Turn an existing Windows XP system into a VMWare View Terminal, part 1: Modify the View Client MSI

I'll say this up front--there are probably better ways to do this. I know that a transform could be created and applied, but I chose to cheat and just modify the MSI directly.

Before we can modify the View installer package (.msi file), you first need to download ORCA. There doesn't seem to be a direct link view Microsoft.com, but if you Google "Download ORCA" you should be able to trust the first link returned. It's a very basic installation.

Then, you need to get the MSI. Again, there are probably more efficient ways to do this, but my preferred method is to run the setup executable, and then go to the Temp folder and look at the most recently created folder--it should contain "VMWare View Client.msi" as well as some additional files. Grab everything.

Now open the VMWare View Client.msi file in ORCA. First thing to do is FileSave As and create a new MSI with a new name--don't screw up the original. Then I'm going to hit the individual tables in order that they appear.

Condition table: If the Single Signon feature gets installed, it's going to want to sign into View using your limited access generic ID that we'll address in step 3. That's bad--so let's just make that feature unavailable. The first way I found to do this is to make the feature dependent on 64bit Windows (we're using only 32bit XP). Change the "Condition" item for the "TSSO" feature to "VersionNT64" to do this. (Another option might be to change the "LOGIN_SSO_DEFAULT" and "LOGIN_SSO_DISPLAY" values in the Checkbox table to 0--I haven't tried this.)

Property Table: The VDM_SERVER property contains the default value for the View Server that is filled in by default. If we don't plug this in, the user's won't be able to connect (because they'll never remember the server name). You'll most likely need to add this property (Tables menu, Add Row). Enter VDM_SERVER in the Property column, and the DNS name or IP address of your View server as the value. From this table you can also change the defaults for the Desktop, Start Menu, and Quicklaunch icons...but since there will ultimately be no shell, I figured those didn't matter much.

Go ahead and save your MSI, and put the entire group of files into a network location that all users will have access to. We'll actually push it to the workstation in another step.