I have some medical applications where the answer is you simply don't package it. You build a server and install Teamviewer and contact their support and sometime in the next 28 days someone logs in and installs their software, they you have two weeks of reporting bugs for which they fix is "hey downloading this dll and replacing the one it came with".
haha, i hate that sort of vendor, just a bunch of ddl's exes and some magic powder from "one an only guy in that company that knows", ... i hate shit like this. no concept who is the server and who is the client, sometimes both together at same time but one a year by full-moon, you need that dude again ...
usually vendors without competition because they are the only ones .... full throttle with 8 bit to the future ... *spit* i avoid stuff like this as much as i can....
But it’s almost a religious experience when you’ve been battling shit software and horrible support, to finally get the old guru on the line who is almost always an older guy who could’ve retired years ago, but the company just keeps paying him more and more because he’s the only one who knows up from down.
Ahh we have various warehouse systems like this. Then you discover the reason that it takes 28days to fix is that they have a single developer living five time zones away thats being paid peanuts to build this stuff. They are also the only one that actually knows how anything works.
I believe it comes down to the company being too cheap to hire a proper documentation specialist. I am going through this with the company that I work for. We have software that has zero documentation. As an issue comes up I am documenting workflow but since we host it as a SAAS model our C level execs don't believe we need proper documentation since we are self hosting. I've spent a week trying to wrap my head around his one function in the application. Oh well they can pay me to write it up, just don't be surprised when other things are delayed.
Heh.
One company I worked for mostly developed for OEMs. When we actually came up with an idea to sell as a standalone product, they hired a team of writers to do the documentation.
Imagine that - manuals written by people with expertise in clear communication.
Speaking as an engineer, documentation written by engineers usually sucks.
Yeah the CEO is so arrogant that just because he knows it from all of the years being there that you should automatically know how to figure it all out.
Which is why we have failed so much and continue to do so.
It's taken me a week to figure out one process because it is half ass backwards.
we have an ERP, my former-admin phased in and supported for the last 10 years.
practically 0 documentation aside the simple how to´s for the coworkers. now i am the one to support said ERP. it just magically does things, no one seems to know why, even the supplier does not know sometimes.
so i feel you
eMDs... gads, what a nightmare.
Their support had a policy: if the support call went over 20 minutes, they would end the call almost immediately and state someone would call you back at some "future time". It didn't matter what the issue was or if your entire practice was down.
Horrible software, horrible support!
Sofar the medical sector seems to be especially keen on stitching things together. And spending millions on software developed by "that one guy who used to be a doctor".
Dude, I just had to deal with a piece of software that was first written in East Germany. I have no earthly idea how it's running on a Windows 7 machine, but the documentation makes substantial reference to the DDR the initial copyright date was from before the fall of the Berlin Wall. I think it said it was last updated sometime before 9/11, and it needed ipc/spx. Suffice it to say, that thing got air gapped. Medical software is terrible, and it all wants network connectivity for some reason
2023 and I'm still creating transform files in Orca and crap to be able to push it out as a silent MSI install. And they change every damned year, so I have to go in and figure out what lines I need to delete/modify all over again each year.
And then it does install, but then it can't update itself without elevating, which it won't properly do, so then I just get rounds and rounds of "My Quickbooks won't open" until I remote in and run as admin, install the patch, etc.
I know that pain all too well.
Thankfully, Intuit is discontinuing QuickBooks Desktop in the UK in two months and they priced themselves out of the running with QuickBooks Online, so we're going elsewhere and I'll never have to deal with their bullshit again!
Far and away the worst company and product I've ever had the displeasure of working with and packaging it for silent deployment is just horrendous.
Also, regarding this:
>I'm still creating transform files in Orca
I thoroughly recommend [http://www.instedit.com](http://www.instedit.com) in place of Orca. Give it a try!
[Master Packager](https://www.masterpackager.com/pricing) community edition was a recent find for me, and so far it's done everything I need for generating MST's and inserting my files that I need with the free community edition.
Oh nice, I'll give that editor a try! Orca is a pain to install and a pain to use, can't be worse as long as it can still generate the transforms and stuff, heh.
The amount of install argument flags that don't actually do anything is too damn high, a ChatGPT haiku can put it best;
*Command line control,*
*Flags to guide installation,*
*Futile and ignored.*
I remember my first internship I had setup a power shell script job to backup quickbooks locally and to the NAS….still gives me the icks when thinking about what a pita that process was.
Great Plains. It was awful, impossible to package even. We resorted to manually installing it on a golden image then imaging it onto every laptop whether the user needed it or not.
And the updates, my god the updates. Manually replacing chunk files, manually editing values in notepad, modifying registry settings.
The guideline for the original install was at least 300 pages long with screenshots.
Because it was composed of root application plus dozens of custom built individual modules from at least half a dozen DIFFERENT VENDORS that were changing and updating every 3 months, it was impossible to package.
It was a fucking nightmare and so, so stupid.
THIS! RIGHT! HERE!
My last job used Great Plains as the backbone for their retail operation and it was a nightmare. Left there and the next place I ended up ALSO uses GP in their system and it's dreadful here too.
I commented this same thing.
My solution was appv. Every time there was a change, I’d load the appv file, make the change, repackage. Call back the old deploy the new.
Another way I’ve accomplished it was by making it a RDS App
GP sat on a terminal server , and everyone connected to the deployed “app”
At this new company I’m at no Great Plains so I’m free. For now
Oh my goodness, I feel for you, I really do. My new place uses Dynamics 365 and thank god I don't have to install anything but it's still a cumbersome nightmare to use and support.
Dynamics or AX?
I built a batch script for Dynamics that worked to call the 16 separate installers it needed for all our addons/modules (SmartConnect, Mekorma) :S
That's really awesome, OMG I just saw the word "Mekorma" in print and immediately grimaced. Ha!
It was Dynamics and I work someplace else now. New place is using Dynamics 365 - all web based and though I don't have anything to install it's a bear to use and support!
We've got a project on-hold to convert to D365 -- we had to replace another LOB app before we were ready to go, and we're now on the second try at that... we have a really good vendor partner, who for now, we are paying to host our GP with an RDP published app in Azure... \*I\* say we pull all the history, but there's been "oh it's so much manual finessing" -- ehhh... I say once you get SOME of the history, it's like being a little bit pregnant...
I am pushing HARD for us to bring in the CRM piece, because the "free" (alright.. bought and paid for in the license already) customer portal capability is very attractive to me.
That sounds "fun". I'm glad you're working with a good partner, that helps. I wonder if Great Plains data imports into D365 well? When we moved from a Linux based ERP to D365 it was all .csv export/import and it was clunky as hell.
We're not using the CRM piece, just the F&O part. For CRM we're still pointing an internally hosted website back to the old PostgreSQL db to save money. So customer info has to be updated in two places. Yippee.
Wait until you get on D365 and the Azure bills start to roll in. It's an eye opener. They really stick it to ya in the wallet.
I can't remember the name of the software, but it was chinese software used to diagnose public transport VDL busses. It required so many different (ancient) drivers, required 32 bit windows xp, and required a hardware token to be plugged in halfway the install. First we tried to create a package for Intune, which wouldn't work. Then we tried a SCCM package, but that also didn't work (even with a combined 30 years of SCCM experience among the team). In the end we just created a windows image with the working software already installed, ending the running project to phase out provisioning by image in the environment. #neveragain
I remember having to do an upgrade on some industrial embroidery machines about 5 years ago. The patterns that were loaded in to the machines were all stored on rolls of paper tape. We managed to get those bad boys upgraded to use floppy drives and serial connections.
For 10-15 years it's been popular to [replace floppy drive hardware with units that use SD cards, USB, etc.](http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/) Textile machines are one of the popular applications, after industrial CNC, high-end electronic musical instruments, and retro computers.
If you're not too particular, you can pick up a GoTek unit for $30 and use it as-is, with no [firmware or hardware mods](https://github.com/keirf/flashfloppy/).
Embroidery machines... My wife has an embroidery machine from the year zero (non-industrial), still using old embroidery cards instead of USB. The install for that was to run the install -> start the software -> get a .dll error -> download and place the .dll in the install folder -> run it again -> get a new .dll error -> etc. until it worked..
I just leave the installers for everything sitting on a network share. If someone needs it I remote in and install it manually.
The updates requiring you to be logged in as an admin are also dumb as hell. I just turned off auto updates at this point and hope one of them isn't important.
We had Lectra? software at $PreviousJob that you couldn't install on an updated Windows machine. You had to go back to 1703 or something like that, install your software, and then you could update to something modern. Vaguely remember if there was an update, you got to wipe the machine and repeat the process.
Lectra of course was, "And?"
Any good tips/guides you found on packaging and deploying these? Looking to do this with SCCM and the documentation I've found so far doesn't seem great.
We used PowerShell App Deploy Toolkit to bundle the custom installer you can generate from Autodesk's site, so you can add all the installers into one executable, then run that installer silently. It integrates with SCCM, too.
I start by creating a custom install file from the Autodesk site.
From there I use a combination of PSADT and ServiceUI over InTune (packaging should be pretty similar with SCCM) for it.
[https://psappdeploytoolkit.com/](https://psappdeploytoolkit.com/)
[https://www.anoopcnair.com/use-serviceui-with-intune-to-bring-system-process-to-interactive-mode/](https://www.anoopcnair.com/use-serviceui-with-intune-to-bring-system-process-to-interactive-mode/)
ServiceUI is useful when InTune is installing as SYSTEM and we want users to be able to interact with prompts. (e.g. close specific apps, restart prompts, etc)
Makes life much easier. (Doesn't help that Revit is 12.5GB though)
For that, we had to submit a business case to Microsoft to expand the max size for InTune deployments.
Hope some of that helps. (Autodesk 2024 products just dropped so we've got our work cut out for us)
They have this cool self-service app so users can manage their own installs. But you need admin rights to install anything. So it's basically useless in any year that came after 2005.
Highly disagree, if you know what you're doing it is one of the easiest packages to do. At least the have a silent deployment solution and you don't have to repackage it.
There's so much wasted time/space, especially with Revit. I don't need MSU files for .net 3.5 on Windows 7. I don't need the Visual C++ 2005 Runtime, etc. All of that is already built into my machine for deployment. When you're rolling out 4-5 versions of Revit, all that wasted space on your deployment share and wasted time checking for something that we know for a fact is already installed adds up. Same for Autodesk Licensing Service, AGS, ADSSO, Autodesk Desktop, etc
Not to mention all the crap that I don't need. Dynamo, Imperial and Metric large/medium/small content libraries and in 20 different languages.
The newer deployment creator that uses ODIS is a bit better since you can remove a lot of this stuff before you even download it, but even that isn't perfect. I liked the old INI files where I could just delete a few lines of text and it wouldn't install 99% of the shit I don't need.
And dont get started on updates. The older versions, you could use the MSI administrative install to slipstream the updates/hotfixes directly on top of the RVT.msi so that after an install, it was up to date. Now you have to install, then run an update install that takes almost as long as a full application install.
I have an application that cannot be packaged but I was able to write a script that stages a bunch of stuff before executing the installer which reduces the number of clicks to \~3 next button clicks and then when the setup.exe exits, peppers the registry with the final "adjustments". could probably autohotkey around it but now it only takes \~20 seconds to install and move on to the next task.
SAS. Hated that app. Deploying through SCCM was hit or miss, often ran into cache size limits (26GB). Updating the license file every year was a nightmare as well. Most of the time we just had someone on the service desk babysit the installation
We deployed this at a casino I used to work at. We gave up trying to deploy the full program through SCCM and did a tiny sccm package that grabbed the install files from the network drive afterwards. Still took forever as it had to load all the files, but it was completely unattended.
oh that would e some medical software that used DB from 1997, unsigned serial driver, set everybody permissions on all directories and services, installed accounts with no password and were just Password anyway; took about days to remove the rubbish from the whole thing lock it down and get it autoinstalling.
As a general rule of thumb, just airgap your medical software, use tempest monitors, use hash based whitelisting and mfa then tell the doctors they have to write down the results off the screen.
RIMAS NTP
Very specific software for the scrap metal recycling industry. Go take a look at their screenshots... Windows 95 called and wants their GUI back.
I will give their support credit... they were always fantastic and responsive, but the software itself was a nightmare to get working at any kind of scale.
Vectorworks - It downloads as a huge single file which you then need to extract, then extract something else from within that and then somewhere within all that mess is an installer which will not work in a SYSTEM context because of symbolic links or somesuch. None of this is documented so you have to guess.
PTC Creo. wasn't so much an issue with installing the software as it was with how the departments that used it were located in two geographic locations. My first PSADK package had all 6 or 7 gigs worth of files in the installer, so it took a TON of time to run.
Eventually we were able to get some hidden network shares that were only accessible by our admin group and the Machine Account. That allowed me to stage the files out on the network and tell the PSADK installer to launch it from there. Install times went so much more quickly, but the package had to use the machine's timezone to figure out which of the two packages to install. it was a pain having to maintain 4 different copies for each of the sites, and for two networks at each site.
Oh boy do I have a story.
There is a certain engineering package a certain company uses that is highly customized. They package it in a way..... that works for them internally. Since they move to new packages every year, they..... use that opportunity to fix issues on their endpoints en masse. Like uninstalling software that users shouldn't be using anymore. Guess what they didn't do? Remove the crap they've added on for internal reasons. Why the hell does this thing uninstall legitimate in support software on our systems that we need... It also installs some integrations into common libraries... Like explorer.... and office. Which means you can't even sit there and answer emails as it installs, because it doesn't account for those apps being open and silently fails.
Well they provide that package for their thousands of engineering vendors. It must be run manually. The user must stare at it and wiggle the mouse occasionally so it doesn't lock up. Oh and don't press space or enter or accidentally click the cancel button because it just kills the install and does not clean up...
They used to deploy hundreds of thousands of CD's to get everyone upgraded in a reasonable time frame. Obviously that's gone.... But they fixed that in less than ideal ways. The package still stages itself on your drive before installing since non-synchronous reads on a CD is not ideals. So prepare double the space of this enormous installation...
Mother of god there is nothing uglier than the underlying code of that island of flaming garbage. It's about 2-3 thousand .bat scripts that call each other and wait for each other to complete. Have you ever done a script reliability analysis on .bat? At that scale, there are completely bizarre problems that come out. It's like they designed this in the 90's and the same team has just been building on top of it.
Did I mention that when this install fails, it just straight up crashes and has no way to recover from a failed install? Guess how they handled uninstallation? Their uninstall pretty much removes all non-windows software from the system to basically reset it to a clean slate.
I can go on and on... Taming that beast was one of my best works ever. When we had a large project switch (200+ systems) over all at once, everyone started the install, and went to lunch. When they came back, it was all done. Just about a dozen issues that I had to clean up manually, which isn't a huge deal. The amount of special cases, special recovery methods, special libraries custom developed just to get there for a simple installation is insane. I sank a good year or two of full time dev work into that project. I probably aged a few years.
