Building a VSA of Windows Live Beta

Last week one of my colleagues came to me with a request. He wished to build a package of Windows Live beta. When you download Windows Live, the download is 1 MB, and believe me, that is not all.

When you start the setup, a lot of additional software is downloaded before you can install it. I built the package, and I was very surprised at what I found:

Writer is one of the best Blog editors. The new and very improved Photo gallery creates a SQL CE database that enables you to manage all of your pictures, and enhances searching inside your picture database. And the new Messenger has some great actions when you are chatting with friends and colleagues.

In this best practice I will show you how to build a cool package with all the best of Windows Live.

First click on the link to download the initial setup:

For the English version
For the Dutch version
For the German version

Startup a clean packaging machine. When you do this on a normal machine, a lot of garbage will be inside the package and it will make cleaning a lot more difficult.

First of all I'll explain why this is such a difficult package. When you start the installation, it downloads all the software and then starts installing various software packages. All the packages have a different installer ID, and cannot be captured in a single program capture. Packaging by starting cmd.exe is not possible also. You need to do a global capture. Windows Live Beta wants to install the following software:

• Messenger Beta with included:
  • DW 2.0 Client
  • Microsoft visual runtime
  • Contacts
  • Segoe UI font
  • Windows Live call
• Mail beta
• Toolbar beta with included
  • Search enhancement pack
• Photo gallery beta with included
  • Windows imaging Component
  • SQL server CE 3.1
  • Microsoft Visual Studio Runtime
  • Contacts
• Writer beta
  • Dot Net framework
• Family safety beta

On a Vista machine it will also install the newest Windows Movie Maker.

Frequent visitors of the Juice will notice the Dot Net framework. That is a hard to build package. But the real pain is the SQL server CE 3.1. It is hard to build a good package with this component.

For this best practice you do NOT need the 2069 version that we alway's use when packaging the Dot Net framework.

So let's get started. Follow the steps below to get the best result.

1. Double Click on one of the links, and download the initial installer
2. Save the download on the desktop.
3. Start SVS admin, and start create a new layer.
4. Give the layer a name.
5. Select start a global capture, and click next and then Finish.
6. Double click the initial installer.

Click to view.

Click Install to start the installation.

Now you will see various screens telling you what it is downloading, installing and configuring, and it tells you a lot about the functionality in this beta version of Windows live.

The best thing to do now is get a big cup of coffee and wait patiently. The downloads and installation may take over 30 minutes depending on your internet connection speed.

When you are finished, you will see the screen below. Select the options you want.

Click to view.

The last screen is notifying you what software is installed and what isn't. Click Try Again if not all software is installed, or click Close to finish the installation.

Go to the system tray, and stop capturing.

Now you have a package with Windows Live beta. But the package is not clean, and when you export it and import it on other machines you will get error messages. So let's clean the package.

De-activate the package, and export it to a folder on one of your disks. You will get a Error code 18. The reason? Simple. There is a persistent driver in the package. The driver will not get unloaded because it resides in the memory cache. When you deactivate the package, the driver is not unloaded. But it will prevent you from exporting. So first reboot your machine, and then export the layer.

You need the export if you clean the package too much. You will know when you have cleaned it too much when it will no longer work. So export to create yourself a backup and let's start cleaning.

Double click on the de-activated layer. Edit layer will appear. Now we going to clean it out.

The steps below are mentioned as a guideline. Because we did a global capture, it depends on what software is running. I did the install on a very clean machine that only has Symantec antivirus running to protect it from all threads off the internet.

Also I only tell how to clean the Read layer. If you wish to clean the read/write layer, you can use clean export from FrankB. That is a great tool and saves you much time.

Remove all files and folders as listed below:

SYSTEM SECTION
[COMMONAPPDATA] Microsoft\Search enhancement pack\Search box extension. Delet the file Querydat.XML

This will be created new on every client when you import the layer.

[COMMONAPPDATA] Microsoft\WLSetup. Delete the folder and all of its contents.

[COMMONFILES]Windows Live\.cache. Delete the file wlc15A.tmp.

In the folders below all the separate MSI's are placed. When you need your users to selfrepair you have to leave them there. I delete them. If the layer is ok, then you can reset the layer instead of selfrepair.

In the folder [FONTS] there are 4 "Segoeuiz" fonts. You can copy them to C:\Windows\fonts. This prevents you from having troubles when you have other apps installed that can use these fonts. When you have placed them on the local system you may delete them from the package.

[PROGRAMFILES] internet explorer. Delete this folder.

[WINDIR] Delete the entire folder $NtUninstallWIC$ with all its content.

[WINDIR] Delete the folder installer with all it's content.

[WINDIR] Delete SoftwareDistribution and all of it's content.

Go to the User-specific section:

[CACHE] Delete Content.ie5 and all of it's content.

[COOKIES] Delete index.dat

[HISTORY] Delete History.IE5 and it's content.

[LOCALAPPDATA]Microsoft\internet Explorer. Delete the file MSIMGSIZ.DAT.

[TEMP] Delete MessengerCache and all of it's contents.

Go to the tab Registry.

Now we are going to clean the Registry. Be careful This is not something you can do if you not understand what the registry does. This part varies depending on your machine and what software is running on your machine.

If you are unsure about what you are doing, you can export the keys first before you delete them. Right click on the subkey, and export it to a folder. Just name it 1, 2, Etc. This will make it easier for you to import them if you deleted too much. Only very experienced packagers will manage to clean registry values at it's best.

If you cleaned to much and want to import the key, you have two option:

Right click on the subset of keys where you exported the key, and import it back. Or update the layer by using cmd.exe, and drag and drop the reg files and hit enter.

Below I will only mention the keys that you definitely will have, and you need to clean out.

Delete the following keys:

• HKEY-LOCAL-MACHINE\Classes\Installer\UpgradeCodes.
• HKEY-LOCAL-MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Installer and all of it's contents.
• HKEY-LOCAL-MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\UnInstall and all of it's contents.

All further cleaning may be useful, BUT is at your own risk. I cleaned out about 60 additional keys. I also added two keys because I always prepare my packages to run in a terminal server environment with DVS4SBC.

In my case the first VSA was 144 MB. The cleaned one is 60 MB. Yes, now you have a clean, lean and mean package. Enjoy it.

Another good tip! If you want to learn to be one of the best packagers in VSA, play around with the files and registry settings.

Learn why you should add or delete keys or even change values. The more you learn, especially about the registry, the more you become a good packager.

If you only want this package to use at home, just leave it as it is. It will work.

Regards,
Erik Westhovens