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Virtualizing Wellnomics WorkPace with VMware ThinApp
January 28, 2010
Wellnomics WorkPace is the only scientifically validated repetitive stress injury prevention software, proven to support positive and sustainable behaviour change among users. Wellnomics WorkPace gets people to accept personal responsibility for their own safety. It educates computer users in practical ways to prevent computer fatigue, discomfort and injury, ensuring healthier, happier employees. It protects corporations from lost productivity, increased overheads, compensation claims and high insurance costs.
Wellnomics WorkPace monitors all aspects of computer use. It helps users ‘pace their work’ with micropauses, regular breaks and exercises. The underlying technique used for monitoring is based on global hooks.
There are two types of hooks, global hooks and local hooks. A local hook is one that monitors things happening only for a specific program (or thread). A global hook monitors the entire system (all threads). Both types of hooks are set up in the same way, the main difference being that for a local hook, the function to be called can be within the program it is monitoring, but with a global hook the function must be stored and loaded from a separate dll.
Wellnomics WorkPace has loaded C:\Program Files\Workpace\rec300.dll to monitor system activity. In a default situation ThinApp loads dll files from the virtual file system and passes the loading process to Windows for dll files on the physical file system. Therefore the application cannot monitor system activity outside the virtual application.
In some circumstances, such as Wellnomics WorkPace, Windows must load a dll file in the virtual file system. For example, you might have a dll file that inserts itself into other processes using Windows hooks. The dll file that implements the hook must be available on the host file system and Windows must load that file. When you specify a dll file in the ExternalDLLs parameter, ThinApp extracts the file from the virtual file system to the sandbox and instructs Windows to load it.
To get Wellnomics WorkPace to work correctly with VMware ThinApp you have to edit Package.ini and insert “rec300.dll” as ExternalDLL under BuildOptions.
For Example:
[BuildOptions]
ExternalDLLs=rec300.dll
After rebuild Wellnomics WorkPace works as if it is locally installed on your computer and monitors all system activity as it should do!
For more information about Wellnomics WorkPace visit: www.workpace.com
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