Files being written to the wrong partition
I am pretty new to AppDeploy Repackager. I have used it successfully to repackage a few legacy apps we use in house that use setup.exe installers. The problem I am having is the 2 apps we have that have no installer at all. To install them we just manually copy some folders to the C: drive and create a shortcut in the All User's desktop folder. I read on a separate thread that I could just point Repackager to any exe file as the setup file and then just not launch it between snapshots. So I point to notepad.exe take a snapshot, copy the folders and shortcuts in place, and then take my final snapshot. The file details show all of the files and folders I just copied in and it builds the XML and MSI with no problem. When I look at the XML I see all of the files and folders listed with the correct paths. However when I run the MSI on other PCs manually or deployed through GPO, all of the files are being written to the D: partition instead of the C:. The PC I build the MSI on is a virtual machine with a clean install of Windows XP SP3. The PCs I am deploying to are physical machines with Windows installed on the C: drive and the D: drive setup as a separate partition used for data. I have tried creating the MSI with the virtual PC having only a C: partition and having both a C: and D: partition. Both MSIs write the files to the D: partition when I run them on the physical PCs. The MSIs do work correctly on the virtual machine.
Any help would be appreciated. This seems like such a simple task..
Thanks
Any help would be appreciated. This seems like such a simple task..
Thanks
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Posted by:
bkelly
13 years ago
This is actually a "feature" of Windows Installer itself-- by default a program is automatically installed to the local drive with the most available free space. If you specify the ROOTDRIVE property as C:\ you should get what you are after. See the following for more details on this: http://itninja.com/question/do-you-have-a-sample-protocol.ini?5
Posted by:
smithd4200
13 years ago
Bob
Thank you my friend. That worked like a charm. I imagine my next issues just as simple. With 1 of the applications I use Repackager to create the shortcut. The shortcut is created, but it creates it with the "Start in:" field empty which causes the program to crash immediately. How do I get this field filled in the the proper working directory?
The other is I have is that I need to package a few .RDP files as an MSI either located at the root of the C: drive with shortcuts in the all user's desktop folder, or just place the .RDP files directly in the all user's desktop folder. If I try the first method Repackager ignores the shortcut files I manually created in the all users desktop folder. When I try the second method the MSI installs the files to C:\Desktop\ instead of "%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Desktop". IS there an easy way to do this?
Thanks again for the help!
Thank you my friend. That worked like a charm. I imagine my next issues just as simple. With 1 of the applications I use Repackager to create the shortcut. The shortcut is created, but it creates it with the "Start in:" field empty which causes the program to crash immediately. How do I get this field filled in the the proper working directory?
The other is I have is that I need to package a few .RDP files as an MSI either located at the root of the C: drive with shortcuts in the all user's desktop folder, or just place the .RDP files directly in the all user's desktop folder. If I try the first method Repackager ignores the shortcut files I manually created in the all users desktop folder. When I try the second method the MSI installs the files to C:\Desktop\ instead of "%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Desktop". IS there an easy way to do this?
Thanks again for the help!
Posted by:
bkelly
13 years ago
Your first issue of getting a bad shortcut sounds like a strange one. If you are only seeing this happen with this one program shortcut, perhaps there is something strange about it we can identify. I assume the shortcut is one you specify in the last screen of the AppDeploy Repackager and not a file you are capturing?
As for the second issue regarding your desire to target all users, try specifying ALLUSERS=2 on the command line. Windows Installer does not identify hard paths for shortcuts but instead installs them depending upon the credentials used to perform the installation. I'd try ALLUSERS=2, but read up on the ALLUSERS public property in general for details.
As for the second issue regarding your desire to target all users, try specifying ALLUSERS=2 on the command line. Windows Installer does not identify hard paths for shortcuts but instead installs them depending upon the credentials used to perform the installation. I'd try ALLUSERS=2, but read up on the ALLUSERS public property in general for details.
Posted by:
smithd4200
13 years ago
Thanks again for the help. I was able to get all of my issues resolved with a small bit of editing the MSIs.
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