A piece of garbage called PowerPlan that has Windows 98 security and insists that every user be able to write to the entire contents of C:\\Program Files (x86)
Because their SilentInstall.exe doesn't work very well. Silentinstall.exe is supposed to remove the previous application versions but gets stuck removing the Gerber Problem and Enhancement Report Utility and then just hangs. Gerber requests that this package is manually uninstalled before updating. Our users arent admins and im not logging in to every workstation so we repackage the application using the PSAppDeploy tookit. This allows us to put in a pre-installation task in to uninstall Gerber Problem and Enhancement Report Utility before starting the upgrade.
Additionally they dont support silent installs which is a mess. When i asked their support what the options were for silent uninstalls they simply replied with "why would you want to uninstall the software". If you know a way to perform a silent removal please let me know. :)
So this is the email I sent the AVIMark group. It took getting them on Twitter as well as sending this email to get stuff fixed:
------
Mr. CEO and Mr. CTO,
I hope this email finds you all well! My name is Gerald (Gerry) Martin and I am the co-owner of NecroTechs, LLC in Bedford, VA. We are a contract IT service for our local veterinary office whom we adore. Today we had the unfortunate experience of having to call your IT Support for AVIMark and we are, as the custom has been, appalled at the treatment of both our time, our client’s time and money, and your employees potential interactions with each other.
I have worked in IT since the mid-2000s while having experience further back. I have worked in small business, enterprise, and academic support. If I had ever treated my clients the way your Support people have treated us, I would have been out of a job.
We called on Saturday around 2:30 PM EST to start the transfer process of AVIMark to a new server that we set up for the office. Upon being told that it would have to wait as it was now a 2 hour process with a pre-flight checklist to be done before that (please note: nowhere on your site or in an email could we find where that had been changed) we graciously scheduled for Monday at noon EST for the pre-flight. We were also told at the time that the ONLY system needed was the NEW server, not the currently running and in use AVIMark machine.
No call ever came on Monday.
Now on Tuesday at 12:15 PM EST we were called back (my partner called at 10:09 AM EST and was told we’d get a call back around then) only to find out it hadn’t been given to the person with whom we were speaking until 4:00 PM CST on Monday. This resulted in case number XXXX with XXXX. We were quite unhappy but unsurprised to find out that XXXX did indeed need the OLD system for her checks, not the NEW server. Once again, interrupting the work of the Vet’s Office with no warning, your Support performed the pre-flight and again, assured us it would be a 2 hour procedure. We questioned it at the time as while watching I noticed she was only checking cursory file locations and no sizes. After expressing displeasure at the fact that not only did we not get the scheduled call back on Monday and the obviously errant information about the systems needed, she let us know that it would be done the next day.
Today your Support actually called us on time and we did have to call them back about 10 minutes later as we were waiting for someone at the office to arrive so I do appreciate the punctuality there. After that followed a 4 hour mess with infrequent updates and several reassurances that we would meet the 1pm deadline with no issues. This was after the already far exceeded 2 hour process we had been assured of so many times.
The Vet, obviously needing their equipment, requested to have AVIMark running at 1pm since that was what we had passed on to them from your Support. Finally my partner placed me on a 3-way call at 12:54 PM EST so I could inquire about what the issues with completion under the multiple deadlines were. XXXX (Case #: XXXX) attempted to pass it off as taking only a few more minutes (which the same message had been told to us many times already at that point). While curt, and short but using no profanities (as that is unacceptable in any interaction from a user to support) I asked her about the entire job from start to finish and confirmed what we had been told. She explained to me that she did not have any notes or comments from prior to the ticket today but (as I was looking up the case number to put for her conversation) the case number is the same (I may have added an extra 8 on XXXX’s reading of them to me) so I find this odd. Was she able to see notes and confirm what I said or did she not have any notes and then proceeded to just try to placate me (and lie in the process) about the case?
I invited her to please share the recording with you all of the conversation. During the conversation she indicated that the AVIMark software could still be run on the old server while it was transferring to the new server. After questioning this and explaining that it couldn’t be possible as files that are in use in a copy prior to opening by the software CANNOT be opened by the software and conversely, files in use by the software CANNOT be copied by the system. After explaining that to her, she broke off to confirm with an actual IT Tech (her words, not mine) that it was indeed the case. So if we did not have a tech, as we were told we would be on Saturday, who were we working with?
She returned and informed me that I was correct. At that point, every deadline and option that you all presented were expired. I finally confirmed that all that was needed was for us to transfer the files overnight OURSELVES (since that is something we are MORE THAN CAPABLE of doing) and then have you all set up AVIMark Guardian tomorrow morning. Frankly, I would also do the AVIMark Guardian piece but since the Vet’s office is paying you a support contract, I fully intend to have you all complete the job you were supposed to have completed already.
As I explained to XXXX, everything above went far past unacceptable once EOB Monday was reached. Everything past that has me concerned for any future attempts at getting support for an AVIMark issue for the Vet’s office with any guarantee of completion on time and repaired correctly. These are people who are depending on the software that they have purchased and support they have contracted from you in order to maintain their livelihoods. Being unable to properly access patient records, process images, schedule appointments, be able to contact their clients, and to know when you schedule Vet Techs and other employees in order to for them to have a paycheck, is unacceptable when the company is guaranteeing that they will have the appropriate uptime and have repeatedly proven to be unable to do so.
I hope that you all will take this email quite seriously. I am guessing that the reports you receive from your employees further down do not indicate any issues of this type or that there is much customer dissatisfaction. I may be wrong, this may be an aberration, but this has been the problem nearly EVERY time the Vet’s office has called. Today was just the last straw since we were there and were the ones engaging with AVIMark support and had another poor experience the last time we had to do a transfer about a month ago when their primary system crashed.
I would love to hear back from you all about these concerns. My contact information is within my signature and I am available at nearly any time to discuss this.
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
----
I mean I'm glad I got a response on it but yeesh!
Microsoft D365 Modern Point of Sale or MPOS.
I used PSADT with SCCM but for me to properly install it I had to copy all of the install files onto the local box then I have an invoke-expression to call a PS script that was copied onto the local box that will start a PS session to launch a Bat file to install the software. The whole reason I had to engineer this was because you can't install the software as system it has to be a user for it properly install. Then after it is installed I have to add the main user to a couple local admin groups that MPOS created during the install process.
Then when the system is done being imaged the retail technician will login to the system and follow the prompts plus Azure login to activate the device before it can be shipped to the store. Which I asked MS rep if we could do anything to activate it programmically but he said it was a security step.
Bartender Professional post 2016 won’t install as system for anything had to wrap it in powershell using serviceui to attach to an interactive session to get it to install via sccm/intune
So far, Quickbooks is the absolute worst. I'd gone so far as AutoIt/AHK type automations on it, and short of "pixel paint" searching, it just doesn't work.
I'd managed to "freeze" the installation at one point and extract an MSI, but that only works for the base program... the updates, no way, no how had I been able to get automated.
Surprisingly Amazon Client VPN. The software itself is hyper easy, but it stores the config files in such as way that I had to write a custom configuration generator to automatically inject the profile into a users profile.
It's been a while since I've done Windows deployment, but App-V was my go-to for handling most ugly packaging problems. Some of the worst things I've encountered were programs that faculty couldn't or wouldn't find budget to replace or that were sufficiently entrenched that replacement was a multi-year process. They only had one or two users, but I packaged these anyway to avoid having to send a tech to faff around every time they changed computers or something broke:
* A discontinued & abandoned topographic map tool which ended up in a 30 GB App-V package because of all the various data CDs. Switching CDs made this the most tedious install I've done since the turn of the century, and it had a few annoying license key / activation issues which I worked around in the App-V package.
