Collection of Useful Posts

Issue: After upgrade to new version, a trust certificate import prompt comes up as older version of Acrobat had Trusted Certificates recorded over time. Analysis: The Certificates are saved in user profiles at this location: %appdata%\ Adobe\Acrobat\ <version> \Security\addressbook.acrodata If the file is copied to new version Security folder for each users then it will not prompt for import, and all the Trust Certificates will be imported to new version. Solution: Create a custom VBScript to copy addressbook.acrodata from older versions to new version for each users (e.g. upgrading from versions 9.0/10.0 to 11.0) for Win7 Add it to Execute Immediate Installation Sequence after InstallFinalize Copy_Trust_Cert.vbs Script: dim arcfolder, arc10folder, arc9folder Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") Set objFolder = objFSO.GetFolder("C:\Users") Set colSubfolders = objFolder.Subfolders ...

Active setup provides a solution when the aim is to deliver user based components when no advertised entry points exist in an MSI package. Most packages will contain some kind on entry point; commonly an advertised shortcut. When launching this kind of shortcut Windows Installer will check the keypath of the component the shortcut belongs to and verifies that the component is installed. If it is found to be missing Windows Install will kick off a repair. This provides a great solution for installing current user data when the package is not installed in the user context. It is also a very good reason why you should never mix machine and user data in the same feature. So what do you do if there are no shortcuts to advertise? Active Setup will solve the problem. An MSI package has been created to install an Outlook plug-in. This package installs both user and machine data. User preferences are stored as a combination of HKCU registry and a XML file written to %USERPROFILE%. As t...

The issue on many blogs and articles is around creating the 'deployment.config' and 'deployment.properties' files for an enterprise deployment.  In my case i wanted to set the security level to 'Medium', but everytime I open the Java control panel it was set to the default HIGH setting. Solution  1 Create the following directory path 'C:\Windows\sun\java\deployment' 2 Create a file called 'deployment.config' in this directory and open with Notepad. Copy the two line below #################### deployment.system.config = file\:\\C\:\\WINDOWS\\Sun\\Java\\Deployment\\deployment.properties deployment.system.config.mandatory = true #################### 3 Create a file called 'deployment.properties' in this directory and open with Notepad. Copy the four line below (# deployment.security.level.locked optional) ###################### deployment.security.level=MEDIUM deployment.browser.path=C:\Progr...

Windows Installer is an engine for performing transactional installations. When installing a product for the fist time, most often few or no files to be installed are already present on the machine. But when upgrading or patching a product, most often those files are replaced so copies must be kept if an error occurs and the installation needs to roll back. The following describes where and why Windows Installer may require so much disk space. Extracted files A bootstrap application may be required for a number of reasons. A bootstrap application may compressed setup files into the bootstrap application, or they might all be included in a self-extracting archive. Bootstrap applications may also download files from a web site either directly to a location on disk or indirectly to the Internet files cache. This location is typically under %TEMP%. If the extractor did not delete these files, you can delete these files after installation has completed. Note that some installers m...

While launching from Admin account or doing “Run as Admin” it was launching properly but when launched from the standard-user account, though it was launching but GUI was not coming properly and before launching, it throws the error that some particular Skin file is missing. I checked in installation folder and skin file was there but still while launching I was getting the error, but when launched from Admin account or using “Run as admin” it was launching properly with proper GUI and no skin file missing error. On exploring further I found that application was installed by admin account and it created some entries in HKCU, and these entries contain the path and name of skin file to be used. So when we launched the application from Standard user account then these entries were empty in HKCU for Standard user. So to solve this problem while re-packaging I used Active Setup . Active Setup provides a great solution for installing current user data when the package is not installed ...

As we continue our journey through shims provided by the Windows Shim Infrastructure, we have reached a point where I can no longer avoid a discussion of the shims contained in acredir.dll: RedirectFiles and RedirectRegistry. Last time around, I pointed out how to redirect the registry using VirtualRegistry, which requires a command line argument which (for a very long time) was not publicly documented. Instead, a lot of people have been using RedirectRegistry, for two important and logical reasons. First, the name just sounds so tempting, since that's exactly what you likely want to do. Second, the act.chm actually does document these shims. So, I understand why people would rationally flock to these shims. However, one of the internal questions that I address quite a bit: why can't I get xxx application to work with the RedirectFiles shim? Am I putting in the command line wrong? (and the command line follows) So, I'll just say this. You shouldn't use these shims...

The last time around , I suggested that you avoid using the acredir.dll shims - RedirectRegistry and RedirectFiles. As alternatives, I recommended VirtualRegistry and CorrectFilePaths. Of course, I have already gone into some details on how to use VirtualRegistry to achieve that, but I haven't gone in to any details on CorrectFilePaths yet. And, unfortunately, the documentation isn't much help as of the 5.0.1 release (as I said - stay tuned to the documentation for future releases, as this is something we are working on). In fact, here is all that the documentation tells you: "Corrects file paths that changed between Windows 95 or Windows 98 and Windows XP Professional. This compatibility fix works by converting the file paths to the correct location for Windows XP Professional in the APIs. For example, a Windows 95 path of C:\Windows\Write.exe is converted to C:\Windows\System32\Write.exe." While this is true, it is not comprehensive (and is, theref...