VMware ThinApp Blog

I’m being asked quite frequently if there is a way to add functionality to the MSI file that ThinApp generates. Yes there is, besides the obvious of modifying the MSI file in a MSI editor you may want to always change its behavior to reflect a company standard.

From the manual:
In the Vmware ThinApp folder you will find the file Template.msi. You can customize this template to ensure the .msi files generated by ThinApp adhere to company deployment procedures and standards. For example, you can add registry settings that you want ThinApp to add to client computers as part of the installation.

Even though it is in the manual not many seems to find it..

The following are MSI setting modifications to the ThinApp PACKAGE.INI in order to allow a standard user (i.e. NON-Admin type) to install a ThinApp MSI packaged application (even if that application normally requires admin privileges to run!).

We recently did some research on how to best deploy a ThinApp packaged application by pushing the ThinApp packaged MSI out to workstations via an Active Directory Group Policy Ojbect.

There has been some recent talk about what is required to deploy a Thinstalled application as an MSI. Well, as we all know, Thinstall has an MSI generation feature already built into the product today. With nothing more than a simple deletion of a semi-colon in the package.ini, Thinstall will generate for you an MSI installer for your Thinstalled application. Below is a list of some of the finer points to consider when using this feature.

If you wish to deploy the MSI to a user who does not have local admin privileges, just set the entry in the package.ini for MSIRequireElevatedPrivileges=0. This will allow a limited user account to install the Thinstalled application without Admin rights.

1. If you are an administrator and you want to install the Thinstalled application machine wide, simply use the MSIDefaultInstallAllUsers=1 in the package.ini to accomplish this.
2. If you want to have it both ways, so that users get a per-user install while anyone in the Administrators group is allowed to perform a machine wide install, than simply set MSIDefaultInstallAllUsers=2 in the package.ini instead.