Was using this over the weekend to test Windows games. This program is able to capture ALL changes to the OS and then remove them with a right-click! You can also backup the games to a seperate files (which can be opened with 7-zip) for browsing later.

Using this program I can now identify all changes to the OS like: DirectX, Quicktime, files dumped into the Windows directory, copy protection drivers.

Interesting piece of software! The download doesn't work currently, though. I found an alternate way of downloading the program, but that seems to be an older version (2.1.2084).

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? How's the program working for you, did you see any performance hits, etc. (i assume the program has to install some kind of driver)?

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).

Thanks for the info, that was very helpful. Will try the app soon, it looks very promising. The program does install some kind of driver, in order to be able to intercept system calls (see the PDF docs) - i think this means a slight performance hit, but that should be no big deal. The app only works for certain type of "setup" applications, i think that's why it may have problems with older "setup" apps.

Well I captured installs of:

Windows Media Player 11
Office 2007
Microsoft ShareView
Remote Desktop 6
Dell PowerDVD
Internet Explorer 7

with Altiris SVS on Windows XP and then loaded them up on Windows 2000. In cases like IE7/Remote Desktop/Windows Media Player where they have the same filenames when you activate the layer it overwrites the previous filename....BUT Windows 2000 uses WFP to overwrite the overwritten file with it's backup file. heh. So as soon as you activate the layer your IE7 iexplore will be overwritten with the IE6 iexplore.

Going to have to play around with disabling WFP. I did have a bit better success with Outlook 2007. The programs do execute but error out with XP specific calls. Going to try the 2000 to XP wrapper later and see if that will work. Would be pretty neat to get Office 2007 to work on Windows 2000.

Bump.

I thought the free version was gone but I guess not!

Also it looks like the 64bit ver will be out very soon!

Clicking on Symantec Workspace Virtualization expands a description.
Clicking on Trialware pops up a page that never loads past 60%.

Worked for me.

Somehow my browser wouldn't connect to www4.symantec.com. It works now though.

DosFreak, I was wondering if you used this for a program that needs to reboot when it installs. I'm trying to install Alcohol 120% into a layer but I keep getting stuck in a loop.

I usually just hit cancel if the program asks for a reboot and then stop the capture. IIRC Alcohol doesn't use a service but it does install a driver so perhaps the installer thinks it needs to reboot. Last time I used Alcohol tho I didn't need to reboot for it to work.

I don't know what's going on then. I create a new layer. Single program capture with the installer. It asks for language, then the license, followed by SPTD setup. At this point it wants to reboot.

I selected cancel so that the capture would finish. If I then try to add to the layer with another single program capture of the installer it complains that I haven't rebooted yet. If I reboot then try to add to the layer with another single program capture of the installer it starts over with the language, license, SPTD setup, and reboot.

If I allow it to reboot on its own and add to layer with global capture the installer runs by itself but still starts over like it hadn't run before.

Oh, SPTD is a seperate install. IIRC, it installs SPTD first, reboots then installs the rest of the program.

You can download and install SPTD seperately (and monitor the uninstall and save the capture file) then uninstall it and reinstall without SVS.

Then install Alcohol.

Problem with SPTD and Alcohol is that you would need to activate them whenever you want to use them and since that is probably pretty often it's best just to capture the installs with SVS, save the capture file and then reinstall without SVS.

Saving the capture file would just be for analyzing registry and file paths to completely remove the app yourself manually if you didn't want it installed anymore.

DosFreak wrote:

install SPTD seperately (and monitor the uninstall and save the capture file) then uninstall it and reinstall without SVS.

Install, then uninstall, and uninstall again, then reinstall? I'm confused.

Maybe I should start over. I want Alcohol 120% and everything it needs in one layer. I'm running Symantec Workspace Virtualization within Virtual PC 2007 because of issues I had with capturing. Using VPC I can discard the changes made if the SWV capture doesn't work and start over as if the previous attempt hadn't been made. I hope to export the layer and take it from VPC to use on the host system.

Problem is SPTD and Alcohol aren't installed together, they are installed seperately they just appear to be installed together because they bundled SPTD with the Alcohol installer but when you install Alcohol and reboot the first time that's when it installs SPTD when it boots back up it finished the Alcohol install.

but IIRC if you download the seperate SPTD installer and install it and then install Alcohol then I *think* the Alcohol installer will detect that and not install SPTD.

No good. I installed SPTD separately, rebooted, then ran the Alcohol installer. It installed SPTD again. Since I can discard changes in VPC I tried this without capturing a SWV layer. This time the Alcohol installer picked up that SPTD was already there. That means something isn't working within SWV. Maybe the SPTD driver isn't starting.

Does this program have any advantage over VMWare ThinApp??

I already have ThinApp, so I'm not sure if it's worth downloading the same thing from Symantec.

Has anyone compared them?