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...

Recently I did a big detective job in the organization I work for. I We wanted to find all the applications used today that utilize the old .NET Clickonce   deployment technology from Microsoft. For those who don’t know, Clickonce is a Windows-based appinstaller format that can be installed and run with minimal user interaction. See more information about them here . Locating all the ClickOnce applications is a pain since they are installed into a user profile when the app is started. So first I had to search through all our computers looking for content under the following folder structure: % localappdata %\Apps\2.0\<random folder>\<random app id>.   <random folder> is constructed from the first 11 characters from the following user registry key: HKCU\Software\Classes\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Deployment\SideBySide\2.0\ComponentStore_RandomString   More details about ClickOnce: ClickOnce can be delivered ...