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StarNet Communications has been a leading developer of X Windows solutions since 1989. After establishing X-Win32 as the de facto standard in the higher education market during the early to mid-1990s -- 150 unlimited Campus Site Licenses worldwide -- X-Win32 has become of one the top three PC X servers in the government and commercial sectors as well.

Unlike its major rivals, Exceed (Hummingbird) and Reflection-X (WRQ/Attachmate), X-Win32 offers a highly focused PC X server that offers superior performance and productivity features, stability, ease of use and low cost (40% or better in most cases).

StarNet also delivers unequaled customer support. Our state-of-the-art engineering infrastructure allows us to fix problems and make a new release available quickly (overnight in many cases). As our testimonials page shows, StarNet customers consistently rate their X-Win32 experience as the best in the industry.




Silent installs or push deployments

X-Win32 supports silent installations and push deployments (typically performed with robust tools such as Microsoft’s Systems Management Server or Emco’s Remote Deployment Kit, although msiexec can be used directly by the adventurous). Push deployments can be used to easily install X-Win32 on thousands of desktops in a large organization. X-Win32’s installer allows the license key to be specified in these push deployments so that your thousands of desktops can use X-Win32 without further configuration.


NOTE: Installing the license key in the installer is only supported for Floating Licenses since Node-Locked Licenses require user interaction for activation.

The method for specifying the license key in the installer has changed slightly between versions of X-Win32. Between X-Win32 7.0 and 7.1 the method changed because X-Win32 7.0 uses an InstallScript-based installer while X-Win32 7.1 uses and MSI-based installer. Between X-Win32 7.1 and X-Win32 8 the ability to simply copy the license configuration between machines as an XML file was added since X-Win32 8 uses XML configuration files instead of the Windows registry.

X-Win32 7.1, 8, and later

X-Win32 7.1 and X-Win32 8 allow the license key to be specified in the SERIAL property of the installer. There are several ways to specify the value of the SERIAL property, including passing it to msiexec on the command line (see examples below), using Orca to edit the MSI and specify the license key directly in the SERIAL property in the property table, or using a third party tool (e.g. Microsoft’s SMS). Note that StarNet cannot provide support for third party installation tools; instead, you should contact the vendor of the tool for assistance and support in using their tool.

In X-Win32 8 and later it may be easier to simply copy the License.config file from a machine that has the license installed to all other machines after the X-Win32 MSI is push deployed. The License.config file is XML-based (see example below) and can even be created by hand. The License.config file simply needs to be placed in the same directory as xwin32.exe.

X-Win32 8 msiexec example

Note that the /qn parameter to msiexec tells it to not display the user interface at all and to proceed with default values for all options (this will install all fonts and translations, which take a minimal amount of additional disk space). Also note that the license key should not have any line breaks in it when it is pasted into the command prompt window and it should be wrapped in quotation marks as shown below.


msiexec SERIAL=”MII*******************************************************************
[... X-Win32 8 Floating License keys are around 1000 characters long …]

**************************************************************************”
/qn /i “X-Win32 8.msi”

X-Win32 7.1 msiexec example


msiexec SERIAL=”12345-12345-12345-12345” /qn /i “X-Win32 7.1.msi”

License.config example

Download the example License.config file: File:xwin32-8-floating-example-License.config.txt

Category:Installation



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