dred05m No I did not, but are you asking for it to work under WinPE or Windows 10/11 ? WinPE is a bit more sensitive when running portable apps overall.
For Windows 10/11 things should work smoothly if you use ThinApp (it's a solid commercial tool):
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As an addition, prior to using ThinApp, I strongly recommend to first take a look on what the app is doing, what it needs in terms of file dependencies and Registry keys. Use SysTracer ([Login to see the link]) for an outstanding before-and-after system comparison (there so many alternatives) and finally use the golden king of kings Process Monitor from Sysinternals. Once you understand how the app works, it's easy peasy to make it portable.
ThinApp works well out of the box but sometimes, for some apps, you do need a bit of manual intervention.
Here is my general flow on creating stable portable apps (I guess each of us have our own unique way to do this):
- Use a VirtualBox VM with Windows 7 or Windows 10 (Windows 7 because it generates less OS events than W10 and I can focus on the actual app events); Make sure you disable all irrelevant services / OS apps / so that the OS will have limited events generated during app deployment and execution);
- Prepare initial SysTracer snapshot (the "before" image of both File and Registry);
- Prepare Process Monitor by filtering out a pre-defined list of default Windows OS file/registry events. You know you did a good filtering if ProcMon won't list any Windows related events at all while running. This is key to see in great details what the app's setup alone is doing, where and how much. It's a fine-tune addition to SysTracer;
- Deploy desired software on the VM without doing anything else on the OS during that time. Isolate the deployment as much as you can by not opening anything else in the background (except SysTracer and ProcMon); Never open any browser, Explorer or anything else, otherwise you might have to start over;
- The moment the app is installed, make another SysTracer snapshot, and also save the ProcMon pml file with the events. In this phase, you must know what the setup did on the device (don't mind any dll registrations for now);
- Next step is to open your app and capture all additional events generated while running the app (includes licensing part, settings, config etc.); Do the last SysTracer snapshop and also save the second ProcMon pml file for later analysis;
- Cross reference all relevant app Registry keys and files from both SysTracer and ProcMon. I find this the most important part of all, where I personally spend most time, in order to prepare a clean, sharp, solid basis for the portable app;
- Once you have isolated the required files and Reg keys you can start packaging;
- Reset your VM to initial state, start ThinApp, start the capture by deploying your app, let it prepare the whole package and when it's done, do the fine tune of the package based on your findings from above steps;
The single most difficult suite of apps for me was making a portable version of Office (Excel, Word, PowerPoint).
Let me know here or on private, what exactly fails when you want to make a portable version of CyberLink PowerDVD and let me see if I can help you out.
I hope that the above information helps both you [Login to see the link] and the community.
Yours,
Resurrector