Video Screencast Help
Search Video Help Close Back
to help

Endpoint Virtualization Community Blog

Showing posts tagged with Virtualization
Showing posts in English
Using SWV's Isolation Rules to get around Office 2003 & 2007 MSI Repairs
Jordan | 29 Jul 2010 | 13 comments

One of the issues with running two versions of Microsoft Office at the same time, with one in the base and one in the layer, is the MSI repair that gets launched when you switch between versions.  This is happening because Office is trying to change the file associations for you so the version that was just launched has ownership.

With SWV 6.1 we introduced layer isolation, which can be defined as what can or cannot see the layer and what the layer can see, well this works for many situations but sometimes you need something more granular which will let you specify specific things that are isolated, Jeremy discussed this in his article on using SWV 6.1 to virtualize different versions of Java, which is what we need for Office. 

To get around the MSI repair all you need to do is create a new Multi-Size registry value named...

Read more
Using Software Virtualization Prior to your CMS7 Upgrade
Scot Curry | 29 Jul 2010 | 0 comments

Introduction

All Symantec customers who have licenses for Client Management Suite 7 now have access to the Software Virtualization agent. There are customers who are in the process of planning their migration to CMS 7 but want to get started with Software Virtualization today.

Get the Agent Installation File

To obtain the Software Virtualization Agent, you will need to install CMS 7 in a test environment. Once you have installed CMS, you will find the Software Virtualization Agent in the %ProgramFiles%\Altiris\Notification Server\NSCap\bin\Win32\X86\SoftwareManagement\SVSAgent folder. Copy the Software_Virtualization_Agent.msi file to a location where you will be able to create a Software Delivery job in your CMS 6 environment.

Get the License

You will need to obtain a license key for the software, as it will be required for installation. To get the license, you will need to access you CMS 7 test installation.

Access Altiris Console 7. From...

Read more
Internet Explorer 8 Language Packs Released
riva11 | 29 Jul 2010 | 0 comments

Microsoft has realesed the latest version of Internet Explorer 8 Language Packs for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. Language files can be used to localize the IE8 package.  

See also the Packaging Internet Explorer 8 posted by ErikW.

The Internet Explorer 8 Language Packs install language specific resource files, allowing users to view the user interface (UI) of Internet Explorer 8 in a different supported language.

Internet Explorer anguages (x64 and x86):

- ENU - English
- ARA - Arabic
- BSC - Bosnian (Cyrillic)
- BSB - Bosnian (Latin)
- BRG - Bulgarian
- CAT - Catalan
- CHS - Chinese (Simplified)
- CHT - Chinese (Traditional)
- ZHH - Chinese (Hong Kong)
- HRV - Croatian
- CSY - Czech
- DAN - Danish
- NLD - Dutch
- ETI - Estonian
- FIN -...

Read more
Virtualized Office 2007 on Vista cause "This document could not be registered" errors or How fonts in layers are still headaches
Jordan | 29 Jul 2010 | 6 comments

As many SVS\SWV packagers can tell you Office 2007 can require some effort to Virtualize and on Vista there's more work to be done. One error that's confusing is: "This document could not be registered. It will not be possible to create links from other documents to this document." and while it appears mostly on Vista you can run into it on Windows XP.  The root cause is what Fonts you have in the base or in the layer just like the "There is insufficient memory or disk space. Word cannot display the requested font" errors you see, which is more common and both of which are more prevalent in SWV then SVS.

Why?  Well with SWV we fixed the font loading issues so fonts now correctly load on a layer activate or when set to Activate On System Startup, which means no more having...

Read more
LSASS and SWV 6.1
Jordan | 29 Jul 2010 | 0 comments

Recently I posted about a change in capture behavior for SWV which is one of two bigs changes on what we capture, the other is that SWV no longer ignores LSASS by default (you can always add it to the program ignore list) for both capture and regular use, this is a big change and it will allow you to capture security policies in a layer as well as allow certain apps, such as Microsoft SQL Sever, to capture in a layer.  For security polices in a layer to take affect you need to set the layer to start on system startup.

