QuickBooks

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Recently I worked with a client that wanted to package QuickBooks and deliver the application with Liquidware’s FlexApp technology to their VMware Horizon virtual desktops; however, when they packaged the application and deployed to their VDI the end user received an error when trying to launch the application

Application Information

QuickBooks is an application that licenses and registers to the volume serial number of the local hard disk. When the license is created an encrypted file is stored that can only be unencrypted if the volume serial number matches the system it was installed on.

Solution

To package and playback QuickBooks, the Volume ID’s need to be consistent. In the customer’s environment, their clones had the same volume ID as the base image as this is not changed in a Vmware Linked or Instant clone scenario. The FlexApp packager did not share the same volume ID. The customer downloaded the Sysinternals VolumeID (v2.1) and changed the volume ID of the FlexApp packager.

• On the base image, open a command prompt and list the directory (dir). This will show the volume serial number.
• On the FlexApp packager, use VolumeID.exe to change the volume ID for the drive, “VolumeID.exe C: B23D-CB11” utilizing the volume ID of the base image in the command.
• Restart the FlexApp packager
• Confirm the volume ID has changed, and take a new snapshot if desired
• Repackage QuickBooks with the new volume ID set and QuickBooks should work when delivered.

If you are developing a base image and you clone a FlexApp Packager off early in the process then this is not an issue as the clone will not change the VolumeID. I normally install from ISO, patch, install VMware tools, and all the C++ redistributable packages, then clone off a FlexApp Packager before I start to customize my base image.