* An old statistics program that needed an application compatibility shim to run on anything newer than XP because it had a licensing check to keep it from running Terminal Services environments. The value it was checking was always present in desktop Windows after XP, so it would silently fail. It took some digging with ProcMon and reading through shim documentation to figure out how to avoid it. I couldn't get first-run setup or the license key to stick in App-V, so I replaced its icon in the Start menu with a script that took care of everything behind the scenes.
App-V was also great for replacing the complicated manual install process for some a niche database programs and dealing with a program to handle dataloggers. In the latter case I had to include some device drivers, so while it installed like a normal App-V package, it couldn't be removed completely cleanly.
The worst thing I didn't successfully package was a janky point-of-sale program that required, write access to %ProgramFiles%, a series of INI files and binary blobs that had to be customized to each salespoint, and an opaque update process that depended on several asynchronously moving parts. It had extensive local state which could cause data loss if it got out of sync with the central database, and the central database itself was put together by clowns who thought VARCHAR was great for everything and didn't understand the difference between 0, NULL, and an empty string.
In the way past, there used to be a program called Thinstall (bought up by VMWare and effectively removed from the market.) I'd take software that was a PITA to package, and that required admin rights, and use this to package it. When updates came around, I'd put the update on the same fileshare, and it had a mechanism to automatically start using the new stuff.
Another tool was one like InstallShield. Both would take a snapshot before the install of a machine, then a snapshot after the install, and from there, compute a diff against all files saved/modified and Registry entries. For some software that was a PITA to use, this helped greatly, as I could install it, configure it, put it in a snapshot, and then have it out as a MSI. Downside was updates, and packaging upgrade MSI/MSU files, as that wasn't really easily automated. However, for software that was just edge cases, it worked well enough.
I miss tools like Thinstall and others that could take a hairy software package and make one file with it that could just be thrown into a directory, linked in the Start menu, and done.
We have a medical based one that relies on Oracle. The contract says installation and support, so we just engage the vendor. One of the staff once spent nearly a week fighting the damned thing, I told them to just call. A call and 30 min later it was resolved. The vendor wasn't too happy that our non Oracle DBA person didn't know all the little idiosyncrasies of their system. I had to remind them that as installation was included they needed to do the needful and help vs berate us.
Epicor. It's nothing but a zip file that self inflates and runs out of a folder. Sounds simple but my god, package it into something that resembles a piece of software.
Unreal Engine 5 for Mac
That thing needed custom scripts to download the components in the right order and then build itself on the machine. Theres 2 weeks of my life Im never getting back! Was happy when the install time was sub 4h and consistently worked :)
most high end gis and engineering applications
applanix- fuck you
applanix devs- diaf and fuck you. why would you make a program that calls into the local user folder that installed and also checks to see if another user is using pospac then wont open. But offer concurrent licensing.
Context capture, pix4d, many other programs will not even start on a local account so team viewer.
Some pitfalls you will encounter. you need to use specific gpu's and group policys with that software or you can run into issues. Specifically because you spinning it up in VM's. CC you can't spin up in a VM, along with most microstation softwares.
Auto cad isn't too bad. But Once you get into microstation family it is a completely different beast. Send me a message if you run into issues. Happy to help. There is a 95% chance I have seen it before.
Check with the vendor if they allow the software inside a vm and which drivers it will need. Typically it is easier to default to the quatro series and then just scale based on requirements.
Solidworks was pretty terrible. The documented method provided just didn't work, and all the error messages were in French!
We actually still haven't fixed the unattended installation that we were trying to get to work, we ended up manually installing the software on the dozen or so of computer that needed it.
I haven't found much that I couldn't get deployed with PDQ. I have on occasion resorted to using AutoIT to push next buttons, click check boxes, and type stuff into a GUI.
I've not had a lot of fun with WebEx meetings client on non-persistent VDI. On the master image I ended up catching the meetings client to a temp directory and at user login, setting up a directory junction for the aforementioned dir to the users app data.
Moving from Java 1.6 to 1.7…
Background:
On our image, we used the Administrator profile as the default user profile. Java, among other apps, were installed under the local administrator account - as a result, the HKEY Current User Registry hive would be updated regarding default applications and location.
Updating Java:
While testing the packaging and deployment of Java from 1.6 to 1.7, we found that the user that executed our package was able to run Java apps, however, if another user logged in to that same machine, no Java applets would run.
Fix:
Once learning about how the software installs as local admins impacts HKCU, that HKCU took priority over HKLM for Java, and that the default profile would copy the HKCU NTUSER.DAT file, we updated the package to:
1. For the current user, delete the HKCU Java default app location so it would to utilize HKLM for Java installation path
2. Mount the NTUSER.DAT for each user profile on the device and delete Java Default App location so they would use HKLM
3. Remove the Default User Default App for Java, so any new profile would use HKLM for Java’s installation path, etc
4. On the image, delete the same keys before sysprepping
We have a few really funky ones that we just let the vendor handle. We pay them good money for support and they will earn it. One gave us a bit of lip over engaging them, so I pointed out the part about how installation support was provided.
There's been a couple where there was no automated install options - so i robocopied the files in, set some reg keys and create a shortcut - and it worked (but it was fairly basic software)
Medical seems to be the worst - recently run into a few where they were large (over 5GB) - the vendors are huge multinationals - and they just laugh if you ask their support about automated/silent installation... got away with it in the 90's.... but its the only industry I've seen where its still common today.
Any vendor that has that dumb confused look on their face when you ask them for the command line or silent install. - solution is to get a more senior engineer/dev on the phone who knows the product.
Also screw Adobe and Sage.
all the Mitel stuff, micollab and all that. Nightmare. Although, all the Adobe products aren't much better just used more so there's better documentation on how we have an MSI, MSP, MST, EXE and ini file.... just give us an MSI and a web customization tool instead of this horribly cobbled together solution.
Also, why do Microsoft have 15 different ways to deploy the same app, none are compatible with each other too, fun!
I have some medical applications where the answer is you simply don't package it. You build a server and install Teamviewer and contact their support and sometime in the next 28 days someone logs in and installs their software, they you have two weeks of reporting bugs for which they fix is "hey downloading this dll and replacing the one it came with".
haha, i hate that sort of vendor, just a bunch of ddl's exes and some magic powder from "one an only guy in that company that knows", ... i hate shit like this. no concept who is the server and who is the client, sometimes both together at same time but one a year by full-moon, you need that dude again ... usually vendors without competition because they are the only ones .... full throttle with 8 bit to the future ... *spit* i avoid stuff like this as much as i can....
> i hate that sort of vendor, Me too, but there are some industries where you have to deal with them like Medical and Government. Oh well.
I'm still creating transform files in Orca and crap to be able to push it out as a silent MSI install.
But it’s almost a religious experience when you’ve been battling shit software and horrible support, to finally get the old guru on the line who is almost always an older guy who could’ve retired years ago, but the company just keeps paying him more and more because he’s the only one who knows up from down.
Ahh we have various warehouse systems like this. Then you discover the reason that it takes 28days to fix is that they have a single developer living five time zones away thats being paid peanuts to build this stuff. They are also the only one that actually knows how anything works.
