App-V Support Tip: Look out for this issue when sequencing your apps

~ John Behneman | Senior Support Escalation Engineer

Hello everyone, John Behneman here again. I ran across an interesting issue the other day and thought I would mention it here in case any of you happened to see it.

The issue involved Microsoft Application Virtualization 5.0 (App-V v5) and a sequenced application that would generate an error when launched on a client, essentially saying that the executable could not be found. When we looked at the shortcut it pointed to this:

[{ UserProgramFiles }\program directory\<programName.exe>

Obviously when a user would attempt to start the application it would fail to find the executable because [{UserProgramFiles} is not a proper environmental variable. The question is why this happens.

It turned out that the default Sequencer exclusion items were preventing the program assets from being captured during the install. In our example, we had an application that would install its assets to the users local appdata directory as reflected in the exclusion report generated when the 5.0 sequencer created the package:

One or more files were excluded from the package because they are located in excluded paths. Missing files can cause unexpected application failures. The following files were excluded: C:\Users\JohnB\AppData\LocalC:\Users\JohnB\AppData\Local\ProgramsC:\Users\JohnB\AppData\Local\Programs\TIP Technologies, IncC:\Users\JohnB\AppData\Local\Programs\TIP Technologies, Inc\TIPQA LauncherC:\Users\JohnB\AppData\Local\Programs\TIP Technologies, Inc\TIPQA Launcher\OpenSSL License.txtC:\Users\JohnB\AppData\Local\Programs\TIP Technologies, Inc\TIPQA Launcher\TIPQALauncher.exeC:\Users\JohnB\AppData\Local\Programs\TIP Technologies, Inc\TIPQA Launcher\TIPQALauncherX.ocxC:\Users\JohnB\AppData\Local\Programs\TIP Technologies, Inc\TIPQA Launcher\libeay32.dllC:\Users\JohnB\AppData\Local\Programs\TIP Technologies, Inc\TIPQA Launcher\npTIPQALauncher.dllC:\Users\JohnB\AppData\Local\Programs\TIP Technologies, Inc\TIPQA Launcher\ssleay32.dll
In our example here, the executable for our application (TIPQALauncher.exe) was not captured due to the default App-V 5.0 sequencer exclusions. Since the sequencer has nothing to link to it defaults to creating the "[{UserProgramFiles}]\TIP Technologies, Inc\TIPQA Launcher\TIPQALauncher.exe" string for the short cut.

Resolution

If you see a similar issue with your app, use the exclusion report to determine which default exclusion item to remove prior to sequencing the application. The TIPQALauncher application in my example here requires deleting the [{Local AppData}] exclusion prior to sequencing but your app might be different.

As a side note, a correct shortcut example for TIPQALauncher was:

"%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\AppV\Client\Integration\DF9538AF-C75C-4765-A915-FB8A28F65F0D\Root\VFS\Local AppData\Programs\TIP Technologies, Inc\TIPQA Launcher\TIPQALauncher.exe"

References

Creating and Managing App-V 5.0 Virtualized Applications: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj713438.aspx

John Behneman | Senior Support Escalation Engineer | Microsoft GBS Management and Security Division

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