Thursday, June 05, 2008

Microsoft ACT standalone installation

Microsoft ACT is great for stress testing web sites. The only "problem" is that you have to install Visual Studio .NET in order to use it. I use it frequently on my dev machine but some times it is useful have it on a remote machine for stress testing directly in a pre-production environment. The steps below shows how you can copy your local ACT installation to a standalone computer.

Pre-requisite: Internet Explorer 6.0

Steps by step instructions:

  • Copy the C:\Program Files\Microsoft ACT directory from you dev PC to the same directory on the remote machine
  • Create the Act.Reg and Register.cmd files below
  • Execute Register.cmd
  • Create a local user: ACTUser with the "User" rights
  • Set the Identify of the following COM objects to ACTUser (using dcomcnfg):
    • Application Center Test Broker
    • Application Center Test Controller
  • Give full control to ACTUser on the following WMI namespace using "Computer Management": Root/CIMV2/Application/MicrosoftACT


== Save as Register.cmd ==
c:
cd "C:\Program Files\Microsoft ACT"
regedit -s act.reg
for %%i in (*.dll) do regsvr32 /s %%i
ACTBroker.exe -regserver
actcontroller.exe -regserver
ACTRegMof.exe -i "C:\Program Files\Microsoft ACT\actnamespace.mof"
ACTRegMof.exe -i "C:\Program Files\Microsoft ACT\actbroker.mof"
ACTRegMof.exe -i "C:\Program Files\Microsoft ACT\actcontroller.mof"


== Save as Act.Reg ==
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ACT]
"AppPath"="C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft ACT\\"
"ProductCode"="{E05F0409-0E9A-48A1-AC04-E35E3033604A}"
"Feature"="AppCenter_Test_for_VS.NET"
"Version"="1.0.0536"

Disclaimer: Follow the instructions at your own risk and make sure you have a working backup!