Does SoftGrid create an inaccessible disk drive?
I've installed a beta version of Microsoft SoftGrid App Virtualization from corpnet - no idea which version. Now, I've got a funky drive showing up in "My Computer", Q:\. I can't open the drive (getting access denied), and I can't set ACL's on the drive. The only way I traced it back to you guys was by asking on ntfstalk, getting an internal tool to print out disk information (DiskDiag.exe), then finding someone in Core File Services who connected the string "SftVol" with Softricity.
Can you guys confirm that your software does create this inaccessible hard drive? Here's the info from DiskDiag that suggested it might be related to MS SoftGrid:
A: = \Device\Floppy0 [Removable]
C: = \Device\HarddiskVolume2 [Fixed]
D: = \Device\CdRom0 [CDRom]
Q: = \Device\SftVol [Fixed] <---------- No hardware corresponds w/ this device.If this is indeed from your app, is it possible you could work with either Core File Services, the Shell team, and/or at least the DiskDiag people to do a slightly better job reporting these devices? Making a new disk type returned by Win32's GetDriveType() (like DRIVE_VIRTUALIZED or whatever) would be a good start.
Answers
When you install the SoftGrid client by default it will create a "inaccessible disk drive" and if avalible it will be named Q:.
Best Regards
Pierre Eriksson
All Replies
When you install the SoftGrid client by default it will create a "inaccessible disk drive" and if avalible it will be named Q:.
Best Regards
Pierre Eriksson
Awesome - thanks for confirming this.
It would be even better if either this didn't have a drive letter associated with it, or if Explorer showed it as a different type of hard drive somehow.
One thing that is really great with having a "Q: drive" is that it is really easy to determine what is user data vs. application data.
Some other solutions for "Virtual applications" do not use a specific drive and then you manually have to specify what is user data.
E.G. if you use another solution instead of "Microsoft Virtual Application" and that Virtual instance of Microsoft Word creates a .doc file and save it on your desktop it will be available as long as you have marked the Virtual application as active. When you deactivate the application you .doc file that you placed on your desktop will disappear!
Of course there is a way to solve this but you have to do it manually, with Softgrid... I mean with Microsoft virtual application it is 99% of the times automatic.
Best Regards
Pierre Eriksson
If you need to change the drive letter, then do it from the registry. Note that you'll need to restart your client and it is also adviceable you sequence on a machine with the same drive letter as your client.
The entries will be found in HKLM\Software\Microsoft\SoftGrid\4.5\Client\AppFS
CurrentDriveLetter
DriveLetter
This was a really big problem in our environment. Finding a universally available drive letter in an org with distributed IT support. What I ended up doing was using a little trick to make the default softgrid drive be the "B:" drive. This works in almost all cases since most computers these days don't have an A: drive let alone B:
What tool did you use to make the B: drive?
We used subst on our sequencer but a lot of installs go wrong.
Thnx- Yeah subst isn't a good idea but if you are on XP or older and need to change the drive letter to B: then go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices and change \DosDevices\Q: to \DosDevices\B:.
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