Fixed the link. Thanks!
DosFreak, can you say if it's possible to create a "package" that can be installed on an other machine, with just the personal license?
EULA
http://www.altiris.com/Download/svsPersonal.aspx
2. LICENSE GRANT. Provided you comply with all terms and conditions of this EULA, Altiris grants you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable and limited license to use the Software solely for personal, non-commercial use in a license count not to exceed ten Nodes (hereinafter, “Personal Use” license). The Software shall not be used for commercial or production purposes and may only be installed on a personally owned computer that does not belong to any business or institution and is not used by or on behalf of any business or institution. A Personal Use license expressly prohibits: (a) any direct or indirect monetary benefit from the use of the Software, (b) the use of the Software within the context of a home-based or part-time business, and (c) the use of the Software for any commercial, business, governmental, or institutional purpose (including educational and not-for-profit) of any kind. You may not distribute or sublicense the Software in any way.
So it goes like this:
You download the software and install it.
It puts a shortcut on your desktop.
You click on the shortcut and through it's interface you point to your game's setup file.
Altiris SVS monitors all changes to the OS and captures those changes to a hidden folder in your root "C:\fsldr" I believe.
Once the installation is finished the game as far as the OS is concerned is the same as any other installed game BUT
If you go back into the Altiris GUI you can right-click on the game and de-activate it. When you look in your OS all files and mention of the game ever being installed in the OS are gone. (The files are still in the hidden folder though). When you re-activate the game in the GUI then the game is brought back from the hidden directory.
Now if you right-click on the game in the GUI you can "export" the game which will copy the files and registry entries for the game from the hidden directory into a ".vsa" file which is just a .zip file which can be opened with any compression utility.
I haven't tried the exported package on other computers but they should work fine. The only issue I can think of is if you use the package on a different OS or on the same OS but that it's sufficiently different to cause problems. For instance:
Altiris captures all changes so it will track DirectX/Quicktime/Codec installs. If you capture an install on a Vista OS and bring the install over to a 2000 OS I'm not sure how well the game will react or vice versa. There shouldn't be too much of an issue since the OS's aren't that dissimilar.
As far as performance there is no performance hit. The files are still on the hard drive but in the hidden folder, the program just fools the OS into believeing that the game is actually in C:\Program Files\Whatever.
Not sure if it uses a driver. It installed and worked fine on 2008 64bit so it seems kind of doubtfull that it uses a driver. I guess I could try capturing an SVS install with SVS to see.... 😀
So far I've tested about 60 games over the weekend. The only issue I've had is that some very old installers aren't tracked (still looking into it) and when I went to delete a layer the SVS GUI would crash (no big deal since it's just once shortcut icon away to start it backup again).