Win32 Application Example

[Rayna Benincase]

Iwant to know what is the difference between windows form application, win32application ana console, i know that both the windows form application and win32 application is gui tool, but i want to know when to use one over the other one, and could I convert console application to windows form application ?

Win32 generally refers to the 32-bit Windows API. However, the _WIN32 macro is defined for both 32-bit and 64-bit programming. As a Visual Studio project type it includes both GUI and console subsystem API-level programs.

A Windows subsystem is a small integer value in the executable's header that tells Windows what kind of services this program needs. This value can be inspected via e.g. Microsoft's dumpbin program, e.g. dumpbin c:\windows\notepad.exe /headers find "ubs". In Windows 9x the dumpbin output was available via the file preview functionality, but that feature was discontinued.

GUI subsystem means that Windows will NOT attempt to outfit each instance with an associated console window. The process can however create a console window itself. Usually this subsystem is used for ordinary programs with a graphical user interface (hence, "GUI"), and with most linkers it's specified as "windows".

I don't really understand what you exactly mean by "convert" one kind of app to another kind. But. If you are talking about using some IDE and convert a project to another one : YES it is possible. What makes the main difference is the .DLLs you linked your app with. You can configure a project opened as "console" to behave as a "win32" for example. It is not really easy, but it remains possible. Nos if you want to know if a given existing application that you installed can be converted : NO.

Sometimes, you just need to deploy a one off setting or configuration quickly, and the Intune PowerShell feature can be very handy to do this. I have used this a lot to run PowerShell scripts on my managed Windows 10 and 11 Endpoints to do admin tasks like removing built-in Windows apps, or to enforce certain configurations.

This has been working well until recently when doing in-place upgrades to Windows 11. I noticed that after the in-place upgrade, the toast notification returned and upon investigation, the key set by this script was missing. Because the Intune PowerShell feature is a run once type of thing, I needed to find a way to set this key again, and ensure it remained.

Another option was to also deploy the PowerShell script to my Windows 11 Dynamic Device group, but I found I had varying results doing this, and there was no guarantee that the key would not somehow be removed again.

To solve this issue, I decided that adding the registry key using PowerShell is still a good approach, but instead of using the Intune PowerShell feature, I decided to take this script and deploy it as a Win32 application.

The next requirement is a detection method. In this example of a registry key being configured, I would normally use the registry detection method in Intune, but other uses for this may require the use of a detection script, so for the purposes of this example I will use the following script.

After a period of time, the registry key is restored due to the App being a required install and re-running the install command due to the detection method showing the app as Not Installed.

In addition to using this method to ensure that whatever I configure persists, it also has a clean removal, so if I ever need to remove the configuration in the future, I can simply change the Assignment from Required to Uninstall.

I have gone on to use this approach a number of times to ensure other configurations in my environments are always set correctly, and if not, any remediation is done without the requirement of manual intervention.

Maurice has been working in the IT industry for the past 20 years and currently working in the role of Senior Cloud Architect with CloudWay. With a focus on OS deployment through SCCM/MDT, group policies, active directory, virtualisation and office 365, Maurice has been a Windows Server MCSE since 2008 and was awarded Enterprise Mobility MVP in March 2017. Most recently his focus has been on automation of deployment tasks, creating and sharing PowerShell scripts and other content to help others streamline their deployment processes.

Is it possible now (in March 2019) to make the installation of an application mandatory? Similar to how in SCCM you can set an application to be installed for all or certain users without them manually installing from Software Center (or in the case of inTune, not having to install from the Company Portal)

Hi,

Could you please provide an example for a more complex setup. For instance to install the Cisco AnyConnect client there is an executable and and XML file. They both need to be installed on the computer by Intune. Does this tool work in this instance? If so, how?

Thank you

The reason I decided to follow this verbatim is because in my other attempt, nothing is appearing in the Company Portal for the end user (my other account on a test device). It is also occurring with this. No problem getting the built-in applications to appear (e.g. Office ProPlus). Any theories on this?

Delivery Optimization is something that can be leveraged to greatly reduce internet traffic overhead on your network. The purpose of this post is to run through how to troubleshoot and optimize your configuration.

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A question that I frequently hear is whether it is possible to deploy Win32 applications with Microsoft Intune. There are a few ways to deploy Windows applications with Microsoft Intune. End of 2022, Microsoft has announced a new possibility of application deployment in Microsoft Intune with Winget. This will offer a catalog with a lot of applications that can be deployed with Intune in just a few clicks. This is by far the easiest way to deploy your applications. However, if you want to deploy a Win32 application that is not (yet) part of this catalog you can create an application package to deploy the application.

In this post I will show you step-by-step how to create an application package ready for deployment with Microsoft Intune. In the following example I will create and deploy a package for the Microsoft Remote Help application.

If customizations are needed during or after the installation (for example config files needs to be copied or registry settings needs to be applied) you can do this by using a PowerShell (or other) script. In that case, make sure that you put the script within the source folder before running the Intune Content Prep tool and use the script in the installation parameters.

Fill in the information of the application. Keep in mind that if the application will be published as "available" (not required) some information will be visible in the Company Portal app. Click Next.

Click Next two times until you are on the Assignment page. You can assign the application as Required, which will install the application automatic, or as Available for enrolled devices which offer the option to the end user to install the application at any time via the Company Portal app. In this case I will publish the application as Available for enrolled devices. Click Next.

VMware provides this operational tutorial to help you with your VMware Workspace ONE environment. This tutorial shows you how to use Workspace ONE UEM to manage Windows Desktop applications through a series of exercises including managing Win32 apps, deploying Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus, the Workspace ONE applications, and reviewing additional application file samples.

As an organization expands and evolves, application delivery overheads increase on IT teams. You must ensure that application delivery is available anytime, while simultaneously ensuring that you are ready to deliver different types of applications, including local apps, hosted apps, SaaS apps, classic apps, or cloud apps.

With Workspace ONE, almost any type of app can be delivered to Windows Desktop devices. Use Workspace ONE UEM to push Windows public and internal applications, web apps, and SaaS applications to Windows desktop devices.

Flexera AdminStudio has integrated with Workspace ONE UEM for application distribution since late 2018. You can leverage their AdminStudio Catalog and export apps to Workspace ONE UEM for deployment. You can avoid repackaging apps manually and therefore save time.

A content delivery network (CDN) is a highly distributed platform of servers that responds directly to end-user requests for web content. Content delivery network acts as an intermediary between the Workspace ONE UEM servers and the end-user devices to mitigate the challenges of delivering the content over the Internet.

Workspace ONE UEM offers the peer distribution system as another method to deploy your Windows applications to enterprise networks. Peer distribution reduces the time to download large applications to multiple devices in deployments that use a branch office structure. Workspace ONE UEM offers two types of peer-to-peer options.

Workspace ONE UEM functionality uses a dedicated file storage service to handle processing and downloads, which reduces the overall burden on your Workspace ONE UEM database and increases its performance. Configuring file storage manually is only applicable to on-premises customers. It is automatically configured for SaaS customers.

Effective December 1, 2020, the default storage capacity for Workspace ONE Advanced, Workspace ONE Enterprise, Workspace ONE Enterprise for VDI, and Workspace ONE Modern Management Essentials licenses will increase from 50 GB to 500 GB.

Configure file storage for Windows applications with the following settings. This is required if you are deploying Win32 apps using software distribution but applies to all internal applications after they are configured.

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