The D-Spot (The Deployment Spot)

In many cases virtual applications will talk to physical ones. That’s one of the reasons to keep Adobe Reader installed locally.

But we’ve got an issue with the Reader again.

Launching a PDF file from within the bubble gave an Access Denied error (using a physical Adobe Reader 10.1):

There was an error opening the document. Access Denied

This issue exits only when the PDF file is stored on a “personal folder”, like the Desktop-folder for example. (local User NTFS permissions?).

This isn’t an App-V issue but a Reader X feature called Protected Mode that gave this error.

It can be solved with some basic OSD scripting, but the first step is here to stay: “Know your application”. As Reader X gave this error, we can disable this feature with a registry key. Most of the work is to find out what registry key to set. To keep this short, here is my OSD script that disables Adobe Reader Protected Mode when opening Reader from within a App-V application:

<REGISTRY>
<REGKEY HIVE=”HKCU” KEY=”SOFTWARE\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\10.0\Privileged” NOREDIR=”FALSE”>
<REGVALUE REGTYPE=”REG_DWORD” NAME=”bProtectedMode”>00000000</REGVALUE>
</REGKEY>
</REGISTRY>

This goes into the VIRTUALENV-tag.

Happy sequencing!

Recently we hosted an event about “Desktop optimisation – efficient windows 7 and office 2010 deployment – notes from the field”. This seminar not only listed many of the new features and functionality that are included in Windows 7 and Office 2010 but also answered many deployment questions including some notes from the field.

The result can be found here:

http://seminar.the-d-spot.org/Desktop optimisation – notes from the field – 17102011.pdf

After adding a security group to an AppV Application using the AppV Management console, the lovely error “Unexpected error” pops up.

Unable to modify the specified Application.
Please report the following error code to your system administrator.
Error code: 0000B004.

Maybe it had something to do with deleted security groups, hence the SID’s:

I found KB930424, but didn’t had the second error in sft-server.log. Therefor my chances to succeed weren’t high. Anyway, I changed the AppV Database transaction log to “Unrestricted File Growth”.

But that didn’t solved the 0000B004 error. I still wasn’t able to change permissions for that particular application

After a while I stumbled upon Hotfix Package 2 for AppV 4.5 Service Pack 1: March 2010. The changelog says:

When you try to use the Microsoft Application Virtualization Server Management Console to remove group assignments for an Active Directory group that has already been deleted, the removal fails together with the 0000B004 error code.

Also Service Pack 2 for AppV Management Server 4.5 contains this hotfix!

Once in a while you need to patch Office 2010 sequences with the latest security fixes from Microsoft. I needed to patch a package which contained Excel 2010 and an Excel Addin.

I prepared my sequence machine with:

• Windows patches, dummy printer, dummy odbc connections
• App-V Sequencer 4.6
• Placed new addin sources and the sequence to upgrade on the desktop
• Made a snapshot

Started the Sequencer, opened the package for upgrade. Enabled “Show Advanced Monitoring Options”, and select “Allow Microsoft Update to run during monitoring”. So far so good, but after downloading & installing the patches all of them failed to install!

All patches failed with error code 0×80070643.

What went wrong?

I forgot to install the OSPP (Office Software Protection Platform) service on my sequence machine! (AKA Office 2010 Deployment Kit for App-V).

After installing the prerequisite all security fixes installed successful:

My colleague couldn’t get an App-V application launched properly.

The app throws the following error:

The Application Virtualization Client encountered a problem while waiting for the application to be ready to interact with the user.

Error code: 19-00001003

Because the app launches a VBScript we changed the SUBSYSTEM Value from windows to console, and the app launched like it should!

 <IMPLEMENTATION>
  
  <VM VALUE=”Win32″>
   <SUBSYSTEM VALUE=”console”/>
  </VM>
  
 </IMPLEMENTATION>

Sometimes you must change this setting in the OSD file yourself. Because the AppV Sequencer doesn’t know if a particular application is a Windows (value=windows) or a DOS (value=console) program.

Hotfix Package 3 is available for AppV 4.6 Service Pack 1.

It fixes an issue with the “Save As New Package” feature in the sequencer.

Here is the full changelog:

• You run the Application Virtualization Client on a computer that is running Windows XP or Windows Server 2003. When you try to start a virtualized application from a network location, such as a UNC path or a mapped network drive, you receive an application error message that states that a .dll file could not be found.
• When you try to run an Open Software Description (OSD) file that contains a batch script from a content share, you receive a “04-00000020″ error message.
• The Application Virtualization Client service may take a long time to start and may result in slow startup performance in certain computer configurations.
• The Save As New Package option of the Application Virtualization Sequencer does not correctly update the virtual registry.
• When a virtualized application calls the Windows API LoadLibrary function, the application does not work correctly in the App-V 4.6 SP1 Sequencer. This issue occurs only when the LoadLibrary function uses a parameter that has a trailing period (.) at the end of the module name.

