5.1

ThinApp User’s Guide
26 VMware, Inc.
Extracting and Registering ThinDirect
After you have built the Internet Explorer 6 package, you need to extract and register the ThinDirect plug-in
on the test machine. The ThinDirect plug-in must be installed as part of the virtual package. The plug-in is
installed in your native browser during the registration process.
Extract and register ThinDirect
In the console, run the thinreg /a VirtIE6.exe command to extract the ThinDirect application, and extract
and register the ThinDirect library.
The ThinDirect application is installed in the Program Files/VMware/VMware ThinApp/ThinDirect
directory.
You can have multiple ThinDirect text files in the ThinDirect directory, if they all have unique names. The
ThinDirect plug-in then reads all files.
In addition to individual machine registration, you can register Web page redirects on a individual user basis
by omitting the /a switch. To achieve individual-user redirects requires that the ThinDirect plug-in be
installed as a separate step from an Administrator account. If you do not install the ThinDirect plug-in as a
separate step, Thinreg displays an error.
You can push additional Web page redirect to end-user computers by copying files with a specific format to
specific individual-machine or individual-user locations.
ThinDirect Plug-in Enhancements
In ThinApp 5.1, the following enhancements have been made to the ThinDirect plug-in.
 ThinApp now supports redirection between two virtual browsers, for more information, see KB artilce
2087928.
 The ThiDirect plug-in can now be used to enable the Firefox browser.
Capturing Multiple Application Installers with ThinApp Converter
On virtual machines running a Windows operating system, you can use ThinApp Converter to convert
multiple application installers into ThinApp packages. After you provide a configuration file with specific
settings that the converter accesses, ThinApp Converter runs applications in silent mode. Silent mode means
that the process occurs without requiring user input, after initial configuration settings are specified. ThinApp
Converter transparently captures installation content, generates ThinApp projects, and build the projects into
a ThinApp package in virtual machines you specify in the configuration file. This process is fully automated,
from when ThinApp Converter starts to run until the ThinApp package is built.
The ThinApp executable file and the application installers can run on virtual machines.
ThinApp Converter Process
Before you run ThinApp Converter, you must use the ThinAppConverter.ini configuration file as a
template to specify the virtual machine environment on which the applications to be converted reside, the
network share paths, and various other mandatory and optional parameters. You then use the -f command
line switch to specify the configuration file that you created, which ThinApp Converter will use. For example,
ThinAppConverter.exe -f myConfig.ini.
ThinApp Converter reads the configuration file to identify which installers are to be converted and the virtual
machines on which the conversion is to occur.
ThinApp Converter then powers on each virtual machine and takes a snapshot that is used after the
conversion process is complete.
After the snapshot is taken, ThinApp Converter pushes a silent capture agent to virtual machines. The silent
capture agent runs transparently on the virtual machines, capturing the application installation process in a
similar way to that of the Setup Capture wizard when a single application is being captured. The silent capture
agent performs the following actions: