Installing Realplayer

[Maelstorm]

Now here's an interesting trick. We all know that to install the latest version of RealPlayer silently, we do RealPlayer10-5GOLD_bb.exe -S. But, if you want to also install plugins, you have to download them from RealPlayer's site. I have discovered how to install RealPlayer and associated plugins. The plugins are registered in the registry at HKCR\Software\RealNetworks\6.0\Preferences\Components. There is a master registry key at HKCR\Software\RealNetworks\6.0\Preferences\Components value @ (Default) that is a pipe (|) separated list of all the components that RealPlayer knows about. All subkey data from here is for the actual components themselves and is referenced from this master list.

In the attached .zip file, you will find registery entries to register various components, as well as the master list and some preferences and an installation script.

RealComp.reg - Contains the master component list.

RealPlayer.reg - Contains some user preferences.

All other .reg files are for their respective components.

You can find the files that make up the components themselves by looking at the install script and checking out what the filename is and where it get's copied to. Unfortunately, I did not install the Rhapsody plugin, but it should follow the same convention. In my previous experiance, the Rhapsody plugin also installs some kind of lockdown component that can be downloaded off the web. I haven't played with it for a couple of years though.

Furthermore, I have discovered a log file at %CommonProgramFiles%\Real\Update_OB called RealPlayer-Log.txt that documents what files get placed where and what components these files belong to. I found it quite usefull when taking RealPlayer apart.

Note that %CommonProgramFiles% equates to C:\Program Files\Common Files on most systems. Open a command prompt window and do set to see what your's is.

There are registry entries associated with the visualizations, but RealPlayer generates these on the fly when it finds new visualizations in the visualizations directory, so there is no need to include registry settings for these. This directory is located at %CommonProgramFiles%\Real\Visualizations. This directory contains .rpv files, and on my system there are also .jpg files there as well. Your system may be different.

It seems that RealPlayer and a couple of other programs install settings to HKCR\Software as well. I have never heard of this location before, so it was a learning experiance for me tracking down where in the registry that RealPlayer registers its plugins. Hopefully, this gives you enough information to add your own plugin sets for RealPlayer.

To use this, just put all files that are in the .zip file into the same directory that has all the files to be installed. Then run the install.cmd and it does the rest.

Enjoy.

RealPlayer.zip

[Maelstorm]

There is one additional point that I forgot to mention. I have discovered the following registry key which holds the user's preferences. This is a per-user setting, so if you make it into an INF or REG file, then you will need to either apply it during the GUI mode install or apply it later to each user individually. The reg key is:

HKCU\Software\RealNetworks\RealPlayer\6.0\Preferences

There is also a preferences key under HKCU\Software\RealNetworks as well, which covers some things, but the bulk of the config options are in the other above mentioned key.

Now, we can install RealPlayer silently, add plugins, and set user preferences.

My next project will be Quicktime and iTunes.

Later.