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Having virtualized nearly 100 applications over the last couple of months, I thought I'd pass along some of the things I've learned along the way. All were learned the hard way, except for the tip on Chrome which I found on the Internet.

It may seem obvious, but make sure you have installed any patches for the software.

It should be obvious, but try rebooting following the installation and before taking the “after” snapshot, even if you are not prompted to reboot. (Make sure your initial snapshot has been saved, of course.)

Sometimes a virtual app does not run because of a missing component such as QuickTime, even though the system requirements may not list it as a requirement. Try a utility such as Filemon to see what it might be looking for.

Run your newly installed application a few times to make sure that you get any registration prompts so you can answer them before you virtualize your application.

If you have been trying without success to virtualize the app on a virtual machine, try it on a physical machine.

Virtualize Google Chrome with "--no-sandbox" in the command line

Experiment with various options:

• Start in current directory
• Don’t compress payload

Don't ever leave spaces in jukebox parameters.

Don't leave spaces in the output file name. With most apps it doesn’t matter, but some do.

If an app prompts you to browse for a file and for some reason it is truncating the filename, try making a copy of the file, rename the file to match the truncation (myfile~2.swf, for example), add it to the configuration and revirtualize the application.

Adobe apps:

• Make sure your clean machine does not have anything else installed (Reader); otherwise the delta may not include necessary dlls.
• If you change the sandbox location, try putting it back to the default.
• Run the app and open a file. It will create a registry entry that in our case corrected a problem with the app crashing. This could be because we redirect My Documents to the user’s network home directory.

Copy .dll files or font files from program folders to appropriate Windows location (for example C:\Windows\System or C:\Windows\Fonts) prior to building app to resolve error on startup of virtual app.

Update to latest version of ZAV.

Disclaimer: As with everything else at Cool Solutions, this content is definitely not supported by Novell (so don't even think of calling Support if you try something and it blows up).

It was contributed by a community member and is published "as is." It seems to have worked for at least one person, and might work for you. But please be sure to test, test, test before you do anything drastic with it.