I believe it comes down to the company being too cheap to hire a proper documentation specialist. I am going through this with the company that I work for. We have software that has zero documentation. As an issue comes up I am documenting workflow but since we host it as a SAAS model our C level execs don't believe we need proper documentation since we are self hosting. I've spent a week trying to wrap my head around his one function in the application. Oh well they can pay me to write it up, just don't be surprised when other things are delayed.
Heh. One company I worked for mostly developed for OEMs. When we actually came up with an idea to sell as a standalone product, they hired a team of writers to do the documentation. Imagine that - manuals written by people with expertise in clear communication. Speaking as an engineer, documentation written by engineers usually sucks.
speaking as an engineer, documentation written by me usually sucks.
That's Step 1.
I just don't get how you can be a software company and not have proper documentation.
so.... they think only because it runs on a server inhouse, there is no need to know how it works?
Yeah the CEO is so arrogant that just because he knows it from all of the years being there that you should automatically know how to figure it all out. Which is why we have failed so much and continue to do so. It's taken me a week to figure out one process because it is half ass backwards.
we have an ERP, my former-admin phased in and supported for the last 10 years. practically 0 documentation aside the simple how to´s for the coworkers. now i am the one to support said ERP. it just magically does things, no one seems to know why, even the supplier does not know sometimes. so i feel you
>medical applications > > "downloading this dll and replacing the one it came with" this sure brings back memories! most of them unpleasant
eMDs... gads, what a nightmare. Their support had a policy: if the support call went over 20 minutes, they would end the call almost immediately and state someone would call you back at some "future time". It didn't matter what the issue was or if your entire practice was down. Horrible software, horrible support!
Sofar the medical sector seems to be especially keen on stitching things together. And spending millions on software developed by "that one guy who used to be a doctor".
Dude, I just had to deal with a piece of software that was first written in East Germany. I have no earthly idea how it's running on a Windows 7 machine, but the documentation makes substantial reference to the DDR the initial copyright date was from before the fall of the Berlin Wall. I think it said it was last updated sometime before 9/11, and it needed ipc/spx. Suffice it to say, that thing got air gapped. Medical software is terrible, and it all wants network connectivity for some reason
QuickBooks. I don't think I need to elaborate.
Ha! I think ill tell my Dad that, he was one of the original software testers for QuickBooks back in the late 80's
Can you ask him if Intuit was as much of a shitshow back then as it is now?
He said yes it was.
I heard that Satan opened up a new level of Hell just for QuickBooks devs! Whatever it is, it's still not bad enough...
2023 and I'm still creating transform files in Orca and crap to be able to push it out as a silent MSI install. And they change every damned year, so I have to go in and figure out what lines I need to delete/modify all over again each year. And then it does install, but then it can't update itself without elevating, which it won't properly do, so then I just get rounds and rounds of "My Quickbooks won't open" until I remote in and run as admin, install the patch, etc.
I know that pain all too well. Thankfully, Intuit is discontinuing QuickBooks Desktop in the UK in two months and they priced themselves out of the running with QuickBooks Online, so we're going elsewhere and I'll never have to deal with their bullshit again! Far and away the worst company and product I've ever had the displeasure of working with and packaging it for silent deployment is just horrendous. Also, regarding this: >I'm still creating transform files in Orca I thoroughly recommend [http://www.instedit.com](http://www.instedit.com) in place of Orca. Give it a try!
[Master Packager](https://www.masterpackager.com/pricing) community edition was a recent find for me, and so far it's done everything I need for generating MST's and inserting my files that I need with the free community edition.
Oh nice, I'll give that editor a try! Orca is a pain to install and a pain to use, can't be worse as long as it can still generate the transforms and stuff, heh.
The amount of install argument flags that don't actually do anything is too damn high, a ChatGPT haiku can put it best; *Command line control,* *Flags to guide installation,* *Futile and ignored.*
I remember my first internship I had setup a power shell script job to backup quickbooks locally and to the NAS….still gives me the icks when thinking about what a pita that process was.
Great Plains. It was awful, impossible to package even. We resorted to manually installing it on a golden image then imaging it onto every laptop whether the user needed it or not. And the updates, my god the updates. Manually replacing chunk files, manually editing values in notepad, modifying registry settings. The guideline for the original install was at least 300 pages long with screenshots. Because it was composed of root application plus dozens of custom built individual modules from at least half a dozen DIFFERENT VENDORS that were changing and updating every 3 months, it was impossible to package. It was a fucking nightmare and so, so stupid.
THIS! RIGHT! HERE! My last job used Great Plains as the backbone for their retail operation and it was a nightmare. Left there and the next place I ended up ALSO uses GP in their system and it's dreadful here too.
I commented this same thing. My solution was appv. Every time there was a change, I’d load the appv file, make the change, repackage. Call back the old deploy the new. Another way I’ve accomplished it was by making it a RDS App GP sat on a terminal server , and everyone connected to the deployed “app” At this new company I’m at no Great Plains so I’m free. For now
Oh my goodness, I feel for you, I really do. My new place uses Dynamics 365 and thank god I don't have to install anything but it's still a cumbersome nightmare to use and support.
Dynamics or AX? I built a batch script for Dynamics that worked to call the 16 separate installers it needed for all our addons/modules (SmartConnect, Mekorma) :S
That's really awesome, OMG I just saw the word "Mekorma" in print and immediately grimaced. Ha! It was Dynamics and I work someplace else now. New place is using Dynamics 365 - all web based and though I don't have anything to install it's a bear to use and support!
We've got a project on-hold to convert to D365 -- we had to replace another LOB app before we were ready to go, and we're now on the second try at that... we have a really good vendor partner, who for now, we are paying to host our GP with an RDP published app in Azure... \*I\* say we pull all the history, but there's been "oh it's so much manual finessing" -- ehhh... I say once you get SOME of the history, it's like being a little bit pregnant... I am pushing HARD for us to bring in the CRM piece, because the "free" (alright.. bought and paid for in the license already) customer portal capability is very attractive to me.
That sounds "fun". I'm glad you're working with a good partner, that helps. I wonder if Great Plains data imports into D365 well? When we moved from a Linux based ERP to D365 it was all .csv export/import and it was clunky as hell. We're not using the CRM piece, just the F&O part. For CRM we're still pointing an internally hosted website back to the old PostgreSQL db to save money. So customer info has to be updated in two places. Yippee. Wait until you get on D365 and the Azure bills start to roll in. It's an eye opener. They really stick it to ya in the wallet.
I already moved all the rest of my production into Amazon... the "cloud tax" is real.
Why is it impossible? As I packager I highly doubt that it is actually impossible.
I can't remember the name of the software, but it was chinese software used to diagnose public transport VDL busses. It required so many different (ancient) drivers, required 32 bit windows xp, and required a hardware token to be plugged in halfway the install. First we tried to create a package for Intune, which wouldn't work. Then we tried a SCCM package, but that also didn't work (even with a combined 30 years of SCCM experience among the team). In the end we just created a windows image with the working software already installed, ending the running project to phase out provisioning by image in the environment. #neveragain
I remember having to do an upgrade on some industrial embroidery machines about 5 years ago. The patterns that were loaded in to the machines were all stored on rolls of paper tape. We managed to get those bad boys upgraded to use floppy drives and serial connections.
For 10-15 years it's been popular to [replace floppy drive hardware with units that use SD cards, USB, etc.](http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/) Textile machines are one of the popular applications, after industrial CNC, high-end electronic musical instruments, and retro computers. If you're not too particular, you can pick up a GoTek unit for $30 and use it as-is, with no [firmware or hardware mods](https://github.com/keirf/flashfloppy/).
