Appstacks corrupt Office Licensing

[PFS]

Hello,

We have been having issues for a while where users and only users who have an Appstack assigned to them (Adobe Acrobat or Java, for example) get Office errors after recomposing.

We're using dedicated-assignment linked clones, and this happens after they are recomposed. Office 365 x64 is installed on the Golden Image.

I read somewhere that the Software Protection Service might be causing it, but I made sure it was able to start on the new provisioning machine when trying to create new Appstacks.

It seems that no matter which Appstack is applied, Office becomes corrupt and it will not license the user.

We are using AppVolumes version 2.14 on the agents and manager.

[PFS]

We solved this by excluding the Office Registry Hive in the snapvol.cfg file while updating the Appstack.

1. Go to AppVolumes Manager > Volumes > AppStacks > Expand the problem Appstack > Update. Point to Provisioning machine.

2. When provisioning starts, go to C:\SnapVolumesTemp\MountPoints\{app id}\snapvol.cfg

Open it with notepad, and under Registry exclusions, on a new line, put "exclude_registry=\REGISTRY\MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office" without the quotes.

3. Save and close the file. Might be worth checking that the configuration saved.

4. Finish the provisioning process by clicking OK on the AppVolumes popup, and restarting the computer, logging back in, and clicking Finish.

5. Users assigned to the Appstack will need to reboot their machine in order for the change to take effect.

[LarryBlanco2]

Was this on instruction of VMware GSS?  I'm having the same issue but with Office 2016 VL.  Seems licensing is getting corrupt upon logoff and login.  

We do not use office 365 yet.

I did apply it to a test subject who was had corrupt licensing for office.   It seems to be working now after excluding the reg info on the app stack.   We've logged off and logged back in several times to try to replicate the issue after applying the fix.  So far so good.

Larry B.

[PFS]

Indeed it was.

From my understanding there were similar issues with different versions of Office. It seems as though the exclusions help a slew of problems. Glad to hear it's working for you.

[PFS]

It would appear that this issue is hit and miss. It works for some people and does not for others. Reopening my SR.    

[LarryBlanco2]

Agree.   We are having the same issue now.   My licensing was working fine up until recently.   Don't know if a specific Office Update or a Windows Update could be to blame.

It's weird, we opened an issue and they stated Office is out of scope for app stack support?   And to call Microsoft.   MS is going to say install it in their VDI solution and watch it work!    How can it be that the #1 application that is used by the majority of the companies out there for business and their users be "OUT OF SCOPE" for support within App Stacks. 

This is what was told to one of my sysadmins.

Larry

[PFS]

If I remember correctly, they told me that my environment was out of scope rather than Office (linked clones + persistent disk, no refresh at logoff)

[LarryBlanco2]

so my solution was to add office to the gold image. . I added it office 2016 STD and all my licensing issues went away.  

Unfortunately I do not believe this to be idea but it's the only known solution I have to stop dealing with the idiotic licensing mechanisms that application publishers have put in place..  MS is not the only one.  Unfortunately its the world we live in.   I just wish they would make simple and more elegant solutions that work in all use cases.

Hopefully, one day, I will be able to easily add office into and app stack and deploy it.

LB

[PFS · Accepted solution]

I was able to finally fix it by turning on Shared Computer Activation - Microsoft's "roaming" version of licensing for Microsoft Office. We were using this before, I'm not sure why it ever turned off.
Turn it on through GPO, or by modifying the install XML on the image.

Import Office ADMXs > Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > Microsoft Office 2016 (Machine) > Licensing Settings > Use shared computer activation=1

If you want to reinstall Office instead, use this line in the XML config doc

  <Property Name="SharedComputerLicensing" Value="1" />

This instantly resolved all the issues I was having.