You can specify certain locations of Writable Volumes to exclude them from persisting across sessions or getting overwritten.

Keep the following considerations in mind before you apply Writable Volumes exclusions:
  • If the user modifies the locations that are excluded, the changes are lost when the user logs off the machine.
  • You must know what application behavior and data will get stored in the folders you want to exclude.
  • Do not use generic locations such as \REGISTRY\MACHINE\SOFTWARE or \Program Files(x86)\. Using generic locations can cause all application updates to be erased.
  • You can include paths within the users profile directories so that specific applications or files can be excluded from being captured.
  • If the Writable Volume is UIA-only, all user profile paths are excluded and you do not have to explicitly specify any user profile paths for exclusion.
Note: This feature is enabled by default and is applicable only when the Writable Volume is assigned.

Prerequisites

You must have administrator privileges on the machine where the App Volumes agent is installed.

Procedure

  1. Log in as administrator to the machine where the App Volumes agent is installed.
  2. Locate and open the writable volumes configuration file, SnapVol.cfg.
  3. Add the following entry in the SnapVol.cfg file, where path is the location of the application or registry that you want to exclude: exclude_uwv_file=path
    • You can specify multiple exclusions.
    • While specifying user environment variables such as %username% and %userprofile% to exclude folders in exclude_uwv_file, the user profile must not be present on the base image.
      Note: When a user profile is specified to be excluded in exclude_uwv_file and if an existing user profile is present on the base image or the profile does not exist, the exclusions do not occur and appropriate error messages are logged in svservice logs.

      The following messages are logged in svservice: User profile already exists. and User environment variable policies will not be enforced.

Example: Exclude an Application Location

The following examples exclude the folder and registry location of Notepad++ from being overwritten during an update:

  • exclude_uwv_file=\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\\
  • exclude_uwv_reg=\REGISTRY\MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Notepad++\\
  • exclude_uwv_file=\Users\%username%\folder\\
  • exclude_uwv_file=%userprofile%\folder\\

What to do next

You must test the application after applying any Writable Volumes exclusions to ensure that the application works as desired.