SVS always has, and still does, ignore LSASS because earlier builds would get into endless boot cycles when any security policy information got captured into a layer, but SWV 6.1 no longer has this issue.  And while you can capture security policies in a layer that doesn't mean you should do so, there can be consequences so throughly...

Read more
Change in Single Program Capture Behavior with SWV 6.1
Jordan | 29 Jul 2010 | 7 comments

Since the 6.1 Beta we've made a change with how Single Program Capture behaves in SWV 6.1 that you'll either love or hate depending on how you look at this news.  Let me start out by saying that we believe this is how Single Program Capture should behave so this is a bug fix.

Previously with SVS is you tried to capture Adobe CS3 products (not sure about CS4), as well as some other applications, using their Setup.exe installer the capture would end before the actual install actually started, the workaround was to launch a command prompt and then launch Setup.exe from the command line or do a silent install.  The issue at hand was certain child processes were being ignored, more on this is a bit, so when Setup.exe actually launched the installer we didn't track that and when Setup.exe exited we'd stop capture because the process we were tracking had ended and we didn't track the child process.  With the changes in 6.1 this is no longer the case as we now...

Read more
Problems with WMI when you upgrade from SWV 2.X to SWV 6.1
Jordan | 29 Jul 2010 | 19 comments

Some of you may notice when you upgrade from any version of SVS to SWV 6.1 that WMI doesn't work.  This is a known issue that we found late in the test cycle but it's very easy to workaround.  What's happening is basically the WMI provider isn't getting registered and the old one is gone (we've moved the install path of SWV).  So there are 3 options to fix this issue:

1) Uninstall SVS and do a clean install of SWV 6.1
2) After the upgrade run a repair on SWV 6.1 via Add or Remove Programs.
3) Run the following Batch commands:
regsvr32 "C:\Program Files\Symantec\Workspace Virtualization\SvsWmi.dll" /s
mofcomp "C:\Program Files\Symantec\Workspace Virtualization\SvsWmi.mof"

And just as a reminder, this is only for upgrades not clean installs.  And if neither of these workaround do solve WMI issues with 6.1 upgrades please post in the comments section.

Read more
Delay Workspace Streaming Agent at Logon
Scot Curry | 29 Jul 2010 | 0 comments

As we all know a lot of processing takes place when a user logs on to a system.  In order to make the user experience as pleasant as possible many administrators delay certain processes from running at logon time.

Customers have asked if there is a way to delay the Symantec Workspace Streaming agent from checking in with the streaming server at logon.  This can be accomplished by adding the following line to the AppstreamCfg.txt.

PrePopulation.WaitForDesktopAfterLogin = # (where # is the number of seconds that to wait).

The AppstreamCfg.txt file is stored in the %ProgramFiles%\Altiris\StreamingAgent\bin folder.  This parameter is only read when the streaming agent starts up, so you will either need to reboot the machine or stop and restart the AWE 6.1 Streaming Agent service.

Read more
Software Virtualization Solution 2.1 SP2 MP2 Hotfix Now Available
Jordan | 29 Jul 2010 | 0 comments

We recently released a Hotfix for SVS 2.1 SP 2 that resolves an issue with many network drivers not being able to install when an SVS layer is active.  You can download the update from our KB or from our trial-ware portal.  If, for some reason, this doesn't resolve the issue described above please reply to this post with the name of the driver you're trying to install and, if you have a paid support contract, contact support about the issue.

Read more
SWV And Windows System Restore
Jordan | 29 Jul 2010 | 0 comments

Windows System Restore is a feature that's saved my PC, as well as many family members, on more then one occasion.  When you have SWV installed and have to restore back to a previous point, where SWV is still installed, interesting things happen to your layers.  If you're familiar with Windows System Restore what's going on may be a no-brainier but I'm going to cover what happens to a layer when you restore to a previous point when  that layer wasn't installed.

SWV keeps files for layers, by default, in C:\fslrdr and registry info in SOFTWARE -> fslrdr and SYSTEM -> Altiris -> FSL.  So in our scenario we've got Layer1 imported into our system and then we create a restore point.  We then capture Layer2 and then realize something is jacked up for some reason and have to restore back to the point right before Layer2 was captured.  What would you expect to happen?

When you launch SVSadmin you'll see that Layer1 is still imported and...

Read more