Setup Capture

Setup Capture

Setup Capture is used to automatically convert standard applications to Thinstall projects, which can then be built into Thinstalled EXEs.

Before you use Setup Capture, a few planning steps to consider:

1. You should capture applications using a clean install on Windows
Note: It's ok to install Thinstall on your clean machine for capturing purposes, it will not affect the snapshots

2. During installation, if given the option to install Shortcuts by the installer, select "Yes".

3. If your machine has background services running like anti-virus, it's a good a idea to stop them. If background applications create files or write registry values during the capture process, these changes will be included in the capture. Having extra data in a package generally does not cause a problem for applications, but it can increase the package size. Because Thinstalled applications are isolated from the system and Thinstall does not actually modify the registry and file system at runtime, having extra data in a package will not harm a system as with MSI-based deployment systems.

4. If the application requires a reboot during installation, Setup Capture will automatically continue the capture process.

Step 1. Select which drives and registry hives to scan.

Step 2. Scan the machine to create an initial snapshot.

Step 3. Install the target application and configure it as you want the user see it.

If you execute the application after the installation completes, the capture will include per-user data settings (HKEY_CURRENT_USER, Documents & Settings). When a user executes the application, he or she will inherit these settings, but any additional changes made by the application at runtime will be saved to a user-specific sandbox.

You can install required dependencies like .NET, ODBC connection drivers, Java, etc. These components will be included in the captured project. If these dependencies already existed on the system prior to starting the capture process, the package will not include them and they must be pre-installed on all machines on which the application will run.

·	You can install application plugins at this point

Step 4. Do a final scan and select a directory to save project.

Step 5. Once the project has been saved, you can generate Thinstalled EXE files by running build.bat in the project directory.
Note: If the application did not install any shortcuts, you may need edit pacakge.ini to tell Thinstall what EXEs you want to generate.