Independent App-V Blog

I got this info from our internal forum and thought it was interesting enough to share with you.

When you are sequencing an application the Windows Installer service might give you an error during monitoring phase.

Error 1719. Windows Installer service could not be accessed. Contact your support personnel to verify that it is properly registered and enabled.

When the application is installed without the sequencer monitoring, the installation finishes without an error and the application works fine.

In this particular situation the sequencer was running Windows Server 2003 and was accessed remotely through a Remote Desktop Connection (mstsc.exe).

The solution to this issue is create a console RDP session to the sequencer machine instead of an regular RDP session. 

You can connect to a console session through the following command:

mstsc /console /v:<server>

Thanks to my colleagues for publishing and solving this issue!

update:
“mstsc /console” has been replaced with “mstsc /admin” on newer Windows Operating Systems (Windows 2008 and Windows Vista SP1 and up). So the correct syntax would then be:

mstsc /admin /v:<server>

Thanks Floris for pointing this out to me.

Microsoft has announced Service Pack 1 for App-V 4.5 recently. It will be released as part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Package (MDOP) 2009 R2 in late October 2009.

Once available, App-V 4.5 SP1 can be deployed immediately to production environments running XP, Vista, Windows7, and Windows Server 32-bit platforms. For customers preparing to run App-V on 64-bit Windows Client and Server platforms they can download App-V 4.6 Beta at Microsoft Connect. App-V 4.6 will be available in H1 2010…”

Some of the new features are:

Official support for Windows Server 2008 R2, both on the Server and on the Client side

Official support for Windows 7 (32bit) (actually this has been introduced with 4.5CU1 already)

Seamless integration into Win7 User Interface (Pin Icons, Jumplistst)

Microsft AppLocker integration (use AppLocker to control Virtual applications)

Support for BranchCache (not sure if that applies to all protocols. MS names http only)

Support for Bitlocker ToGo

3rd Party LDAP Integration

Read more at source.

Credits to Falko Gräfe for this text.

My collegae Falko Gräfe has a dedicated website (www.kirx.org) about App-V related information.

He recently pointed me to his latest publication, an App-V Sequencing Recipe template.

The “Sequencing How-to Template” collects lots of the information that might be important to re use an application package or to create a new App-V package based on an older how-to guide. It contains fields for each value that normaly has to be entered or modified during sequencing with space to make notes about unexpected tasks.

The original idea came from the old “SoftGrid Sequencing Recipe Template” that was provided by Softricity in the past and never seemed to be updated and published by Microsoft.

The template maps the different steps in the sequencing process (preparation, sequencing wizard, wrap up) to documentation paragraphs, fields and tables. So it’s easy to document and easy find information back.

Download the template and read more at source.

Updated with some info, thanks to collegae Falko Gräfe.

Did you see:
http://blogs.msdn.com/rds/archive/2009/09/04/what-s-the-difference-between-a-rds-cal-and-a-ts-cal.aspx

Microsoft announced that Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) for Terminal Server will be included in both the Windows 2008 TS CAL and 2008 RDS CALs. This means that customers that have the 2008 TS CAL or the 2008 RDS CAL also have the right to use Application Virtualization! Since only the client is licensed in App-V this also means the right for all of the components of App-V!!

No App-V for Terminal Server licenses nor App-V for Remote Desktop Services licenses will be sold after Nov. 1st 2009.

Some important notes though:

Advice:
Consider purchasing W2008 TS/RDS CALs before January 1st if you want to save 5% TS/RDS CAL costs. Do not buy any App-V for TS CAL today if you already have your Terminal Servers running on Win2008 or if you are migrating soon.