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LukaszDziwisz
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Office 2016 reconfiguring each time it opens

Hello Everyone,

Just wanted to see if anyone runs into a problem where provisioning an application causes Microsoft Office 2016 to reconfigure itself. I've been facing this issue with multiple application like for example Infopath 2013. Once provisioned to user it is causing Microsoft Office  to reconfigure itself each time that Microsoft Access or Microsoft Word is opened. When Outlook or Excel is opened it is fine.  Another example is Xperience application which is one of our inhouse applications. Once pushed to the user it is causing only Word to reconfigure every time. And another one is causing Outlook to create and open a local copy of OST file instead of connecting to Exchange?

The packaging machines we used are clones on image (not sure if at the same update level though). We tried provisioning on PM with Office 2016 and without and getting the same result.

SO I'm wondering if there is any global configuration like for example snapvol.cfg where we could exclude/include something that would prevent it from happening? Any help would be much appreciated.

13 Replies
sjesse
Leadership
Leadership

Its probably the order the appstacks are getting attached in, there is a common folder office uses, and at least for infopath its probably overwriting it. Its supposed to work with project and visio in seperate appstacks, but I'm not sure about the other ones. See if you can combine infopath in the same appstack.I don't think exclusions will work because they are working with at least some paths in common.

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LukaszDziwisz
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Yeah I was thinking about it but what we are doing is actually we put Office 2016 on Master Image and created one for Visio and Project.

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oliober
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi

We have the same problem with word.

Every time, when Packaging Machine is not equal to the Parent Machine (Windows Updates etc.) the issue with the office repair occurs.

Now we use a Windoww only Packaging Machine without Office, Runtimes etc.

Until now, this works for us.

LukaszDziwisz
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Yeah that is probably good idea however in some cases we need need office as a prerequisite

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LukaszDziwisz
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

SO would you all agree that the best way is to update your Master image with any updates necessary, seal it and provision to the pool. Then clone it, remove all of the agents besides appvolumes and snapshot it to use as a PM? Do you guys unjoin it from the domain, rename and join again? Our master image is joined to the domain and PMs are too. Also If provisioning is successful and next set of updates comes around what do you do with existing appstacks? Redo them, or is it only when new appstack is created?

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Ray_handels
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

SO would you all agree that the best way is to update your Master image with any updates necessary, seal it and provision to the pool. Then clone it, remove all of the agents besides appvolumes and snapshot it to use as a PM?

Yes. Not quite sure if documentation states this but it is noted as being best practice.

Do you guys unjoin it from the domain, rename and join again?

Yes. I found out that not joining the machine to the domain I was unable to attach appstacks for provisioning. I would suggest using a local administrator account for packaging, try to avoid using a domain account. Also make sure no policies are attached to the OU that your PM is in. These could be applied during the appstack creation proces and you could end up with all kinds of crap in the appstack.

Our master image is joined to the domain and PMs are too. Also If provisioning is successful and next set of updates comes around what do you do with existing appstacks? Redo them, or is it only when new appstack is created?

No we don;t because this would take up waaay to much time. Support does seem to throw out that option pretty offen but most of the times the appstack still work, even with a newer version of Appvolumes. We found out that if an appstack stopped working it had an issue in the firts place so recreating would be our best option. Most of the time the basic appstack keep on working.

We even tested with W7 appstacks on W10 machines (it's a while back but still) and even 70 to 80% of those worked. Do not do this for production by the way, just making an observation here Smiley Happy

LukaszDziwisz
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Thank  you for that information. I guess one thing I was doing different is that once I had PMs setup I've been updating them with patches whenever Image was updated to keep it the same but I see that other admins delete their PMs and repeat the procedure after Image is updated.

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danielkrause
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

We noticed that in the appstack registry a key appears

"Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SnapVolumes-{79ddf113-fe64-4540-a31b-1b4819c19c4a}\USER\S-1-5-20\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\OfficeSoftwareProtectionPlatform"

"Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SnapVolumes-{79ddf113-fe64-4540-a31b-1b4819c19c4a}\USER\S-1-5-20\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SoftwareProtectionPlatform"

if the outlook is native on the local machine, we could maybe exclude this native in the snapvol.cfg?

In the previous versions we used a workaround to provide a key to prevent reconfig on startup for a while in Office2010, whats worked also fine. But its not the best solution in that case.

Problem with microsoft office 2016

reg add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Word\Options /v NoReReg /t REG_DWORD /d 1
reg add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Excel\Options /v NoReReg /t REG_DWORD /d 1
reg add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Access\Options /v NoReReg /t REG_DWORD /d 1
reg add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Powerpoint\Options /v NoReReg /t REG_DWORD /d 1
reg add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Options /v NoReReg /t REG_DWORD /d 1

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Ray_handels
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

We noticed that in the appstack registry a key appears

"Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SnapVolumes-{79ddf113-fe64-4540-a31b-1b4819c19c4a}\USER\S-1-5-20\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\OfficeSoftwareProtectionPlatform"

"Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SnapVolumes-{79ddf113-fe64-4540-a31b-1b4819c19c4a}\USER\S-1-5-20\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SoftwareProtectionPlatform"

if the outlook is native on the local machine, we could maybe exclude this native in the snapvol.cfg?

Yes you can. I always thought that this had been removed for the purpose of not storing the KMS activation database within the appstack. Apparently it is still inthere.

And you are 100% sure that this is not the local machine that is showing this?? Did you attach it to a machine without the Appvolumes agent to see if it is indeed inthere??

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danielkrause
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

This is in the default template of the newest Version of the snapvault.cfg

virtualize_registry=\REGISTRY\USER\S-1-5-20\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\OfficeSoftwareProtectionPlatform

virtualize_to=\USER\S-1-5-20\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\OfficeSoftwareProtectionPlatform

virtualize_registry=\REGISTRY\USER\S-1-5-20\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SoftwareProtectionPlatform

virtualize_to=\USER\S-1-5-20\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SoftwareProtectionPlatform

But even removing it makes no difference. any idea of the right syntax to remove these keys in the snapvol.cfg?

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Ray_handels
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

This is the user part. Seems that you are using the writable with profile?? Am I right? If so, try and disable it.

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mchadwick19
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

To sort of get back to basics here, are you able to identify the package/app that is causing the reinstall? I ask because we were running into a similar issue where after installing an update to Firefox (in an appstack) the Skype for Business plugin for Firefox was no longer "installed" causing office to repair itself just to place a single .dll file in the Firefox plugins directory.

There should be an MSIinstaller, TrustedInstaller, or OSPP event in the system or application logs that can give you more info about what is triggering the Office install/repair.

VDI Engineer VCP-DCV, VCP7-DTM, VCAP7-DTM Design
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SummaCollege
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

LukaszDziwisz ​& Ray_handels

We don't join the master/golden image to the domain, nor do we add the clone that we use for packaging to the domain. Everything is kept unjoined from the domain except the actual desktops.

The issue you describe, not being able to attach appstacks for provisioning, we were experiencing as well. At least, it sounds a lot like the issue we had. Allowing the use of "Non-Domain Entities" fixed this for us. This setting is found under "CONFIGURATIONS".

Hope this helps you (or someone else) a bit..

Regarding updating the appstacks we have the same philosophy as Ray is describing.