Systems Management

Once again I came up with this problem. I tried to create an msi package with Appdeploy Packager of a special software with hardware drivers included. This software wrote in lot of different locations and I didn´t recognize them all. I tried to create package 3 times, every time it came corrupted. I gave up, and got back the Adminstudio. Created MSI with monitoring method, it came up fine with very clean registry, so.... Appdeploy is not good enough.

And the files that are related to odbc connections also we include them.

You have to include in the capture all new files and registry added to the machine. Some of them are useles, and you can exclude them. Exemple: logs, registry keys related to IE or Windows setings.

What gets included in our package by default depends on the packaging build/image we are using.If it has unecessary services running, or applications installed like mcafee etc, there are chances files related to these applications will get included.Best way is try to see what all files are not related to your application.Something like log files, uninstall.exe, files related to apps like IE, mcafee, if you are using an image with CCM client installed, you will also get files related to this.Exclude all these files from your package.Same goes for registry keys.

Now I really understand, why creating your own msi is not really the first option you do for mass deployment. It gets ricky, when you import too much files and registry keys in msi, not knowing for sure, are they part of application or not. Packaging small programs is easy, but now when I´m trying to pack big and complex software, there are tons of files and reg hives I need something to do about....