Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Adobe Reader XI - App-V 5.0 SP2


This is treated in a very similar way to the recent previous versions.
Briefly
Download the enterprise version
Extract the MSI, create an admin point and patch the admin point.
Download and install the Adobe Customisation Wizard and use that to create a transform.

The above is necessary for a normal package.

The main problem with creating an App-V 5.0 SP2 version is that the App-V client redirects some keys through to the native registry

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SOFTWARE\Microsoft\AppV\Subsystem\VirtualRegistry]
PassThroughPaths = REG_MULTI_SZ :
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WINEVT
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\eventlog\Application
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\WMI\Autologger
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Perflib
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies


See this link for more information
http://packageology.com/2014/02/overriding-group-policy-settings-app-v/


The result is that unless the HKLM\Software\Policies value is removed from the above key, the desired settings for Adobe Reader XI cannot be available in the bubble.  An example is Updating.  If [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\11.0\FeatureLockDown]
"bUpdater"=dword:00000000
Is not a setting that can be seen then the updater item in the preferences menu will still be visible.

For an App-V version of Adobe Reader XI
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies
This value either needs be removed from the above registry key OR the HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe and below must be managed by Group Policy.

While sequencing it is very important to turn off Protected Mode and then re launching Reader and closing.  This causes important user settings to be captured in the sequence.  Also with out this mode set, launching Reader on a client results in:
This is related to the file %AppData%\LocalLow\Adobe\Acrobat\11.0\ReaderMessages which is not properly managed by a virtualised reader running in protected mode.

Keywords: passthough pass through