VAppCollector launches even if System Center Configuration Manager/App-V integration is not enabled

Article
10/20/2011

Here’s a great new KB article we published today. This one talks about a potential issue you might see one your App-V/ConfigMgr 2007 clients. If you’re running these now or have plans to do so in the future you’ll probably want to give this one a read:

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Symptoms

The VAppCollector component of System Center Configuration Manager 2007 (ConfigMgr 2007) will be launched on a client even if ConfigMgr 2007/Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) integration is disabled. This can potentially generate multiple errors in the event log such as Event IDs 2012, 3008, 3210 and 5009.

Cause

This can occur if the Asset Intelligence component is enabled in System Center Configuration Manager 2007. Regardless of whether ConfigMgr 2007 is managing App-V clients or not, it will trigger the launch of VAppCollector. This is by design.

Resolution

There is no supported way to prevent VAppCollector from launching other than by disabling Asset Intelligence, although in most cases this is not a viable solution as it stops all licensing information for the System Center Configuration Manager site.

If you are unable to disable Asset Intelligence, the only other known workarounds are below:

1) Include the computer account as part of the App-V user group assigned in the App-V server. This will allow the system account to launch the applications and thus no errors will be reported in the application event log.

2) Use System Center Configuration Manager 2007 to deploy your virtual packages or to deploy your virtual applications using MSI.

3) Ignore the errors in the event logs as they will not affect the App-V operations.

4) Set the HKLM\software\Microsoft\Softgrid\4.5\Client\Configuration\RequireAuthorizationIfCached registry key to 0. Keep in mind that this affects security because any user can create a shortcut and launch the applications even when they are not authorized. Be sure you fully understand all the implications of this before modifying this registry key. See below definition of this key:

RequireAuthorizationIfCached

Indicates that authorization is always required, whether or not an application is already in cache. Possible values:

0=False: Always try to connect to the server. If a connection to the server cannot be established, the client still allows the user to launch an application that has previously been loaded into cache.

1=True (default): Application always must be authorized at startup. For RTSP streamed applications, the user authorization token is sent to the server for authorization. For file-based applications, file ACLs control whether a user may access the application.

Restart the sftlist service for the change to take effect. See https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd464849.aspx for more details.

More Information

VAppCollector is a component developed by the System Center Configuration Manager team to collect information about virtual applications using the App-V client. Besides Asset Intelligence it is used to populate the information in the virtual applications reports in System Center Configuration Manager to gather errors, last launched, etc. It is also used to collect information for virtual applications for metering purposes. VAppCollector does not have its own log as do other components in System Center Configuration Manager 2007.

It is normal behavior to collect all this information during an Hardware inventory cycle and launch of each application. You can gather more information about Asset intelligence by looking at the following log:

Assetadvisor.log

You will see entries similar to these:

Executing "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Application Virtualization Client\sfttray.exe" /exe "C:\Windows\system32\CCM\VAppCollector.exe" /quiet /launch "Microsoft Office Document Cache" AssetAdvisor 8/4/2011 9:34:31 AM 236 (0x00EC)
Timed-out running "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Application Virtualization Client\sfttray.exe" /exe "C:\Windows\system32\CCM\VAppCollector.exe" /quiet /launch "Microsoft Office Document Cache" AssetAdvisor 8/4/2011 9:34:30 AM 236 (0x00EC)

If VAppCollector ran successfully you will see consecutive executing lines otherwise you will receive time-out entries among the executing lines.

Another way to determine if VAppCollector ran is to look into the sftlog.txt and find the lines that do not have usr values in them. Below is an example.

Launched by a user:

[08/04/2011 17:35:57:594 SWAP INF] {hap=C8:app=Microsoft Office Document Cache 14.0.4763.1000:tid=11C8:usr=administrator}
Elapsed time for launch: 6.219 seconds
[08/04/2011 17:36:18:958 SWAP INF] {hap=C8:app=Microsoft Office Document Cache 14.0.4763.1000:tid=11C8:usr=administrator}
App shut down

Launched by VAppCollector (note the lack of a "usr=" entry in the log lines):

[08/04/2011 17:30:21:501 SWAP INF] {hap=C3:app=Microsoft Office Document Cache 14.0.4763.1000:tid=1300}
Elapsed time for launch: 3.422 seconds

[08/04/2011 17:30:29:986 SWAP INF] {hap=C3:app=Microsoft Office Document Cache 14.0.4763.1000:tid=1300}
App shut down

Although VAppCollector will run on clients that have received applications through App-V server, the virtual applications reports in System Center Configuration Manager will not populate as there are no virtual packages to correlate the data. Asset Intelligence reports will have information about virtual packages but due to the lack of permissions to launch the virtual applications it cannot collect information such as software company, version, etc. These columns will show as unidentified or unknown on these reports.

Other things to consider:

Any prelaunch scripts that are set in the OSD files of these virtual applications will be launched during the hardware inventory cycle. If for example you are using a prelaunch script to map a drive, there will be an attempt to map the drive using the system account and if the computer doesn't have rights to map the drive it will show as disconnected. To work around this issue and similar issues consider the use of Post shutdown scripts to gracefully disconnect drives and terminate any instance that is triggered during the prelaunch phase.

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To continue reading this article please see the link below:

2590590: VAppCollector launches even if System Center Configuration Manager/App-V integration is not enabled

J.C. Hornbeck | System Center Knowledge Engineer

VAppCollector launches even if System Center Configuration Manager/App-V integration is not enabled

Symptoms

Cause

Resolution

More Information

Additional resources