Windows 8 on Remko's Blog

The publisher could not be verified when launching an application with RES Workspace Manager

Fri, 13 Sep 2013 15:35:25 +0000

Today I was troubleshooting a warning message that popped up when launching a network application with RES Workspace Manager:

Usually this is a simple fix: add the servername (file://server) to the Local Intranet zone:

That worked when I launched the application directly. However when launching the application with RES Workspace Manager I would still get the warning. Even stranger: when I clicked Cancel the application would still be launched.

ClickOnce Applications in Enterprise Environments

Mon, 05 Aug 2013 16:51:21 +0000

ClickOnce is a Microsoft technology that enables an end user to install an application from the web without administrative permissions.

That's great isn't it?
While ClickOnce may sound great to developers it's actually a nightmare for Enterprise administrators because they try to prevent users from installing software themselves.

ClickOnce also incorporates an Automatic Updates mechanism which means that users might run different or not tested/approved versions...

Virtual Environments
It get's even worse in virtual environments such as VDI and SBC where machines are often non-persistent. Each time the users starts the application they will see a screen similar to the one below while they actually download and install it over and over again:

If the environment is persistent, it's not guaranteed that the user works on the same machine each day. This means that the application will be installed on every box the user ever logs onto...

How does it work?
In order to understand how we can best treat ClickOnce applications we need to understand how they work since MSDN documentation does not describe this in detail.

Windows 8 comes with free hardware/software inventory tool

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 11:26:44 +0000

Yesterday I wrote about the Windows 8 CP WebSetup installer and told you that the Application Compatibility check creates a few XML files in the folder %AppData%\Local\Microsoft\WebSetup\Panther.

So what can we do with them?

The XML files are created by a separate exe in the WebsetupExpanded folder called WicaInventory.exe with the arguments: /apps /fast /ext "exe,sys" /output <XML file> /log <LOG file>

In my case the commandline was:

batch Download

WicaInventory.exe /apps /fast /ext "exe,sys" /output "C:\Users\rweijnen\AppData\Local\Microsof\WebSetup\Panther\WICA_Programs_REMKOLAPTOP.xml" /log "C:\Users\rweijnen\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WebSetup\Panther" "c:\Users\rweijnen\AppData\Local\Temp\1fd52b5b-2609-4156-ac02-49dca27a0a8d\WebSetupExpanded"

Let's see what's in WICA_Programs_REMKOLAPTOP.xml.

Undocumented commandline switches for Windows 8 CP

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 23:29:18 +0000

The Windows 8 Consumer Preview is downloaded as a Web Installer called Windows8-ConsumerPreview-setup.exe.

On my system the Web Installer crashed while checking Application Compatibility:

I clicked the Debug option and launched the Visual Studio debugger: