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Application Virtualization (MS App-V)...feasibility & sequencing Crystal Runtime

  • Thread starter Deleted member 12106
  • Start date
D

Deleted member 12106

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Greetings. At work we have a project to pull the plug on all VMs within the org, at least locally hosted. I have been tasked with this project for my department and need to provide the application we build/support to teammates.

I have been suggested to try App-V which on the surface would really, really, really be perfect. I have deployed App-V 5.1 and have begun to use the sequencer. Our application also installs and relies on a Crystal Run time 13 (CR), both the app and CR are 32-bit. Our installer uses specific DLLs and such, so need to use our CR package This run time is required for the reporting side of our application. The sequencer sees our application, but will not grab the CR. I did some google-foo and it appears that on App-V 5.0 and higher MS has changed a few things up. CR does not play ball well due to path length.

Google-foo revealed:
  1. CR paths are too long for use with VFS
  2. It is possible to shorten the paths by making an MST, I have tried and this did not work.
  3. It is possible to update the paths in MSI, same as MST, but to MSI, no change.
  4. It is possible to manually specify install path, no change
  5. It could be possible to use CR as middle ware, I could not get it to work correctly, reporting engine throws errors that would indicate no CR is present.
  6. Possible to update install paths and reg paths after it is installed. I need to validate if this will work or not.

Outside of my last point above, I have no other magic to try. Currently my sequencer VM is win10x64, I am spinning up a win7x32. I have probably about 25 sequencing attempts thus far on just trying to grab the CR.

I am also still green to App-V, about 2 weeks in of playing with it. I'd appreciate any hints/tips/feedback regarding application visualization.

If App-V is not a viable solution in the end, I can still do RemoteApp and/or VMs with automated configurations, however this would add more "care and feeding" as well as complexity in the long run, more moving pieces. App-V would be the ideal solution due to simplicity.
 
So did more digging into the packages, it appears that the reg keys and runtime are brought over. The CR is not listed as an app when sequencing nor does the log at the end nag about it. Looked at the VFS and saw the CR path in program files. Looked at the reg hives and saw the keys. So the first error on my first sequenced package was generating an error:
Code: 
Retrieving COM class factory for component with CLSID {GUID} failed due to the following error: 800700700a the data area passed to a system call is too small.

This error was also present on subsequent packages where the CR was not listed. Even when used as middleware, no change.

I used a win10x64 vm and a win7x32 vm for my sequencer, same errors with either.

I am using the package on my win10 image which also has UAC enabled. Unsure if this is a cause or part of it. I then set the app compatibility level to win8, same error. Set to win7=happy.

Next up is to do further testing on win10 and win8 and experiment with UAC and compatibility settings to see what may be preventing the app package to work as-is. It may be just with this particular application as well. We'll find out.
 
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