Office 2010 – Click to run installer – “modification”
As a tech guy you get invited for beta’s on a regular basis, this happened to me for office 2010 a while ago. When i logged on to Microsoft connect i found out Microsoft does not give away full blown iso’s anymore but something they like to call “Click to run Installer”. *hmm interesting.
A couple of minutes after installing it was clear to me the click to run installer is a modified version of Microsoft app-v (softgrid registry keys, the famous Q drive etc), only the softgrid processes are hidden and sfttray does not seem available.
Well so far so good, but then i remembered the app-v 4.6 beta also went public. so this is where it got interesting: What if i take the OSD files from the “Click to run installer” and feed them to a normal app-v client. i guessed there would be some sort of mechanism preventing me to load the applications, this suspicion was increased by the first application i started because it was asking for a certificate 
but no worries.. From all the osd files i managed to start a certificate manager 
So here is a little howto:
- Get invited to the beta of office 2010 to get your hands on some OSD files
- Get the app-v 4.6 client (connect.microsoft.com)
- Extract the OSD files from the machine where you ran the “click to run installer” (C:\Users\Public\Documents\SoftGrid Client\OSD Cache)
- Import the OSD files on the app-v 4.6 client
- Load the application(s): for instance with “Sfttray.exe /loadall”
- Run the application via the GUID name: for instance “Sfttray.exe /launch {eef3cf80-26b2}”
I definitely see a future for this type of application delivery, where even home users use techniques that are common for enterprises these days: How great would it be if you could just stream a application and only pay when you are really using it ? – as a service!
