View 4.5 ThinApp Configuration: Failed to access the network path

By Arne Fokkema - ICT-Freak.nl

Today I was playing with VMware View 4.5 and I wanted to test the ThinApp integration. This is a new feature of the View 4.5 release. From the release notes:
http://www.vmware.com/support/view45/doc/view45_releasenotes.html

Integrated Application Assignment – Simplifies the delivery of ThinApp applications to end-users using the View Administrator console.

But when I configured the file share I received the following error:

So the first thing I tried was browsing the files share from the localhost (View Connection Servers) with the FQDN I had to authenticate:

This was weird because I was able to browse via the netbios name. After a short search at Google, I found the following post on http://serverfault.com:

Allowing other machines to use filesharing via the DNS Alias (DisableStrictNameChecking)

This change alone will allow other machines on the network to connect to the machine using any arbitrary hostname. (However this change will not allow a machine to connect to itself via a hostname, see BackConnectionHostNames below).

• Edit the registry keyHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\lanmanserver\parametersand add a value DisableStrictNameChecking of type DWORD set to 1.

You also need to change the following key:

Allowing server machine to use filesharing with itself via the DNS Alias (BackConnectionHostNames)

This change is necessary for a DNS alias to work with filesharing from a machine to find itself. This creates the Local Security Authority host names that can be referenced in an NTLM authentication request.

To do this, follow these steps for all the nodes on the client computer:

1. To the registry subkeyHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa\MSV1_0, add new Multi-String Value BackConnectionHostNames
2. In the Value data box, type the CNAME or the DNS alias, that is used for the local shares on the computer, and then click OK.
   • Note: Type each host name on a separate line.

Restart the View Connection server and right after that, you’re able to add the Thinapp Repository: