Question to repackagers!!!

[BCM4309]

To those of you who have repackaged Winzip. When you install your package and a new user logs in does Windows Installer run briefly to create keys under HKEY_CURRENT_USER? Actually this applies to any application that creates keys under HKEY_CURRENT_USER. My management is having a problem with this "repair" functionality happening yet they want the application fully configured based on our company standards.

Help!!!

Bryan

[stankjones]

Bryan does your company use roaming profiles?

I've had this problem, I've chosen to remove the advertisement from the shortcut. (works most of the time)

However with roaming profiles the roaming profile over rights the HKEY_CURRENT_USER settings, so unless the user lets the setup run at least once they will always get this.

[Pfeiffer]

The quick answer is Yes.
Not only will Winzip have the HKCU repaired but any files that might sit in a USER specific directory (%UPERPROFILE% etc...) This should be a very quick process in the case of Winzip, I am suprised anyone noticed.

How are you deploying the application. SMS, Zen, in the PC build???

[BCM4309]

Pfeiffer,

Our project / management team didn't want Windows Installer doing anything without the "user" initiating the process. In the case of Winzip, if a new user logged in and right clicked on "My Computer", Windows Installer would launch to "self-heal" Winzip to make available the context menu sensitive "stuff". This "self-healing" process was very fast but still unacceptable to management (sigh).

We are deploying our packages through ZEN. I resolved this issue by making a few of my packages "per-user". I had to delete 6 or so things from the project to get "per-user" to work properly, specifically the references to "ISInitAllUsers" and the alluser custom actions installshield creates on the fly.

Thanks,

Bryan

[Pfeiffer]

Our managers must have come from the same school. 😛

[CChong]

I removed it and at least now it does not do the repair upon logon - only when the user starts WinZip.

[CChong]

Bryan,

I ran into this problem when repackaging WinZip as well. The recommended solution from WinZip is as follows (from their web site) :-



"Silent (On Demand) Installs (AUTOINST.TXT)
In some network environments, WinZip may repeat the installation process (including the Setup Wizard) each time it is run from a workstation. This occurs when the network environment does not preserve WinZip's user registry settings between WinZip sessions.
If you encounter this situation, you can eliminate the repetitive installation process by creating a file called AUTOINST.TXT in each WinZip folder. This file, which must be a plain text file, must contain this exact text:

I agree to the WinZip Computing License Agreement

If this file is present and contains the specified text, WinZip will silently re-create the required registry information as needed each time it is run and your users will not see the Setup Wizard.

Note: if you are upgrading to WinZip 8.1 from a previous version of WinZip installed on a shared network drive, we suggest that you uninstall the previous version of WinZip (and delete any files left in the WinZip folder) before installing WinZip 8.1 and adding AUTOINST.TXT. Alternatively, you can simply look for the file WZSHLEXT.DLL in the WinZip folder. If it exists, delete the file. "



This solved the problem with WinZip for me. As for other apps, well I wish all the solutions to repackaging problems were as easy as this one.

Regards,
Dave

[BCM4309]

DEvans,

I used this in the beginning but it doesn't allow for a customized installation, at least I couldn't get it to. We have a customized install that we want to present to our user population.

I was able to achieve the results I wanted with a "PERUSER" installation of our software.

Later gator,

Bryan