MSCI Barra Aegis - App-V error

MSCI Barra Aegis 4.2 is a vendor application that has an MSI installation.  It is not well designed software though, and among other things writes settings into the win.ini file.

We attempted to create an App-V package for this software as initially it appeared to be a good sequencing candidate.  Problems occured however, during runtime and the operation of its graphics generation.  When installed normally certain operations would generate graphical representations of data within the application.  A "graphics engine" called GSW32.exe gets installed to C:\Windows\Syswow64 (W7 64-bit) and is called upon to generate graphics.  It launches as a process in the background and the process closes again afterwards.  When running within the bubble the application failed to launch the GSW32.exe and caused the error shown: "Graph Control" "Failed to open Graphics Server".  It was possible to workaround the problem  by prelaunching the GSW32.exe process however this was not a viable solution because the GSW32.exe did not shut itself down when the application was closed.  This meant that the bubble persisted in perpetuity.  Post run scripts were unable to manage the shutdown of the GSW32.exe process.  Other options were attempted such as providing GSW32.exe in the application folder and ensuring paths were correct but no solution was found.

Genesys ActiveX Interface for Desktop Tookit 7.2.000.00 on Windows 7 64bit

Sounds straighforward but the install can easily break.  The quality of the MSI is debatable.

The media was composed of
setup.exe
setup.msi
setup.cab
read_me.html
ip_description.xml

Copy the media to a folder on the C:
Set the setup.exe for Windows XP SP3 compatibility.
Run the setup.exe
Choose both installation feature options (documentation and libraries)
Change the Destination Folder to C:\Program Files (x86)\GCTI\ActiveX Interface for Desktop Tookit, in this step it is important to add the (x86) piece in otherwise a failure occurs.

Lotus Notes 8.51 Eclipse Fixpack5

The fixpack5 setup.exe is a common Installshield type exe that calls a fix.msi.  The command line for the exe can be constucted as follows to pass the required MSI parameters properly

setup.exe /s /v"/qb-! /l*v %temp%\fixpack5.log"

note the quotes enclosing the parameters after the /v.

Alternatively calling msi directly can also work with the following

msiexec /i fix.msi /qb-! SETUPEXEDIR=<folder containing setup.exe> /l*v %temp%\fixpack5.log

Problem Steps Recorder (PSR)

In Windows 7 the Problem Steps Recorder (psr.exe) can be used to generate a MHTML file containing detailed screen shots, mouse and keyboard actions.  Although designed to capture problem actions to reproduce problems, it can be used to detail the installation process for applications.

PSR.EXE will save out to a compressed zip format which contains an MHTML .mht file readable in Internet Explorer.  Be aware the MHTML file can rapidly become very large due to the screen shot images stored during captured operations.

Short File Name (SFN) to Long File Name (LFN) Conversion

The text below is an excerpt from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8.3_filename


Although there is no compulsory algorithm for creating the 8.3 name from an LFN, Windows uses the following convention:^[4]

1. If the LFN is 8.3 uppercase, no LFN will be stored on disk at all.
   • Example: "TEXTFILE.TXT"
2. If the LFN is 8.3 mixed case, the LFN will store the mixed-case name, while the 8.3 name will be an uppercased version of it.
   • Example: "TextFile.Txt" becomes "TEXTFILE.TXT".
3. If the filename contains characters not allowed in an 8.3 name (including space which was disallowed by convention though not by the APIs) or either part is too long, the name is stripped of invalid characters such as spaces and extra periods. Other characters such as "+" are changed to the underscore "_", and uppercased. The stripped name is then truncated to the first 6 letters of its basename, followed by a tilde, followed by a single digit, followed by a period ".", followed by the first 3 characters of the extension.
   • Example: "TextFile1.Mine.txt" becomes "TEXTFI~1.TXT" (or "TEXTFI~2.TXT", should "TEXTFI~1.TXT" already exist). "ver +1.2.text" becomes "VER_12~1.TEX".
4. Beginning with Windows 2000, if at least 4 files or folders already exist with the same initial 6 characters in their short names, the stripped LFN is instead truncated to the first 2 letters of the basename (or 1 if the basename has only 1 letter), followed by 4 hexadecimal digits derived from an undocumented hash of the filename, followed by a tilde, followed by a single digit, followed by a period ".", followed by the first 3 characters of the extension.
   • Example: "TextFile.Mine.txt" becomes "TE021F~1.TXT".

Hide User Accounts on the Welcome Screen

Use this where you need an account on a machine to support network connections but do not want it displayed as an interactive logon option on the Welcome Screen

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList

<UserName>  REG_DWORD    0

For information regarding automatic logon look here

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc939702.aspx


This section applies to Windows 10 and how to have a separate local admin and local user accounts and elevate using the admin account when required.  At the same time the login screen does not advertise the presence of the potential accounts to login with.

Prevent accounts appearing at the logon screen:

secpol.msc
Security Settings_Local Polices_Security Options

When using local accounts on Windows 10 you may want to set
Interactive logon:Don't Display last signed-in Enabled

If the SpecialAccounts setting above is set for the Local Admin account, this causes a limitation that you will not be able to Switch User, and nor will you be able to  use RunAs Administrator to run things elevated.

There is a work around though.

Search for Notepad
Open file location
Shift Right click and select Run as a different user
Enter
.\LocalAdminAccount
password
In notepad, file open and navigate to C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe
right click RunAs Administrator
The cmd window is now running elevated as the admin.



I can't have my cake and eat it here :(

What I want is to have local user accounts selectable but not the local admin account.  However I also want the option to login interactively with the local admin account if necessary.

If the Don't Display last signed-in is enabled, then the user is inconvenienced by having to enter their account name at every login.

If the Don't Display last signed-in is disabled (default), then use can select but LocalAdmin will display unless it has the SpecialAccount key, but then there is no way to choose to login with the LocalAdmin.

I will settle for Selectable with LocalAdmin set with a SpecialAccounts entry.  If interactive admin logon is needed, it will need to be enabled by removing the SpecialAccounts key first.

Sequencing 32bit Registry Keys on 64bit Windows 7

During sequencing 32 bit processes writing to HKLM\Software will, as usual, end up being redirected to HKLM\Software\Wow6432node.  This will be reflected in the virtual registry tab and the keys will be shown under the HKLM\Software\Wow6432node.  Obvious perhaps but important to remember to avoid confusion hence this post !