May 3rd, 2012· Microsoft Word 2003 virtualized with ThinApp does not read registry values for international settings.
· Microsoft Office 2010 can now be deployed on systems with Office 2010 natively installed.
· Virtual Microsoft KMS-licensed packages can now run concurrently with other virtual KMS-licensed packages.
· ThinApp packages now support SMB 2.0 protocol for sandbox access between Microsoft Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows 2008, or Windows 2003 operating systems.
· A virtualized ThinApp application fails, when you run the application on one Windows 7 system and set the sandbox location to a share on another Windows 7 system.
· Wire 200 application virtualized using ThinApp fails to start.
· On Microsoft Windows XP, Victor player virtualized using ThinApp 4.6.1 or 4.7 does not detect the UDF files (Universal Disk Format) present on the CD drive.
· ThinApp fails to start the WordPad application in a virtualized Windows 7 operating system.
· The list of email recipients for a Web-based application is empty if you access it through virtualized Internet Explorer 6.
When you run virtualized Visual Lighting application on ESX host or Workstation 7 host and perform a specific function, the application displays the following error message:
· Calculation-Error Message There is not enough virtual memory available to perform the calculation! Try closing other applications or increasing your virtual memory to a minimum of 1500MB. Click the 'Learn More...' button below for instructions Error 5
When you start a radiology application virtualized with ThinApp 4.6, the application fails with the following error message:
· xpdyinfo.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience
· xhost.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience
· xgwingea.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience
When you attempt to start the virtualized instance of JT2Go application, the application fails with the following error message:
· Unable to load DLL C:\THinapp\SW\JT2Go\Products\JT2Go\VisView.exe -> mfc90.dll the specified module could not be found.
· You can start only one instance of the virtualized Misys Tiger application at a time.
· A virtualized instance of Internet Explorer 6 fails to open a Windows shortcut to a folder, and displays the CLASS_E_CLASSNOTAVAILABLE error.
· When you exit the virtualized AGT Infogestion 4 application, the files present in the Sandboxfolder are not deleted.
When you try to start Lewis Digant application (Java based) on Windows XP SP3 with ThinApp 4.7.1, the following pop-up message is displayed:
· Unable to validate your license. Please contact Technical Support.
On Microsoft Windows 7 or later, when you try to create a ThinApp package MSI file which is more than 2GB in size, the MSI creation fails with the following error:
· The system cannot open the device or file specified.
· When you start Firefox virtualized on a 32-bit operating system and try to open a PDF file on a 64-bit operating system, the application fails.
· After you login to Infinitt with virtual Internet Explorer 6, the application closes without giving any warning or error message.
· When you start virtualized Wellcore Field Completions application, the user interface elements are not visible. This is observed when you use Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP Service Pack3.
· The help file in virtualized CaliberRM 2008 Service Pack 1 is not accessible.
· When you virtualize Internet Explorer 6 as per instructions in the ThinApp User Guide, some specific security updates are not applied.
· When you start a scanner function in virtualized Epic Summer application, the scanner user interface fails to appear. This issue is observed for Fujitsu scanners on Windows XP Service Pack 3.
· When you start virtualized CtrlWORK 2.5.10 application pop ups fail to appear. This is observed on Windows XP Service Pack 3 with Internet Explorer 6.
· In Microsoft Windows XP, when you use Appsync to update a ThinApp application captured in 4.6.1 or earlier to an application captured in 4.6.2 or later the application fails.
· Log monitor now provides advanced logging and filtering settings to control log levels and formats. These settings can be changed by modifying the Capture.ini and LogFilter.ini files. Customers should typically ignore these settings unless they are suggested by VMware support to make changes for troubleshooting.
November 28th, 2011· The ThinApp Setup Capture wizard includes an option to manage with Horizon Application Manager. When the checkbox is selected, ThinApp checks if the Horizon agent is installed natively on the client and is running. If the Horizon agent is found, the ThinApp package reports to the Horizon agent so that it can be controlled by Horizon Application Manager.
· Horizon Application Manager entitlement allows the delivery of ThinApp packaged applications to specified users and groups. The Horizon agent authorizes a ThinApp package to open, based on entitlements.
· ThinApp packages are registered by Horizon Application Manager and delivered to end points.
· The administrator can track usage of ThinApp packages by using Horizon Application Manager monitoring and reporting.
· The administrator can configure an Organizational URL for end points missing the Horizon agent.
August 27th, 2011· Multiple enhancements have been made in the ThinDirect component, and outstanding known issues addressed, to improve performance and reliability.
