AdminStudio Questions

[SonnyLee]

Hi, can you help me answer the following questions from my potential AdminStudio customer?

-Evaluation licensing is invalidated if I try to restore a VM snapshot with AdminStudio already installed. I’m guessing this is a protection mechanism to keep people from abusing the evaluation period.

               -Will a fully-licensed installation of AdminStudio allow me to restore a VM snapshot with it installed so I don’t have to keep re-installing it for every repackaging job I want to run?

-InstallScript Scan isn’t working for me in the evaluation. When I run through the Repackager wizard, documentation says it should detect that the installer exe is an InstallScript MSI project, and launch a dialog asking if I want to preserve InstallScript logic. This wizard dialog doesn’t appear for me, and the exe definitely comes from an InstallScript MSI project.

               -Is it because the setup.exe was compiled using an old InstallShield 2016 version, or is this a known bug with a workaround?

Thanks,

Sonny

[moconn · Accepted solution]

Hi @SonnyLee -

You can get by in the AdminStudio evaluation using the Repackager installed with the evaluation copy for this purpose to test the packaging, but reverting back will break the license and your evaluation will stop functioning.  Use a test VM that you can reinstall AdminStudio from a pre-install state to test other packages.

For our licensed customers, AdminStudio includes access to using the Standalone Repackager or Remote Repackager to run the Repackager tool on a second machine that is separate from the main AdminStudio workstation install.  This allows you to revert that repackager VM unlimited times and not break the AdminStudio workstation licenses, which stays on a persistent machine.  More information on these methods found in the product help here.

AdminStudio also provides the Automated Application Converter (AAC) that can tap into virtual machine hypervisors like Hyper-V, VMware ESXi/vSphere, or VMs hosted in Microsoft Azure to control the spin up of VMs, copy the installer to be repackage, execute it with command-line options applied, and copy the resulting capture back down to the AdminStudio workstation running the AAC to finish creating the resulting MSI or MSIX package before reverting that VM back to a clean state.  More info on using the AAC here; the evaluation allows for a single VM to be used for testing.  The full AdminStudio solution allows for 1 VM (Professional edition) or unlimited VMs (Enterprise) running at once.

As for moving an InstallScript MSI to a Basic MSI, per the product documentation here you must use either the Installation Monitoring method or the the Single Snapshot method if using Snapshot. Using the Multiple Step Snapshot will discard the InstallScript logic.

[dmorgan]

Hi, I'm the customer in question for this one. 
I was actually following that documentation for Installation Monitoring, but when I get to step 7, the InstallScript Scan dialog doesn't show when it's supposed to:
"Click Next. Repackager will automatically determine if this is an InstallScript-based setup. If it is an InstallScript-based setup, the InstallScript MSI Identified Panel opens, informing you that the Repackaging Wizard has identified this setup as being an InstallScript MSI setup and prompting you to use InstallScript Scan to convert this setup."
^This does not occur on my InstallScript MSI installation, using the Install Monitoring process. It appears to be either a bug or a version incompatibility to me. But let me know if there is anything else to try on my end.

This InstallScript scan functionality is very important for this effort, and will greatly sway our decision on whether to buy a licensed version of AdminStudio.

Thanks in advance!
Dan Morgan, Act! LLC

[moconn]

Hi @dmorgan --

It may be that the installer in question is not an InstallScript MSI, but rather either an MSI with an EXE setup wrapper/launcher or a pure InstallScript setup. Thus, the wizard to perform this conversion does not launch.

I would open a Case with our Support team to help troubleshoot the issue further. If the installer is truly an InstallScript MSI setup, then there may be a misconfiguration with our Repackager, or with the installer that's being repackaged.  Support could help your further investigate.