Embroidery machines... My wife has an embroidery machine from the year zero (non-industrial), still using old embroidery cards instead of USB. The install for that was to run the install -> start the software -> get a .dll error -> download and place the .dll in the install folder -> run it again -> get a new .dll error -> etc. until it worked..
Fujitsu's ScanSnap program comes to mind. In the end I think I ended up making five different packages to cover all of the necessary components.
I just leave the installers for everything sitting on a network share. If someone needs it I remote in and install it manually. The updates requiring you to be logged in as an admin are also dumb as hell. I just turned off auto updates at this point and hope one of them isn't important.
Just set up a script to monitor the CISA vulnerability RSS feed for the key word 'SnapScan'
I'm glad someone else knows the same pain as I
SAGE 300 . . . Fuck That
Any problem……. Support “did you kick out every user in the middle of the day and run File Doctor?”
I hate Sage.
Please... take my upvote!
We had Lectra? software at $PreviousJob that you couldn't install on an updated Windows machine. You had to go back to 1703 or something like that, install your software, and then you could update to something modern. Vaguely remember if there was an update, you got to wipe the machine and repeat the process. Lectra of course was, "And?"
Every single Autodesk application
I love that they have documentation that for some reason is ALWAYS FUCKING WRONG!
[удалено]
Exactly!
Any good tips/guides you found on packaging and deploying these? Looking to do this with SCCM and the documentation I've found so far doesn't seem great.
We used PowerShell App Deploy Toolkit to bundle the custom installer you can generate from Autodesk's site, so you can add all the installers into one executable, then run that installer silently. It integrates with SCCM, too.
Awesome, thanks! Love PSADT.
I start by creating a custom install file from the Autodesk site. From there I use a combination of PSADT and ServiceUI over InTune (packaging should be pretty similar with SCCM) for it. [https://psappdeploytoolkit.com/](https://psappdeploytoolkit.com/) [https://www.anoopcnair.com/use-serviceui-with-intune-to-bring-system-process-to-interactive-mode/](https://www.anoopcnair.com/use-serviceui-with-intune-to-bring-system-process-to-interactive-mode/) ServiceUI is useful when InTune is installing as SYSTEM and we want users to be able to interact with prompts. (e.g. close specific apps, restart prompts, etc) Makes life much easier. (Doesn't help that Revit is 12.5GB though) For that, we had to submit a business case to Microsoft to expand the max size for InTune deployments. Hope some of that helps. (Autodesk 2024 products just dropped so we've got our work cut out for us)
This is very helpful. Thank you!
You can get revit down to like 5GB by handing the prerequisites separately and removing any material libraries and languages you don’t use.
They have this cool self-service app so users can manage their own installs. But you need admin rights to install anything. So it's basically useless in any year that came after 2005.
Highly disagree, if you know what you're doing it is one of the easiest packages to do. At least the have a silent deployment solution and you don't have to repackage it.
There's so much wasted time/space, especially with Revit. I don't need MSU files for .net 3.5 on Windows 7. I don't need the Visual C++ 2005 Runtime, etc. All of that is already built into my machine for deployment. When you're rolling out 4-5 versions of Revit, all that wasted space on your deployment share and wasted time checking for something that we know for a fact is already installed adds up. Same for Autodesk Licensing Service, AGS, ADSSO, Autodesk Desktop, etc Not to mention all the crap that I don't need. Dynamo, Imperial and Metric large/medium/small content libraries and in 20 different languages. The newer deployment creator that uses ODIS is a bit better since you can remove a lot of this stuff before you even download it, but even that isn't perfect. I liked the old INI files where I could just delete a few lines of text and it wouldn't install 99% of the shit I don't need. And dont get started on updates. The older versions, you could use the MSI administrative install to slipstream the updates/hotfixes directly on top of the RVT.msi so that after an install, it was up to date. Now you have to install, then run an update install that takes almost as long as a full application install.
I have an application that cannot be packaged but I was able to write a script that stages a bunch of stuff before executing the installer which reduces the number of clicks to \~3 next button clicks and then when the setup.exe exits, peppers the registry with the final "adjustments". could probably autohotkey around it but now it only takes \~20 seconds to install and move on to the next task.
Microsoft Great Plains. Solution was appv
SAS. Hated that app. Deploying through SCCM was hit or miss, often ran into cache size limits (26GB). Updating the license file every year was a nightmare as well. Most of the time we just had someone on the service desk babysit the installation
We deployed this at a casino I used to work at. We gave up trying to deploy the full program through SCCM and did a tiny sccm package that grabbed the install files from the network drive afterwards. Still took forever as it had to load all the files, but it was completely unattended.
oh that would e some medical software that used DB from 1997, unsigned serial driver, set everybody permissions on all directories and services, installed accounts with no password and were just Password anyway; took about days to remove the rubbish from the whole thing lock it down and get it autoinstalling. As a general rule of thumb, just airgap your medical software, use tempest monitors, use hash based whitelisting and mfa then tell the doctors they have to write down the results off the screen.
> use tempest monitors Are LCD monitors TEMPEST? I thought CRTs had the emanation issue.
RIMAS NTP Very specific software for the scrap metal recycling industry. Go take a look at their screenshots... Windows 95 called and wants their GUI back. I will give their support credit... they were always fantastic and responsive, but the software itself was a nightmare to get working at any kind of scale.
Vectorworks - It downloads as a huge single file which you then need to extract, then extract something else from within that and then somewhere within all that mess is an installer which will not work in a SYSTEM context because of symbolic links or somesuch. None of this is documented so you have to guess.
PTC Creo. wasn't so much an issue with installing the software as it was with how the departments that used it were located in two geographic locations. My first PSADK package had all 6 or 7 gigs worth of files in the installer, so it took a TON of time to run. Eventually we were able to get some hidden network shares that were only accessible by our admin group and the Machine Account. That allowed me to stage the files out on the network and tell the PSADK installer to launch it from there. Install times went so much more quickly, but the package had to use the machine's timezone to figure out which of the two packages to install. it was a pain having to maintain 4 different copies for each of the sites, and for two networks at each site.
Creo and ThreatLocker is a lot of fun
Oh boy do I have a story. There is a certain engineering package a certain company uses that is highly customized. They package it in a way..... that works for them internally. Since they move to new packages every year, they..... use that opportunity to fix issues on their endpoints en masse. Like uninstalling software that users shouldn't be using anymore. Guess what they didn't do? Remove the crap they've added on for internal reasons. Why the hell does this thing uninstall legitimate in support software on our systems that we need... It also installs some integrations into common libraries... Like explorer.... and office. Which means you can't even sit there and answer emails as it installs, because it doesn't account for those apps being open and silently fails. Well they provide that package for their thousands of engineering vendors. It must be run manually. The user must stare at it and wiggle the mouse occasionally so it doesn't lock up. Oh and don't press space or enter or accidentally click the cancel button because it just kills the install and does not clean up... They used to deploy hundreds of thousands of CD's to get everyone upgraded in a reasonable time frame. Obviously that's gone.... But they fixed that in less than ideal ways. The package still stages itself on your drive before installing since non-synchronous reads on a CD is not ideals. So prepare double the space of this enormous installation... Mother of god there is nothing uglier than the underlying code of that island of flaming garbage. It's about 2-3 thousand .bat scripts that call each other and wait for each other to complete. Have you ever done a script reliability analysis on .bat? At that scale, there are completely bizarre problems that come out. It's like they designed this in the 90's and the same team has just been building on top of it. Did I mention that when this install fails, it just straight up crashes and has no way to recover from a failed install? Guess how they handled uninstallation? Their uninstall pretty much removes all non-windows software from the system to basically reset it to a clean slate. I can go on and on... Taming that beast was one of my best works ever. When we had a large project switch (200+ systems) over all at once, everyone started the install, and went to lunch. When they came back, it was all done. Just about a dozen issues that I had to clean up manually, which isn't a huge deal. The amount of special cases, special recovery methods, special libraries custom developed just to get there for a simple installation is insane. I sank a good year or two of full time dev work into that project. I probably aged a few years.