· ThinDirect now supports the redirection of all browser pages except a specified list of URLs, instead of only supporting the redirection of only a list of specified URLs.
Example:
· [VirtIE6.exe]
· -www.vmware.com
· *
· New parameters have been added to the thinreg utility to enhance search and exclude functionality. See New Parameters in thinreg.exe.
· The thinreg utility can now uninstall applications without dependence on .vbs file association to run the uninstall script.
· Microsoft Office 2007 application startup times have been improved by approximately 30%.
· The IgnoreDDEMessages parameter has been added to the Package.ini file. This parameter, which is automatically set for virtualized Internet Explorer 6 packages, causes an application to ignore any DDE messages that it receives, meaning that it can be used to ensure Document Open operations always launch in the native application and not an open virtual application.
February 28th, 2011· Improved support for Microsoft Office 2010 applications.
· Known issues related to Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8 have been addressed.
· New options have been added to the package.ini file.
· S x S COM is now supported.
· More than 160 known issues have been resolved, resulting in improved application support.
October 4th, 2010· Full support for Internet Explorer 6 running on Windows 7.
· ThinApp has been successfully used to help customers virtualize and isolate many browser related issues such as ActiveX controls and various versions of Java.
· Adds the ability to “Harvest” Internet Explorer 6 from an existing Windows XP instance.
· Adds a new “ThinDirect” feature which allows redirecting of URLs from native to virtual browsers.
· Adds support for registering virtual services as boot-time applications
March 25th, 2010Full support for Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2:
· One of the most anticipated features of ThinApp 4.5 is full support for Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 (both 32 and 64bit editions).
New utility: Relink – upgrade packages in seconds without repackaging or rebuilding:
· Relink can be run against existing ThinApp packages in either .exe or .msi format and automatically upgrades them use the latest and greatest version of the ThinApp runtime and package format. Relink accepts wildcard filenames and can work in recursive mode to upgrade all packages located under some parent directory. Relink is very handy if you have packages without associated projects and you want to upgrade them to support Windows 7.
· Relink usage looks like this: relink [-Recursive] ExistingPackage [ExistingPackage...]
· Relink will automatically create a backup of files it upgrades, so make sure you have enough disk space for 2 copies of your packages. Currently the AppLink feature requires that both the base package and the dependency packages both be current ThinApp 4.5 packages if either is built with 4.5. Relink makes it fast and easy to upgrade any packages needed. With relink, there is no need to recapture applications that work fine on other platforms.
Improved support for MSI packages:
· Support for >2GB single file MSIs. As applications have grown in size over the years, it has become more and more common to generate deployment packages larger than 2GB however the MSI/CAB file formats do not support files larger than 2GB. ThinApp has always supported creation of EXE/DAT packages of any arbitrary size (100GB or more), and now with ThinApp 4.5, an industry first, ThinApp generated MSI packages can be larger than 2GB without requiring separate CABs or data files. Because native MSI & CAB don’t natively support file sizes above 2GB we pulled off some clever tricks to make this work. In the past if you wanted to deploy something like AutoCAD as an MSI package to end-users you had to split it up into multiple CAB files and wrap this in a ZIP file or other container (ZIP32 doesn’t support files larger than 4GB either). It simplifies many processes if you can work with one single file for deployment or point end-users to a single http link and tell them to “just run this file”. As before, ThinApp MSI files are still compatible with all versions of Windows Installer so you don’t need to worry about what your clients have installed.
· MSI Install now twice as fast. MSI installation times have also dramatically improved in ThinApp 4.5. Compared with ThinApp 4.0.4, installing a ThinApp generated MSI is approximately twice as fast for both the case where the source MSI is located on the local hard drive or a network share.
· Fast random access to MSIs from ThinApp Management SDK. The ThinApp Management SDK can be used to access data inside of ThinApp generated MSI files. In ThinApp 4.0.4, in order to access that data the entire CAB file needed to be decompressed. In ThinApp 4.5 we now have fast random access to data inside of MSI files so there is very little performance difference between operating on a ThinApp EXE/primary data container and a ThinApp MSI.
I/O performance improvements for VDI:
· In 4.5, use of the system swap file is greatly reduced which means few disk I/O writes occur. In VDI environments with shared storage this will effectively allows you to support larger numbers of users per storage array. For example, in ThinApp 4.0.4 Word 2007 requires approximately 99MB in page file backing and in ThinApp 4.5 this is reduced to 88MB. When running multiple applications from a shared suite of applications the saving are even bigger. Launching Word, Excel, and PowerPoint simultaneously results in a 37MB page file backing savings with ThinApp 4.5.
