Passing Remote Recording through RDP on Win 7

Copied from http://www.roelvanlisdonk.nl/?p=2171

I was using Microsoft Remote Desktop on a Microsoft Windows 7 machine to remotely control an other Windows 7 machine an I was running Skype on the remote machine. There was coming sound through the boxes of the local machine, but the microphone was not recorded even when the settings of the Local Resources where: Remote audio playback [Play on this computer] and Remote audio recording [Record from this computer].

The problem was found in the control panel > sound > recording > Select a recording device below to modify its settings:

this list was empty.

Solution

After setting the registry key [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\WinStations\RDP-Tcp\fDisableAudioCapture] to [0] on the remote machine and reconnecting the problem was solved.

Techsmith Jing %LOCALAPPDATA% exclusion

Techsmith Jing v2.6.12032

Jing is free screen shot and windows video capture software.

The problem with the Jing sequence was that it did not repair as expected.  An App-V repair should delete the user settings and usually cause the application to launch as it does after it is first delivered. 

The Jing app is arguably not written quite correctly.  It stores it’s user settings in files under %LOCALAPPDATA%\Techsmith\Jing   This location should be used for large application user orientated files that are not suited to roaming in the profile.  In order that the App-V application user cache does not get too large App-V apps are allowed to write to this REAL location and do not redirect it to a location “inside the bubble”.   Attempts to write to %APPDATA% and user registry are redirected to the App-V user cache.  When the app is repaired the user cache is deleted and the settings are removed.  The problem with Jing was that the user settings are being written outside the bubble to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Techsmith\Jing   This meant that the repair of the Jing sequence did not work !  The user setting were retained L

It can be fixed though.  Before you sequence an application where you want the %LOCALAPPDATA% kept inside the bubble, remove these locations from the excluded folders list.  Also when you get to the “Configure Software” stage launch the application so that it (hopefully) writes some launch config files to %LOCALAPPDATA% which will go inside the bubble. Watch for unwanted user specific stuff though.

Specifically, in this case the software asks for online account information to be entered.  Once the settings are properly redirected inside the bubble, repairing the application correctly causes the account information to be lost when a repair is done.


Although this application could be successfully sequenced and launched it turned out to be very fragile on the client.  It could be consistently broken by launching immediately after a shutdown.  This seemed to cause some sort of corruption which could not be rectified by deleting caches (any of them!).  There was insufficient time to analyse further, ultimately it was delivered as an MSI.

Skpe App-V

Skpe and App-v....

http://www.tmurgent.com/TmBlog/?tag=skype

Hyper-V remote server management

It’s possible to manage the Hyper-V VMs without remoteing into the Hyper-V server itself.

Download

Windows6.1-KB958830-x64-RefreshPkg.msu or Windows6.1-KB958830-x86-RefreshPkg.msu

from

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=7887

Run it to install the Remote Server Admin Tools.

Go to the Programs and Features applet in the control panel and click “Turn Windows Features On or Off”

Activate the Hyper-V tools by selecting the item under Remote Server Administration Tools \ Role Administration Tools

.lnk files in 32/64bit environments

Avoid using .lnk files in packages which could potentially be used in a mixed 32/64-bit environment.  They would be effectively be hardcoded to point to either C:\Program Files.... OR C:\Program Files (x86)....

In case anyone says it is the packager's job to make an application work.....

The packaging consultants role is to create an installation from a set of information that can produce a working installation, as opposed to creating a method to make an application work.  While the packager can bring useful skills to the process, ultimately it is the application owner who is the expert on any given application and responsible for finding a working configuration.  This is then fed back to the packager so that it can be incorporated to the installation package. 

HP ALM Client

The MSI is a “vendor” MSI but is actually generated from a backend system to enable client installations.  The base MSI does not have many entries eg Extensions Table that would normally be expected.  As a result any resources that are installed via an accompanying transform must have the standard table entries added to support the installation of those resources.

In the case of the package above Microsoft Office Addins were requested to be included within the pacakge.  These were captured separately, and the resulting WSI (wise) capture results were used as a guide to author those resources into a transform for the main HP ALM Client MSI.