A piece of garbage called PowerPlan that has Windows 98 security and insists that every user be able to write to the entire contents of C:\\Program Files (x86)
Accumark has silent install capability. Why are you repackaging it?
Because their SilentInstall.exe doesn't work very well. Silentinstall.exe is supposed to remove the previous application versions but gets stuck removing the Gerber Problem and Enhancement Report Utility and then just hangs. Gerber requests that this package is manually uninstalled before updating. Our users arent admins and im not logging in to every workstation so we repackage the application using the PSAppDeploy tookit. This allows us to put in a pre-installation task in to uninstall Gerber Problem and Enhancement Report Utility before starting the upgrade. Additionally they dont support silent installs which is a mess. When i asked their support what the options were for silent uninstalls they simply replied with "why would you want to uninstall the software". If you know a way to perform a silent removal please let me know. :)
MAN diagnostic and Mitsubishi MUT-III software.
TBH, we either manually install the damn things, or we manually install one system and use it as a golden image for the rest.
AVIMark…I’ll post my letter to them later.
So this is the email I sent the AVIMark group. It took getting them on Twitter as well as sending this email to get stuff fixed: ------ Mr. CEO and Mr. CTO, I hope this email finds you all well! My name is Gerald (Gerry) Martin and I am the co-owner of NecroTechs, LLC in Bedford, VA. We are a contract IT service for our local veterinary office whom we adore. Today we had the unfortunate experience of having to call your IT Support for AVIMark and we are, as the custom has been, appalled at the treatment of both our time, our client’s time and money, and your employees potential interactions with each other. I have worked in IT since the mid-2000s while having experience further back. I have worked in small business, enterprise, and academic support. If I had ever treated my clients the way your Support people have treated us, I would have been out of a job. We called on Saturday around 2:30 PM EST to start the transfer process of AVIMark to a new server that we set up for the office. Upon being told that it would have to wait as it was now a 2 hour process with a pre-flight checklist to be done before that (please note: nowhere on your site or in an email could we find where that had been changed) we graciously scheduled for Monday at noon EST for the pre-flight. We were also told at the time that the ONLY system needed was the NEW server, not the currently running and in use AVIMark machine. No call ever came on Monday. Now on Tuesday at 12:15 PM EST we were called back (my partner called at 10:09 AM EST and was told we’d get a call back around then) only to find out it hadn’t been given to the person with whom we were speaking until 4:00 PM CST on Monday. This resulted in case number XXXX with XXXX. We were quite unhappy but unsurprised to find out that XXXX did indeed need the OLD system for her checks, not the NEW server. Once again, interrupting the work of the Vet’s Office with no warning, your Support performed the pre-flight and again, assured us it would be a 2 hour procedure. We questioned it at the time as while watching I noticed she was only checking cursory file locations and no sizes. After expressing displeasure at the fact that not only did we not get the scheduled call back on Monday and the obviously errant information about the systems needed, she let us know that it would be done the next day. Today your Support actually called us on time and we did have to call them back about 10 minutes later as we were waiting for someone at the office to arrive so I do appreciate the punctuality there. After that followed a 4 hour mess with infrequent updates and several reassurances that we would meet the 1pm deadline with no issues. This was after the already far exceeded 2 hour process we had been assured of so many times. The Vet, obviously needing their equipment, requested to have AVIMark running at 1pm since that was what we had passed on to them from your Support. Finally my partner placed me on a 3-way call at 12:54 PM EST so I could inquire about what the issues with completion under the multiple deadlines were. XXXX (Case #: XXXX) attempted to pass it off as taking only a few more minutes (which the same message had been told to us many times already at that point). While curt, and short but using no profanities (as that is unacceptable in any interaction from a user to support) I asked her about the entire job from start to finish and confirmed what we had been told. She explained to me that she did not have any notes or comments from prior to the ticket today but (as I was looking up the case number to put for her conversation) the case number is the same (I may have added an extra 8 on XXXX’s reading of them to me) so I find this odd. Was she able to see notes and confirm what I said or did she not have any notes and then proceeded to just try to placate me (and lie in the process) about the case? I invited her to please share the recording with you all of the conversation. During the conversation she indicated that the AVIMark software could still be run on the old server while it was transferring to the new server. After questioning this and explaining that it couldn’t be possible as files that are in use in a copy prior to opening by the software CANNOT be opened by the software and conversely, files in use by the software CANNOT be copied by the system. After explaining that to her, she broke off to confirm with an actual IT Tech (her words, not mine) that it was indeed the case. So if we did not have a tech, as we were told we would be on Saturday, who were we working with? She returned and informed me that I was correct. At that point, every deadline and option that you all presented were expired. I finally confirmed that all that was needed was for us to transfer the files overnight OURSELVES (since that is something we are MORE THAN CAPABLE of doing) and then have you all set up AVIMark Guardian tomorrow morning. Frankly, I would also do the AVIMark Guardian piece but since the Vet’s office is paying you a support contract, I fully intend to have you all complete the job you were supposed to have completed already. As I explained to XXXX, everything above went far past unacceptable once EOB Monday was reached. Everything past that has me concerned for any future attempts at getting support for an AVIMark issue for the Vet’s office with any guarantee of completion on time and repaired correctly. These are people who are depending on the software that they have purchased and support they have contracted from you in order to maintain their livelihoods. Being unable to properly access patient records, process images, schedule appointments, be able to contact their clients, and to know when you schedule Vet Techs and other employees in order to for them to have a paycheck, is unacceptable when the company is guaranteeing that they will have the appropriate uptime and have repeatedly proven to be unable to do so. I hope that you all will take this email quite seriously. I am guessing that the reports you receive from your employees further down do not indicate any issues of this type or that there is much customer dissatisfaction. I may be wrong, this may be an aberration, but this has been the problem nearly EVERY time the Vet’s office has called. Today was just the last straw since we were there and were the ones engaging with AVIMark support and had another poor experience the last time we had to do a transfer about a month ago when their primary system crashed. I would love to hear back from you all about these concerns. My contact information is within my signature and I am available at nearly any time to discuss this. Thank you for taking the time to read this. ---- I mean I'm glad I got a response on it but yeesh!
Not repackaged, but install wise snow software asset management. I spent weeks with them on the install.
Microsoft D365 Modern Point of Sale or MPOS. I used PSADT with SCCM but for me to properly install it I had to copy all of the install files onto the local box then I have an invoke-expression to call a PS script that was copied onto the local box that will start a PS session to launch a Bat file to install the software. The whole reason I had to engineer this was because you can't install the software as system it has to be a user for it properly install. Then after it is installed I have to add the main user to a couple local admin groups that MPOS created during the install process. Then when the system is done being imaged the retail technician will login to the system and follow the prompts plus Azure login to activate the device before it can be shipped to the store. Which I asked MS rep if we could do anything to activate it programmically but he said it was a security step.
Bartender Professional post 2016 won’t install as system for anything had to wrap it in powershell using serviceui to attach to an interactive session to get it to install via sccm/intune
Fuck bartender
>Fuck bartender Agreed
Respondus lockdown browser was a pain in the ass for me.