Memory sharing improvements for suites of applications and Terminal Server:
· In shared multi-user environments it is common to run many instances of a single application. For example 10 users may be logged into a single Terminal Server box each running their own instance of Microsoft Word. In ThinApp 4.5 pages from one instance of an application will be shared with other users running the same application even if they are logged into different sessions. This memory sharing also works with suites of applications like Office where a set of common DLLs are loaded into different applications (Word & Excel). For example, the MSO.dll library is loaded by all Office applications but only one copy of the DLL is actually present in memory if one user runs Word and another runs Excel. In order for this memory sharing to occur, the same package must be run by both users from the same location on disk (or network share).
Startup time improvements:
· For many users, application startup time is one of the most important criteria for user acceptance. In ThinApp 4.5, many applications will start significantly faster. For example, Power Point 2007 loads approximately twice as fast compared with previous versions of ThinApp when launched from a local hard drive with a cold disk cache.
Bandwidth consumption improvements:
· Compared with ThinApp 4.0.4, ThinApp 4.5 typically uses less bandwidth to stream an application from a network share during initial application startup. For Office 2007 applications, the amount of bandwidth consumed to stream an application from a network share has been reduced by approximately 50% (half the bandwidth required from 4.0.4). This improvement comes from a new build optimization process that performs static analysis on executable data and arranges packages such that less executable code needs to be present on client systems in order to begin execution.
New package.ini parameter: OptimizeFor:
· ThinApp 4.5 adds a new optional package.ini parameter called "OptimizedFor" which can be set to either "Memory" (default) or "Disk". ThinApp's new performance and memory sharing features may result in larger package files. In the worst case scenario packages can be twice as large as before but in most cases the size difference, if any, is will be less significant. If disk size is more important than memory utilization and startup performance, you can set "OptimizeFor=Disk" in package.ini under [BuildOptions]. The result of such a change will cause package sizes to be similar as 4.0.4 and lower. In ThinApp 4.5, virtual executable files such as EXEs and DLLs are not compressed inside of packages on disk even when CompressionType=fast is enabled unless OptimizeFor=Disk is also set.
Support for capturing on partially non-clean PC:
· In order to capture applications using Setup Capture, you need a clean instance of Windows so that a proper install diff can be generated. The most popular way to capture applications is to use a clean instance of Windows using VMware Workstation to run the installation and revert back to a clean snapshot. Guest VMs are a lot more usable with vmware tools installed in the guest however vmware tools installs some libraries such as a newer C runtime which could cause a resulting install capture diff to miss such libraries if the application also installs them. In ThinApp 4.5, when installing an MSI based application ThinApp 4.5 can automatically detect files and registry entries that the application requires even if those entries already exists on the capture PC. This results in correct captures even in the case where some libraries are installed on the PC. Our solution for detecting dependent registry keys and files is generic and should work with other libraries but at this point we only test the VMware Tools scenario and using a clean PC is still best practice. Our detection logic only works when both the libraries and captured application using MSI based installation.
Quality Reporting 1.0:
· ThinApp 4.5 includes a new feature called Quality Reporting that can optionally be enabled to allow virtualized applications to report quality metrics to VMWare servers. When enabled, applications try to report the following information to qualityreporting.vmware.com via a simple http query once every 10 days.
· Operating System version the application ran on
· Name, Version, and vendor of the application
· The Inventory name you selected for the application
· Start and cumulative total execution time for the application
· Number of executions of the application
· Number of times crashes were detected during execution
· Some clarifications about this feature
· This feature doesn't transmit any data that can identify you, your company, or your license key
· VMware doesn't record the IP address of clients making connections to report data
· Enabling the feature does not impact the performance of the application
· Data reported to the server is small (a few kilobytes) and occurs once every 10 days so has almost no network impact
· This feature is invisible to end-users. There is no impact if network connectivity is unavailable.
Journaling of Virtual file system meta data and virtual registry:
· This feature was included in ThinApp 4.0.4, but largely remained a secret. The purpose of journaling is to support the ability to recover gracefully in the event disk writes are incomplete or the disk state becomes inconsistent when sets of disk writes are not flushed atomically. Journaling is used by advanced file systems such as NTFS and most modern database systems but is absent in simpler file systems like FAT32. With previous versions of ThinApp there were cases where sandboxed virtual registry and file system could become corrupted.