This hotfix applies to both client & sequencer. Because AppV hotfixes are cumulative, each new hotfix release contains all the hotfixes that were included with the previous hotfix packages.

Hotfix 3 is available at Microsoft: KB2571168.

I just had an issue with an App-V shortcut not picked up by the client. In the SFTLOG.TXT file the following errors exist:

[xx/xx/2011 xx:24:42:784 OMGR ERR] {tid=C10:usr=xxx}

The Application Virtualization Client cannot use the OSD file specified because the GUID attribute for the CODEBASE element changed (rc xxxxxx04-00001004).

[xx/xx/2011 xx:24:42:799 SWAP WRN] {tid=C10:usr=xxx}

Could not load OSD file \\xxx\xxx\xxx.003\xxx.osd

[xx/xx/2011 xx:24:42:799 AMGR INF] {tid=C10:usr=xxx}

The app manager could not create an application from ‘\\xxx\xxx\xxx.003\xxx.osd’ (rc xxxxxx44-00001004).

According to the last log file entries this is a typical issue where the OS VALUE tag in the OSD file is missing. But this wasn’t the case because I cleared all OS VALUE’s from the OSD file.

My second thought was a legacy OSD file floating around the Softgrid cache. But after setting the State key to zero and rebooting the machine the issue still exists. But I kept walking this path, because the first log entry was about GUID attributes that has been changed (04-00001004). But especially because the issue started after performing an Active Upgrade of the sequence.

So I decided to clear all caches using these methods:

• Removed the App-V user cache (%appdata%\SoftGrid Client)
• Cleared the system cache again with the State key
• Removed the registry folder from Microsoft\SoftGrid\4.5\Client\Applications\<ApplicationName>

Rebooted the machine and BAM, I got my long awaited shortcut!  Probably a previous OSD version was floating around in the AppV User Cache.

Today Microsoft announced the release of MDOP 2011, which includes App-V 4.6 SP1.

What is changed and improved in this Service Pack?

• Package Accelerators: This is the biggest improvement in SP1. Instead of creating sequencing recipes using Word, Microsoft is introducing an easier method called Package Accelerator. Microsoft is also contributing, what we used to call, Recipes. A package accelerator for MS Project 2010 is currently available. In April a package accelerator for Office 2010 will see the daylight! And last but not least, Microsoft is working with Adobe to release package accelerators for Adobe products!
• Read only cache (for remote desktop services & VDI).
• The sequence process is redesigned, easier to use.
• Licensing for cloud applications.

Looking forward to play with this new version!

While browsing Microsoft Technet, and especially Technet Edge, I stumbled upon some new App-V learning material.

Apart from the basics, if I may believe the titles of these tutorials, also some advanced topics are mentioned.

Ideal for a rainy sunday afternoon: Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) Virtual Labs.

We needed to have Access 2010 delivered through App-V on the same computers where Office 2010 Standard was published to. Office 2010 needs the Office 2010 Deployment Kit for App-V to activate, this was already up and running on our client computers.

If we streamed Access 2010 next to Office 2010 Standard, Access launched and asked for a Product Key:

I thought the Office Software Protection Platform must take action here, and contact our KMS Server to obtain a license, but it didn’t behave like that. The Office Software Protection Platform (osppsvc) service is responsible for the activation. This service is installed by the Office 2010 Deployment Kit for App-V.

After going through Technet and some forums, I finally got it all together and found the solution:

The KMS activation is done when installing the Deployment kit for App-V. To use Access 2010 and Office 2010 Standard together, the Deployment Kit for App-V needs to be installed with the STANDARD and ACCESS parameters combined. These Licensing Flags can be used on the command line separated by a space:

OffVirt.msi ACCESS=1 STANDARD=1 /qb REBOOT=REALLYSUPPRESS

To verify which actions the OffVirt.msi installer exactly did, use the logfile parameter and check the logs:

OffVirt.msi ACCESS=1 STANDARD=1 /qb REBOOT=REALLYSUPPRESS /l*v c:\temp\OffVirt.log

If the ACCESS=1 parameter wasn’t set, you’ll get this in the logfile;

MSI (s) (E0:E0) [17:11:35:989]: Skipping action: Access_KMS_Client (condition is false)

When you did set the ACCESS=1 licensing flag;

MSI (s) (40:58) [17:29:32:699]: Doing action: Access_KMS_Client

Going through the logs makes everything clear. Combining the OffVirt.msi parameters makes sense!