Following on from Installing VMware ThinApp 4.6 - ThinApp Part 1 we will actually create a ThinApp.

The software of choice is Adobe Reader 9.1, a very common piece of software used in the enterprise.

It is also the perfect candidate for ThinApp application virtualisation due to the constant updates to the product. With ThinApp you would just need to re-recreate the package with the update and then replace the original ThinApp package with the new one (it sure beats trying to apply it to 1000's of computers).

1. Download Adobe Reader

Dont forget you will probably want the Enterprise version to be allowed to deploy/distribute on a corporate network.

http://www.adobe.com/products/reader/

2. Start VMware ThinApp, Click Next. 

3. Run the Prescan.

A prescan is run to take a baseline of the registry and files on the computer. This will be used to compare what has changed when the software is installed.

Click "Prescan >" and wait a few minutes for the prescan to complete.

4. Install Adobe Reader

Dont run a postscan yet! Start the installation of Adobe Reader 9 and install as required.

Once installed make any preference changes you need (turn off internet updates, accept license agreement etc) 

5. Run the postscan

The postscan is compared with the prescan to see exactly what changes the application makes to the registry and files.

Click "Postscan >" to run the scan a wait. 

6. Executable entry point

Select the executable which should be used to start the application.

In this case "AcroRd32.exe" is the actual executable for Adobe Reader.

Click Next.

7. Application Access

Choose to limit the application with Active Directory groups or allow everyone.

Click Next.

8. Select the Isolation Mode

Choose "Full write access" and Click Next.

For legacy applications that are no longer patched this needs to be reviewed and tested, as you would prefer to limit these to "Restricted write access". Generally Windows Logo Certified applications are set to "Full write access".

9. Sandbox location

This depends on how you are running your environment. Generally this is in the user profile.

Select "User profile" and Click Next.

10. Quality Assurance

Decide if you want to share your ThinApp statistics with VMware (its annonymous you know and it helps!).

Click Next.

11. Project Settings

Give the application a name for identifying packages and a build location.

Click Next.

12. Package Settings

Choose to package the file as one a single entry point or as a seperate .DAT file.

If you would like to distribute the package as an MSI and register file associations when this installed, choose generate MSI package.

Finally if you are distributing this package for production compress it to save precious space.

Click Save.

13. Build It!!

Click "Build" to start building the package....

If you click "Open the project folder" before building you can see what the package contains and make any further advanced changes if required.

14. Build Complete

When the build completes Click Finish.

15. The folder with the complied and compressed ThinApp virtual package will be displayed.

16. Run your ThinApp!!

Double click the .exe for your Adobe Reader ThinApp package and confirm it works correctly, try this on another computer.

Depending on what project settings you chose you may have only one .exe which you could make available in a network location to all users.