· Some examples include
· Incomplete disk writes when sandbox is hosted on network share and network dies
· Incomplete disk writes to USB devices if device is not properly ejected
· Incomplete disk writes if application terminates abnormally during write operation
· Incomplete disk writes when power failure occurs
Improved support for application white listing (AppLocker for Windows 7):
· Application white listing systems allow desktop administrators to limit the set of applications a user can execute to a specific set included in a "white list." If the user tries to run an application not found in this white list, he/she will get an Access Denied message. This type of policy is used to ensure users cannot run applications downloaded from the Internet or brought in on USB keys. In ThinApp 4.0.4 and below, some "stub" executables for child processes were dynamically generated at runtime making it more labor intensive for Administrators to pre-define a white list which included all the processes the application might execute. ThinApp 4.5 removed the need to generate "stub" executables making it easier to include a ThinApp package and all of it's child processes in a whitelist. As an example, Office 2007 installs a service called MDM.exe which ThinApp runs as a virtual service when any Office application is first started. In previous versions of ThinApp it was necessary to include the ThinApp user entry points as well as the dynamically generated “stub” process name for MDM.exe in the white list. In ThinApp 4.5, white listing systems such as AppLocker will only see a multiple request to execute user entry points for virtual child processes where the child EXE is located inside the package. Effectively, if you white list a ThinApp package, you are white listing everything inside the package as well. If a virtualized application tries to execute a process not contained in the package, the normal white listing logic will occur.
User Interface Improvements:
· ThinApp 4.5 has a new "Quick Start Video" to walk you through the process of capturing your first application and a some detail on each of the options you see exposed in the Setup Capture wizard. The video is only a few minutes long and If you haven't used ThinApp, it's a great way to get started. We've found that ThinApp is being used by an ever widening audience, it's not just for techie desktop administrators anymore. The ThinApp team also conducted some usability studies and made some changes based on the feedback we've received. Our long term goal is bring application virtualization to the most novice users while retaining the power and functionality expected by power users.
Quality improvements & Wine test:
· Application compatibility is our #1 goal with ThinApp. If the applications you need to virtualize don't work then all the other features in the world don't matter. In ThinApp 4.5 we've resolved more than 300 issues and extended our testing in many directions. ThinApp has Quality Assurance teams in Palo Alto, Mumbia, Bangalore, and Beijing who have run through a suite of over seven million API test, 40,000+ automated application test, and 10,000+ manual application and feature test for ThinApp 4.5. These teams run test on a wide array of operating systems including NT4, Windows 2k, XP (32/64), Vista (32/64), Win7 (32/64), Server 2003, Server 2008 (32/64), Server 2008 R2 and a wide array of applications. Additionally the ThinApp engineering team has been working diligently with the Linux Wine team to collaborate on suites of automated test. A significant number of test fixes made by ThinApp engineering were contributed back to the Wine project, especially targeted at reducing the number of test failures on Windows 7. The ThinApp engineering team has also set up ‘WineTestBot’, a service which allows Wine developers to run tests on VMware Virtual Machines which run a large selection of Windows versions. The result of the collaboration is both Wine and ThinApp improve their quality.
ThinApp Community Portal for Applications:
· In addition to the ThinApp Quality Reporting mechanism, ThinApp users can more actively participate in sharing packaging information with the community via the ThinApp Community Portal. The ThinApp community portal allows users to publish and share their ThinApp project files and packaging tips, and search for information about applications that other users have packaged
February 6th, 2010This release adds the following enhancements:
· Journaling support for the virtual registry. This support prevents data corruption when an application fails during a write operation, a power failure, or an incomplete disk flush on a removable disk.
· German and Japanese versions of the ThinApp User's Guide.
This release resolves these issues:
· Microsoft SQL Server Express cannot run on Windows Vista Enterprise edition.
· AutoCAD crashes on startup.
· When you specify a sandbox location from the command line, NoMachine NX Client fails.
· When you capture and configure Microsoft Outlook 2007 on a Japanese operating system, you cannot create .pst files.
· MicroStrategy Server cannot generate Microsoft Excel data through the Windows Installer.
· The thinreg.exe utility cannot unregister packages when you redirect the Start menu to UNC shares.
· Mapping large virtual files into memory fails for the IMobileTC application.
· When you use the Chinese version of Internet Explorer 6 with Service Pack 1, the Security and Advanced tabs of the Internet Options dialog box appear in English.
· The IBM Rational 7.0.1 License Key Administrator cannot detect virtual registry keys.
· The 16-bit component of Fiserv Organization Profitability System (OPS) cannot detect .dll files in the virtual environment.
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