MSI Package SAP GUI 7.20

Do not attempt to capture the SAP GUI 7.20 installation with Wise Smartmonitor turned on.  It causes the SAP GUI installation program to hang and you will get nowhere.  Capturing can be completed with Wise Smartmonitor off.

Rather than trying to capture the raw install with the GUI and patch runs, it may be easier to utilise the SAP installation server software.  This gives you the ability to create a package which can install silently, with the selected features and patch levels you require. This is a much easier propect to capture and if it all goes wrong and you need to start again you won't have to face a protracted install process during capture.

Other Notes
The capture needs a fair amout of cleaning up.  A lot a COM registration infomation is not exclusively associated with the appropriate components and duplicated in large generic registry components.

A couple of ini files contained non-standard entries (don't they all?) so these were tranferred to file installs rather than inifile table contructs.

Even though office is a prerequisite capturing on a clean machine is probably preferrable here rather than one with office installed.

Set Registry Keys in the App-V 4.6 environment during launch

This is particularly useful if you need to have keys set in areas of the registry that are supplied primarily by a secondary, application in a Dynamic Suite Composition (DSC).  A primary application is unable to apply keys via the virtual registry in this case and adding the keys at launch can solve this.  An example would be an Oracle application requiring certain keys applied to Oracle Client registry locations.

These fields go between the VIRTUALENV tags.

<  REGISTRY  >
<  REGKEY HIVE="HKLM" KEY="SOFTWARE\Test"      NOREDIR="FALSE"   >

<  REGVALUE   REGTYPE="REG_SZ"   NAME="a_name"  > a_string value <  /REGVALUE  >

<  REGVALUE   REGTYPE="REG_DWORD"   NAME="a_32bit_valuename"  > 64123 <  /REGVALUE  >

<  REGVALUE   REGTYPE="REG_BINARY"   NAME="a_binary_as_hex_pairs_valuename"  > 50,51,52 <  /REGVALUE  >

<  REGVALUE   REGTYPE="REG_SZ"  > some_string_that_becomes_value_of_the_default_of_the_key <  /REGVALUE  >

<  REGVALUE   REGTYPE="REG_SZ" >< /REGVALUE  >

< /REGKEY >

< REGISTRY >

Good idea to use a tool to edit the OSD so that the XML formating is correct.

An OSD editor and other tools can be obtained from http://www.loginconsultants.com

Spawn a prelaunch command window for troubleshooting App-Vs

Open the OSD as described earlier.

In the <DEPENDENCY> section below the <IMPLEMENTATION> section enter the following:

WAIT can be true or false depending on whether you want to launch to continue or wait for this item to complete.

<SCRIPT TIMING="PRE" EVENT="LAUNCH" WAIT="TRUE" PROTECT="TRUE">
<HREF>cmd.exe (or path to any other application)</HREF>
</SCRIPT>

< SCRIPT EVENT="SHUTDOWN" TIMING="POST" WAIT="FALSE" PROTECT="FALSE" EXTERN="TRUE" >
< SCRIPTBODY>
net use s:\\\\sgserver\\SoftGrid /DELETE
< /SCRIPTBODY >
< /SCRIPT >

TIMING can be PRE or POST of the EVENT
WAIT
PROTECT can be TRUE (inside the bubble) FALSE (outside the bubble)

http://www.tmurgent.com/OSD_Illustrated.aspx

Good scripting primer.....
http://blog.gridmetric.com/2011/10/05/osd-scripting-primer/

Also
sfttray /exe cmd.exe "<appname>"

Editing OSDs on the fly during launch testing.

You'll often want to adjust some aspect of the OSD during testing if a prelaunch script needs tweeking for example.

To get directly to the "active" OSD for editing carry out the following:

Launch the App-V Client and locate the item in the Applications Folder.
Right click and select properties and copy the Local OSD File string value to the clipboard.
Open Notepad with admin rights.
File_Open paste in the OSD location you copied earlier.

You can now make your edits and save before testing the effects during launch by activating the shortcut.

App-V Blogs for reference

http://www.tmurgent.com/OSD_Illustrated.aspx

http://www.tmurgent.com/
http://blog.stealthpuppy.com
http://softwaredeployment.wordpress.com/
http://blogs.technet.com/b/appv/
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/appvirtualization

Installation Command Line Paramaters for 4.6 App-V Client

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc843737.aspx

Nice blog on App-V 5 services

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/gladiatormsft/2013/11/12/app-v-on-virtual-services-in-app-v-5-0/

App-V Client Sequencer Compatibility grid / matrix

http://blogs.technet.com/b/appv/archive/2010/01/21/app-v-4-6-and-applications-sequenced-using-earlier-versions.aspx
http://blogs.technet.com/b/appv/archive/2009/08/06/understanding-the-different-mixes-of-32-bit-and-64-bit-applications-and-platform-supported.aspx

MAD blog
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sgern/

Why Doesn't Windows 7 Search work properly?

Windows 7 Search not working.
Really, why not?  Windows 7 is supposed to be better than that which has been before, yet anyone you mention it to agrees it's not as good as XP.

XP searching was great. Right click the folder select search set your parameters and a few moments later you got your results - and the thing you were looking for.  But Windows 7 Search in the explorer windows can't cut it and below are the reasons why. 

• There is no simple GUI for entering the parameters of the search. It's possible to a limited extent but you really need to go and learn how to use filters in the search window to get the results you want.  Learning how to use search filters is boring and crap.
• You can't search for the contents of files in a network drive location without doing TWO searches.  On the second search you need to click the file contents button which appears.
• The file contents button doesn't work as well as the XP search contents.

Say you have a text string in text file on a network drive.  The string is the alphabet from a to z.  If you use Windows 7 search TWICE! (if you're new to Windows 7 I bet you think I'm joking) and the SECOND TIME click file contents with a parameter of abc sure enough you file containing the alphabet will be presented in the search results.  Try xyz though, or any other string in the middle of the alphabet and, no can do.  Do the same search on your XP machine pointing to the same network drive location an it is perfectly happy returning your alphabet file in the search results for xyz or any string within the file.

So if you knew Windows 7 search was annoying but couldn't quite work out why, the above might be your explanation.

More info here
http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/Exploring-Windows-7s-New-Search-Features-Part1.html