Technology, Software, Brews, and Opinions

Time for another App Scorn entry.  This time, we have Techsmith Snagit to put the evil eye on.

Originally, Snagit ran perfectly under Windows XP and AppV.

For particular reasons (unbeknown to myself), Snagit has a big problem with AppV and Windows 7, when combined together.  Snagpriv.exe is the culprit, needing something that we’re not sure of.  When packaged, and used on a Windows 7 machine, under AppV, it results in an error message “Unable to start snagpriv.exe”.  No bug code, no definitive error message.

On the Techsmith support page, it claims that this can happen if you have ZoneAlarm installed, and you need to configure it to allow snagpriv to run.  In our case, that claim is bogus.

So after some searching, I found myself looking at a completely different error code, from the AppV client instead of Snagit.  It seems that there is an extra bit of code you can insert into the AppV OSD file to make Snagit work (and just about anything else that might have similar issues).

<ENVLIST>
     <ENVIRONMENT VARIABLE="__COMPAT_LAYER">RunAsInvoker</ENVIRONMENT>
</ENVLIST>

Of all the years I have been working with Softgrid/AppV, I never knew this code existed.  Now I do, and Snagit works without a hindrance.

Yes, this is my motto.

Holy. Crap.

I gotta say, MS did a number on the sequencer this time around.  I just packaged SPSS 19 in less than 20 minutes, albeit unsuccessfully on the client station, but hey!

The best changes so far are:

1. Asks you where the installer is, very similarly with most other re-packager applications (KACE AppRepackager, Symantec Ghost AI)
2. Has a check-box to enable the Next button when in packaging mode (no more hitting the Next button by accident!)
3. When asking what OS values to include, it warns about selecting previous OS entries
4. When asking what OS values, it also has a option to NOT select ANY for universal deployment
5. When saving, and this is a big one, it auto-fills in the field with Desktop/[PackageName]/[PackageName].sft (no more New Sequencer Package.sft files!)

The actually DO listen to customers, it just takes a while to get the requests in the roadmap.

Just as a note, even though the great and mighty Adobe promised a Reverse command in Soundbooth for the CS4 release (and didn’t make it), they have also overlooked the command for the CS5 release. I brought the audio clip I wanted into Adobe Premiere, and was able to reverse the audio just fine.

As another note, Audacity, a free, open-source software, has the same command function, and has had it from the start.

And I added a new category to my blog: App Scorn.  Where software lacks in promised functionality, I will post!