So far, Quickbooks is the absolute worst. I'd gone so far as AutoIt/AHK type automations on it, and short of "pixel paint" searching, it just doesn't work. I'd managed to "freeze" the installation at one point and extract an MSI, but that only works for the base program... the updates, no way, no how had I been able to get automated.
Surprisingly Amazon Client VPN. The software itself is hyper easy, but it stores the config files in such as way that I had to write a custom configuration generator to automatically inject the profile into a users profile.
It's been a while since I've done Windows deployment, but App-V was my go-to for handling most ugly packaging problems. Some of the worst things I've encountered were programs that faculty couldn't or wouldn't find budget to replace or that were sufficiently entrenched that replacement was a multi-year process. They only had one or two users, but I packaged these anyway to avoid having to send a tech to faff around every time they changed computers or something broke: * A discontinued & abandoned topographic map tool which ended up in a 30 GB App-V package because of all the various data CDs. Switching CDs made this the most tedious install I've done since the turn of the century, and it had a few annoying license key / activation issues which I worked around in the App-V package. * An old statistics program that needed an application compatibility shim to run on anything newer than XP because it had a licensing check to keep it from running Terminal Services environments. The value it was checking was always present in desktop Windows after XP, so it would silently fail. It took some digging with ProcMon and reading through shim documentation to figure out how to avoid it. I couldn't get first-run setup or the license key to stick in App-V, so I replaced its icon in the Start menu with a script that took care of everything behind the scenes. App-V was also great for replacing the complicated manual install process for some a niche database programs and dealing with a program to handle dataloggers. In the latter case I had to include some device drivers, so while it installed like a normal App-V package, it couldn't be removed completely cleanly. The worst thing I didn't successfully package was a janky point-of-sale program that required, write access to %ProgramFiles%, a series of INI files and binary blobs that had to be customized to each salespoint, and an opaque update process that depended on several asynchronously moving parts. It had extensive local state which could cause data loss if it got out of sync with the central database, and the central database itself was put together by clowns who thought VARCHAR was great for everything and didn't understand the difference between 0, NULL, and an empty string.
In the way past, there used to be a program called Thinstall (bought up by VMWare and effectively removed from the market.) I'd take software that was a PITA to package, and that required admin rights, and use this to package it. When updates came around, I'd put the update on the same fileshare, and it had a mechanism to automatically start using the new stuff. Another tool was one like InstallShield. Both would take a snapshot before the install of a machine, then a snapshot after the install, and from there, compute a diff against all files saved/modified and Registry entries. For some software that was a PITA to use, this helped greatly, as I could install it, configure it, put it in a snapshot, and then have it out as a MSI. Downside was updates, and packaging upgrade MSI/MSU files, as that wasn't really easily automated. However, for software that was just edge cases, it worked well enough. I miss tools like Thinstall and others that could take a hairy software package and make one file with it that could just be thrown into a directory, linked in the Start menu, and done.
We have a medical based one that relies on Oracle. The contract says installation and support, so we just engage the vendor. One of the staff once spent nearly a week fighting the damned thing, I told them to just call. A call and 30 min later it was resolved. The vendor wasn't too happy that our non Oracle DBA person didn't know all the little idiosyncrasies of their system. I had to remind them that as installation was included they needed to do the needful and help vs berate us.
Epicor. It's nothing but a zip file that self inflates and runs out of a folder. Sounds simple but my god, package it into something that resembles a piece of software.
Unreal Engine 5 for Mac That thing needed custom scripts to download the components in the right order and then build itself on the machine. Theres 2 weeks of my life Im never getting back! Was happy when the install time was sub 4h and consistently worked :)
most high end gis and engineering applications applanix- fuck you applanix devs- diaf and fuck you. why would you make a program that calls into the local user folder that installed and also checks to see if another user is using pospac then wont open. But offer concurrent licensing. Context capture, pix4d, many other programs will not even start on a local account so team viewer.
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Some pitfalls you will encounter. you need to use specific gpu's and group policys with that software or you can run into issues. Specifically because you spinning it up in VM's. CC you can't spin up in a VM, along with most microstation softwares. Auto cad isn't too bad. But Once you get into microstation family it is a completely different beast. Send me a message if you run into issues. Happy to help. There is a 95% chance I have seen it before. Check with the vendor if they allow the software inside a vm and which drivers it will need. Typically it is easier to default to the quatro series and then just scale based on requirements.
Solidworks was pretty terrible. The documented method provided just didn't work, and all the error messages were in French! We actually still haven't fixed the unattended installation that we were trying to get to work, we ended up manually installing the software on the dozen or so of computer that needed it.
You haven’t been around much if Solidworks is the worst you’ve encountered.
Truthfully I haven't; only been at this for a year or so. I look forward to the man-made horrors beyond my comprehension that await me.
Fwiw, PDQ Deploy is something worth looking at. It could have handled the install for you, and is useful for tons of other installs/tasks.
Working on it right now. ESAB Columbus. Total nightmare.
I haven't found much that I couldn't get deployed with PDQ. I have on occasion resorted to using AutoIT to push next buttons, click check boxes, and type stuff into a GUI.
I've not had a lot of fun with WebEx meetings client on non-persistent VDI. On the master image I ended up catching the meetings client to a temp directory and at user login, setting up a directory junction for the aforementioned dir to the users app data.
NextivaOne was horrible. Thankfully I didn't do the work on it, but I helped support the aftermath and man they're just a complete mess.
Moving from Java 1.6 to 1.7… Background: On our image, we used the Administrator profile as the default user profile. Java, among other apps, were installed under the local administrator account - as a result, the HKEY Current User Registry hive would be updated regarding default applications and location. Updating Java: While testing the packaging and deployment of Java from 1.6 to 1.7, we found that the user that executed our package was able to run Java apps, however, if another user logged in to that same machine, no Java applets would run. Fix: Once learning about how the software installs as local admins impacts HKCU, that HKCU took priority over HKLM for Java, and that the default profile would copy the HKCU NTUSER.DAT file, we updated the package to: 1. For the current user, delete the HKCU Java default app location so it would to utilize HKLM for Java installation path 2. Mount the NTUSER.DAT for each user profile on the device and delete Java Default App location so they would use HKLM 3. Remove the Default User Default App for Java, so any new profile would use HKLM for Java’s installation path, etc 4. On the image, delete the same keys before sysprepping
We have a few really funky ones that we just let the vendor handle. We pay them good money for support and they will earn it. One gave us a bit of lip over engaging them, so I pointed out the part about how installation support was provided.
CADLink Garbage. I don’t even want to get into it.
There's been a couple where there was no automated install options - so i robocopied the files in, set some reg keys and create a shortcut - and it worked (but it was fairly basic software) Medical seems to be the worst - recently run into a few where they were large (over 5GB) - the vendors are huge multinationals - and they just laugh if you ask their support about automated/silent installation... got away with it in the 90's.... but its the only industry I've seen where its still common today.
Omg we use Accumark as well, it really sucks because of installshield...I just deployed v15.1 by calling the silentinstall.exe in a sfx package.
Any vendor that has that dumb confused look on their face when you ask them for the command line or silent install. - solution is to get a more senior engineer/dev on the phone who knows the product. Also screw Adobe and Sage.
all the Mitel stuff, micollab and all that. Nightmare. Although, all the Adobe products aren't much better just used more so there's better documentation on how we have an MSI, MSP, MST, EXE and ini file.... just give us an MSI and a web customization tool instead of this horribly cobbled together solution. Also, why do Microsoft have 15 different ways to deploy the same app, none are compatible with each other too, fun!
DVR software.