Musings of an Application Packager

Basically, as an alternative to install a device driver using the DifxApp merge module (with Windows Installer), you can stage the device driver into the driver store in Windows 7 & 8 using a native utility called " pnputil .exe".  This is IDEAL for situations where you're using non MSI packaging methods and application virtualisation technologies. i.e. Apps that require a device driver, which should make virtualisation possible if you script the pre-launch logic to install the device driver physically .  Even though the files contained within the virtualised package are virtual, once they are staged into the virtual store, the drivers become physically part of it. For instance, in App-V 5, you could use a StartVirtualEnvironment event action.  For Symantec SWV packages, this would be achieved via the OnPostActivate action. What is the Driver Store ? http://technet.microsoft.com/ en-us/library/cc731478.aspx The driver store is exactly what the name s...

I first encountered this issue today, where the client had packaged two versions of the SQL Server Reporting Services Client Printing ActiveX.  There are separate version for SQL Server 2005 and 2008 Reporting Services.  However, both of these ActiveX controls have identical filenames (rsclientprint.dll). This was a manually created package, and the following guide suggests if you don't allow standard users to install via ActiveX controls via GPO, then to package the ActiveX using the following method. So how do we know if these ActiveX controls are meant to run side-by-side or not? ( The following excerpt is from : http://www.kodyaz.com/articles/client-side-printing-silent-deployment-of-rsclientPrint.aspx ) Reporting Services Client-Side Printing and Silent Deployment of RSClientPrint.cab ActiveX file. RSClientPrint.cab is a Microsoft ActiveX control that provides client side printing for Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services reports. The ActiveX ...