cancel
Showing results for 
Show  only  | Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
joerg_arnold
Level 3

Repackaging DWG TrueView 2020 - runs user advertisement

Hallo,

I have run out of ideas concerning the following problem:

our organization needs to roll out the free CAD-Viewer DWG TrueView 2020 via SCCM. If I run the silent installation using the command setup.exe /Q /W (and optionally /T setup.ini to use the ini during install) the installation runs fine. The problem arises when I start up the TrueView application after I change from my admin account to any normal user account. On the first start under any normal user msiexec starts up to run a kind of an advertisement (please wait before Windows configures DWG TrueView 2020) before DWG TrueView runs its own first start initialization. It seems not to be an advertised shortcut because the same behaviour occurs when I directly start the exe behind the shortcut. This behaviour is OS independent, I tested it under Win7 Enterprise and Win10 Enterprise.

I also have checked the msi-file that setup.exe uses with Installshield 2019R2 Pro and even the old Wise Package Studio. Wise Package shows the msi is set to per machine installation and Installshield shows under Setup Design Allow Advertise. In Installshield I created a mst-file with the option Disallow advertisement. The mst gets applied via the setup ini by adding TRANSFORMS=%platform%\dwgviewr\DWG.mst in the AOEM section of the provided setup.ini. The mst file does get applied successfully, I can verify that because I renamed the desktop shortcut. all this has no change noticeable.

Then I recorded the changes made by the advertisement and TrueViews first run init with repackager. all registry entries went to HKCU an nothing to HKLM. So I went somewhat experimental and moved the recorded registry informations to HKLM and built and installed the msi. User advertisement still runs with the side effect that now the file type associations are busted. So that made it worse, as expected.

All the tests have been run with the install files stored locally. I need the user advertisement to be gone because the normal user won't have access to the network share where the setup is stored and the user advertisement will fail.

How can I disable the user advertisement? Please advise.

Labels (1)
0 Kudos
(4) Replies
MarkusLatz
Level 8

Hi @joerg_arnold ,

the installation of Autodesk DWG TrueView 2020 has a "2nd stage installer" which installs on the 1st run for a new user a "per user" install to install all required local user files and registry keys. Without these "local" files/keys Autodesk DWG TrueView won't run.

But to run this 2nd stage install you do not need the original installation sources, just the local cached msi file.

So I suppose something in general is wrong with your local installation, because we have build many Autodesk DWG TrueView packages for our customers which use SCCM to install. And this works without any problems.

regards

Markus

0 Kudos

Hallo Markus! Thank you for your reply!

I'd like to clarify: The installation and the Applications just runs fine. I'd like to get rid of the "2nd stage installer" to avoid issues that might arise if we have to clear the local SCCM cache on the clients for some reason. In general, user advertisements are considered undesirable installer behaviour. But it sounds like this is nearly impossible to get rid of because of the setup und application design. Or am I wrong? I hope so...

0 Kudos

Hi Joerg,

you do not run into "issues" if you clear the SCCM cache, because all required files to run the 2nd stage installer are installed on the local pc (msi is cached in %systemroot%\Installer folder and the other files needed are installed with the regular per machine installation)

The reason why Autodesk did this is, because they need write access to a few files. And in a normal environment a normal user do not have write access to ProgramFiles or ProgramData. and to separate user settings they install these files in the users profile folders.

Sure, you can modify the dwgviewr.msi (with a transform) and put all files and registry keys at common locations were all users have write access. Hhm, probable you have to modify also a few configuration files.

But with msi and InstallShield everything is possible 🙂

regards

Markus

0 Kudos

We agreed touse the installer as it is because we are lacking the time (and I lack the experience with Installshield) to pull this off. Thank you anyway! 🙂

0 Kudos