software Thinstal1 SxS writecopy HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software writecopy HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software Microsoft writecopy HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software Microsoft Windows writecopy HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion writecopy HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion ExpLorer writecopy HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion ExpLorer MountPoints2 writecopy HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion ExpLorer MountPoints2 c1664 b80 e468 11db 8906 806d6172696F writecopy HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion ExpLorer MountPoints2 c1664 b81 e468 11db 8906 806d6172696F writecopy HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion ExpLorer MountPoints2 c1664 b82 e468 11db 8906 806d6172696f writecopy HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion ExpLorer MountPoints2 c1664 b83 e468 11db 8906 8
242. ws it to optimize file system access in the virtual environment For example when an application tries to open a file VMware Project North Star Thinstall does not need to consult the real filesystem twice to determine if the file exists or not once for the real system location and once for the sandbox location Instead VMware Project North Star Thinstall is able to check for the file s existence by only consulting the virtual registry and as a result VMware Project North Star Thinstall can achieve great runtime performance One artifact of this optimization is that if you copy files into the sandbox directory structure directly the files will not be visible to the application If the file already exists in the sandbox you can overwrite and update the file however we recommend leaving the sandbox alone and performing all modifications in the virtual environment instead Q How can view the virtual registry in the sandbox The command line utility vregtool can be used to list the contents of a virtual registry file as shown below You may notice that some of the virtual file system data is stored in under the registry tree HKLM FS vregtool registry rw tvr printkeys sb_only HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE FS Profile gimp 2 2 unitre deleted HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE FS Profile fonts cache 1 NEW writecopy HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software writecopy HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software Microsoft writecopy HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software Microsoft Windows
243. xxx in your project and create an Attributes ini file Attributes ini on page 145 there containing Isolation DirectoryIsolationMode Merged The directory Profile Local Settings Out LookTempxxxx is just an example you can use whatever you want as long as you make sure that the directory is named in the OutlookSecureTempFolder registry key and is set to the correct isolation mode Explore exe The Windows Shell explorer exe will check for an already running copy using GetShellWindow If explorer exe detects a shell is already running it will send a message to the running copy and exit If you want to run explorer exe in the virtual environment you can do the following steps 1 Kill the currently running process explorer exe using Task Manager 2 Run the explorer exe from a VMware Project North Star Thinstall virtual environment VMware Inc 138 Chapter 13 Tips and Tricks Java Runtime Environment JRE VMware Inc A conflict may occur if one version of Java is installed natively and another one is included in a Thinstalled executable This is because newer versions of Java also install a plugin DLL that gets loaded by IE This plugin DLL overwrites virtual registry keys when it is loaded and can conflict with a virtualized copy of older Java runtimes You can prevent IE from loading plugins by adding the following line to beginning of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE txt isolation_full HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software Micros
244. yW IN DWORD nBufferLength 104h 000862 0a88 GetCurrentDirectoryW gt 0x14 C test cmd_test bin 000863 0a88 cmd exe 4ad01580 lt USERENV d11 769c0396 GetCurrentDirectoryW gt DWORD 14h COUT LPWSTR lpBuffer 4AD34400h gt L C test cmd_test bin 000864 0a88 cmd exe 4ad05b74 gt 01e32 d11 774e03f0 GetFileType CIN HANDLE hFile 7h 000865 0a88 GetFileType 7 gt 0x2 000866 0a88 cmd exe 4ad05b74 lt 0le32 d11 774e03f0 GetFileType gt DWORD 2h 000867 0a88 cmd exe 4ad05b9d gt kernel32 d11 7c812f39 GetStdHandle IN DWORD nStdHand1le FFFFFFF5h 000868 0a88 cmd exe 4ad05b9d lt kernel32 d11 7c812F39 GetStdHandle gt HANDLE 7h 000869 0a88 cmd exe 4adQ5baa gt kernel32 d11 7c81af14 GetConsoleMode IN HANDLE hConsoleHand1le 7h 000870 0a88 cmd exe 4adQ5baa lt kernel32 d11 7c81af14 GetConsoleMode gt BOOL 1h OUT LPDWORD 1pMode 13DA84h gt 3h 000871 0a88 cmd exe 4adQ5dec gt kernel32 d11 7c835484 WriteConsoleW IN HANDLE hConsoleOutput 7h IN const lLpBuffer 4AD2B1E0h IN DWORD nNumberOfCharsToWrite 15h IN LPVOID LpReserved O0h 000872 0a88 cmd exe 4adQ5dec lt kernel32 d11 7c835484 WriteConsoleW gt BOOL 1h OUT LPDWORD 1pNumberOfCharsWritten 13DABOh gt 15h 000873 0a88 cmd exe 4adQbf00 gt 0le32 d11 774e03f0 GetFileType CIN HANDLE hFile 3h 000874 0a88 GetFileType 3 gt 0x2 000875 0a88 cmd exe 4adQbf00 lt ole32 d11 774e03f0 GetFileType gt DWORD 2h 000876 0a88 cmd exe 4adQ2c

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