Has anyone tried using DO with Altiris' SVS? Unlike VMWARE, which virtualizes an entire OS, SVS virtualizes individual software installations. It's primary audience is for sys admins in charge of keeping 100s of PCs' installations stable, but it's free for individual home use.
Anyway, SVS works by diverting all registry entries and files into a "layer" that can be activated/deactivated. I use SVS for when I want to install a piece of software that I'm not sure about and I don't want it mucking up my base system. And for big programs like my OCR/scanning program that adds tons of background processs and context menus to Explorer; it's very comforting to turn that layer off so it doesn't bother me, but the software is there when I need it.
It's rather complicated to explain it all. The reason I go into this detail is to explain some of the refresh problems I'm experiencing. SVS works by diverting all files (creating/deleting new files) to a hidden directory; to the OS, it looks like c:\My Document\foo.txt. But foo.txt is being pulled up from the hidden area.
IN short, it makes file operations sluggish and refresh views have to be manual. With SVS totally turned off, file moves/deletes are instantly visible. With my virtual apps/files turned on, the refresh is not automatic.
Is there a way to force a refresh after any file move/delete command? IS anyone else using DO and SVS?
(By the way, I did try to virtualize DO to its own layer, but deleting files wouldn't work; I'd get error messages saying that the disk was full or write-protected. I re-installed DO into the base ((non-virtualized)) and had no problems of that kind.)
Oh, what fools these mortals (with their tinkering PC ways) be!