Application Deployment & Virtualization

Update March 2026: A better solution is now available. The WinSparkle updater can be disabled entirely by replacing WinSparkle.dll with a stub DLL — no scripts, no delays, no update dialogs. The legacy script described in this post is kept for reference only. See the new post: Disabling Auto-Updates in the reMarkable Companion App: WinSparkle DLL Stub Method When deploying the Remarkable desktop application within a Windows enterprise environment, it introduces challenges due to its update mechanism. The application automatically checks for new updates every time it starts from the internet using WinSparkle .dll, which we would like to control but cannot. The first launch gives us this screen if there is a newer version available. But “Skip this version” doesn’t work. Instead this process automatically downloads an .exe setup update file that attempts to execute, requiring administrative privileges typically unavailable to standard enterprise users. This results in users being freque...

Backstory: (If you don’t want to read all my mad ramblings, then go directly to the part “Our tool” = ) During our previous Windows Xp to Windows 7 migration (2013-2014) we upgraded approximately 13000 computers, then as now we were using Broadcom (formerly Symantec) CMS(Altiris) for deployment, and ended up repackaging over 400 different virtual packages with Symantec SEV (Symantec Endpoint Virtualization). That format was great for compatibility, and for the most parts it worked pretty well once you knew it's bugs and quirks, but we had to throw it away after Symantec made us aware in early 2017 they would EOL it from the summer of 2018. After a lot of research and testing, we decided that our Windows 7 to Windows 10 migration would be all about APP-V. That way we could also reuse most of our new App-V packages on our current Citrix environment, and in future VDI solutions. We were concluding it is the only virtualization tool big enough not going EOL on short notice like ...