[wpkg-users] Old version reinstall - WPKG is nice but it still needs improve

[Rainer Meier]

Hi Tomasz,

> Filemon and Regmon are your friends, then.
> Check where the program wants to write files/registry, and make those 
> writeable by all. Involves 5-30 minutes of work, works for 99% of 
> admin-only software, and is far better than granting admin rights to all 
> users.

Full ACK. I forgot to mention this. In fact I got all programs in use by 
me working without any admin rights. Most of them need write access to 
some *.ini files within the %ProgramFiles% tree which can be fixed by 
adding a simple cacls/icacls command within a postinstall script.

Some applications can even be configured to write the configuration 
files correctly to the %AppData% tree.

For example for IrfanView just copy i_view32.ini to the install folder 
overwriting the default one. Use the following contents:

[Others]
INI_Folder="%APPDATA%\Irfanview"

Et voila, IrfanView is able to store user settings independently for 
each user, without admin rights.

The same for winamp. Just put 'paths.ini' to the install folder using 
the following contents:

[Winamp]
inidir=%APPDATA%\Winamp
m3udir=%APPDATA%\Winamp
cwd=%APPDATA%\Winamp


And Winamp stores the files to your profile not requiring any admin 
rights any more.


> I use one simple trick for some "ugly" software where versions etc. are 
> unpredictable:
> 
> set %UGLYSOFT%=10.2
> 
> install_this
> install_that
> 
> echo %date% %time% > C:\uglysoft\INSTALLED_%UGLYSOFT%.TXT

Wow, very "ugly" - but might work. WPKG can now even check for existence 
of the C:\uglysoft\INSTALLED_10.2.TXT file :-)


br,
Rainer