Installation monitoring and capture......

[ljh]

(note: this is being posted to the dotnet groups because of thier expertise
in app development and network administration)

I cannot, for the life of me, remember the name of an application that I had
a couple of years ago. It was an app that monitored the installation of
another application and created a setup package that could be run on another
PC to install the app almost like an Xcopy install.

The app monitored all added or changed files and registry entries. It then
wrapped all changes into a single exe that made the same changes to another
PC. The purpose of the app was to create unattended installs of
applications that normally required the user to answer multiple questions
during the course of a normal install.

The application was NOT Novell Zenworks. It was much cheaper (around $99 I
think).

I need to automate the installation of applications that require user
interaction during thier normal installation process. It would be nice if I
could track all changes made by an application by comparing the pc with a
baseline snapshot. It would be even more helpful if I could use the
comparison to create the unattended installs that I need.

Does anyone know of such a product (that is NOT Novell's Zenworks)?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Michael C]

I cannot, for the life of me, remember the name of an application that I
had a couple of years ago. It was an app that monitored the installation
of another application and created a setup package that could be run on
another PC to install the app almost like an Xcopy install.

Sounds like a recipe for disaster unless all the machines are identical.
Most apps have lots of "if" statements in the installer that do things
differently on different OSs and different hardware and also depending on
what's already installed. I'd be suprised if this worked very well.

Michael

 

[DL]

Many installations only have an option to either default install or custom
install, so presumably you had something specific in mind?

 

[ljh]

My concern was that the Developer edition of SQL Server that is installed
with Visual Studio Pro may be different than the edition installed by SQL
Server Express on the client PCs.

This would be a big problem and a huge waste of time if my db code did not
work with SQL Express because of some differences between SQL Express and
the Developer Edition.

I cannot find any comparisons between the Developer Edition installed as a
part of Visual Studio 2005 Pro and the freely avilable SQL Express editions.

Does anybody know if there are any differences that I should be aware of?

 

[ljh]

The name of the app was AppNstall (before that AppImager).

Unfortunately the product is no longer available. The company
(AppDeploy.com) was purchased (by Phoenix Technologies) and the app was
discontinued.

Too bad..... It was a beautiflu little application. It did a before and
after snapshot comparison and created a setup package you could run on other
PCs to replicate the installation unattended.

Small, simple and quite effective.

 

[chanmm]

SQL server 2005 developer edition has all the features for SQL Server 2005
Enterprise. If you only code for Data Engine and not the Reporting Services,
Analysis Services. I didn't see the problem why your code won't run in SQL
Express.

chanmm

 

[ljh]

So, no reporting services or Analysis services and it should be fine? And,
if I need those, there is a free version of SQL Express that includes them
(its just a much larger download).

Thanks!