ThinApp on Remko's Blog

Return username instead of computername in a ThinApp

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 11:50:07 +0000

One of the lesser known features of VMware ThinApp is that you can supply a Virtual Computer name.

This is documented as follows in the package.ini reference guide:

VirtualComputerName Parameter
The VirtualComputerName parameter determines whether to rename the computer name, to avoid naming conflicts between the capture process and the deployment process.

Office 2010 very slow when ThinApped

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 09:00:11 +0000

This blog is about an issue with VMware ThinApp and Office 2010 I discovered a while ago.

Environment
Customer is using Office 2003 natively on a Citrix XenApp 5 environment. Some users had a business need for Office 2010, therefore a ThinApp with Office 2010 was created (this customer uses ThinApp for App-Virt).

To make the picture complete: Thinapp version is 4.7.2-771812 and Office version is 2010 SP1 (14.0.6024.1000) .

Symptoms
Users complained that Office 2010 was very slow. Most noticeable was Outlook 2010 which was completely unusable.

Outlook startup time was minutes rather than seconds and while starting it seemed to delay on loading profile.

When Outlook was finally started, switching between folders and layouts felt really sluggish.

For example when switching from Calendar to Inbox took a few seconds, after which it would take almost 20 seconds for the e-mails to show. Switching between e-mail would take 2-3 seconds to display the contents in the reading pane.

Running multiple instances of Lync (howto)

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 22:55:37 +0000

Yesterday I showed a video demonstrating it's possible to run multiple instances of the Microsoft Lync 2010 client simultaneously.

A little warning before we go on: the Lync Client was not designed to run with multiple instances. Or better said: it was designed specifically to prevent this, let's see how it does this:

On startup Lync calls an internal function called COcAppNoUI::InitializeMainInstance. In this function it creates a Mutex named "Office Communicator_" in the Global namespace. It also creates an Event in the Global namespace called "COMMUNICATOR-".

When a second instance of Lync is launched it checks if the Global Mutex exists and if it does it fires the Global Event. The Main instance has a thread that waits for this event using the WaitForMultipleObjects API.

Harmony Client crashes upon exit

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:37:08 +0000

Today I was troubleshooting the application "Harmony Client" which crashed upon exiting:

The application had been thinapped and the error only appeared when starting the thinapped version.

Error 372 in Thinapped Visual Basic Application

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 22:34:29 +0000

Today I was troubleshooting a Thinapped Visual Basic Application. The application halts with a Run-time error '372' when trying to run a report:

Microsoft KB article kb942870 hints to an ActiveX component that is registered into HKCU instead of HKLM.

A trace with the ThinApp Log Monitor reveals that the application is looking for an ActiveX component under HKCU: