Which type of apps can you virtualize

Question

Hello,
I'm new to ZAV, and wants to know which type of applications you can virtualize and which type not, and why.
if you take for example adobe reader, how is it possible to associate the file extension .pdf to that file and how is the integration with internet explorer . Are that things working with ZAV?, because everything is in 1 executable.
I hope someone can explain me this.

Answer 1

Allright so you don't use the whole adminstudio suite.. you can a lot with it, but probably ZAV is enough for most of the things. That's great.
I'm doing monitor instead of snapshot, because it's better to "monitor" the installation process instead the "before" "after" solution. but ok not interesting.
Ofcourse i'm not re-package an msi again. Always use the Tuner or ORCA or ZCM builtin Properties (very handy). You can say 90% of the apps are msi's. But not for our software vendors. I'm working on local government and much software are old old setups/installers. Very annoying. I think 10% of our software is MSI, So i have to do it by myself.
But making MSI's is not my core-business on my work. I'm System Engineer, so doing everything and have to know things about everything :S.
So i'm also user very often (if possible) the built in silent commandline paramenters. As example for Inno Setups i record the answer file. Or use a simple Setup.exe /s and afterward i'm removing the shortcuts with zcm "file removal" .
And ok, the are not in MSI format, but it works!, And since there is not a standard in how setups are working, or vendors don't create the msi for me, i have todo what's working.
But dandirk, Do you also have alluser problems with ZAV? or does the whole problem never exists because it's 1 executable, and for each user it's creating an sandbox.
Do you have experience with creating the sandbox on a network share.. For example on the Homedirectory. We are not using roaming profiles, so if i put it in the userprofile it's gone after re-imaging.
Originally Posted by dandirk
I snap with ZAV... I haven't really tried the import msi much. With snap you can install and config your app, importing msi you have to figure out reg keys and file edits to setup.
Though importing msi is not a bad thing to try if you have problems with the snap.
If you are doing "monitor" captures with installshield often, you are probably missing something. 90% of apps are msi now a days. Installshield should give you a warning that an install is already an msi when you start your monitor. If an app is already an msi, you DO NOT want to remonitor/snap it with installshield. Its much better to extract the msi (if needed) and use tuner or installshield to create a MST.