Springboard Series - The Resource for Windows Desktop IT Professionals : Application Compatibility

Springboard Series Virtual Roundtable on June 18th

Stephen L Rose — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 20:28:08 GMT

Windows 7 Application Compatibility: Your Questions Answered (Part 1)

Date: Thursday, June 18

Time: 11:00am Pacific Time

https://ms.istreamplanet.com/springboard

Windows 7, is approaching fast and from the application standpoint is very similar to Windows Vista. We’re going to examine Windows 7 application compatibility not only from the perspective of moving from Windows Vista, but also for those coming from Windows XP. Join us to discuss the most common challenges around application compatibility when coming from a legacy operating system, why changes were made along the way, compatibility technologies inside the OS and methods for getting incompatible applications to run on Windows 7. Along the way we share tips and tricks, demonstrate free tools to analyze and fix applications and answer your specific questions about application compatibility live.

In Part 2 of this Virtual Round Table discussion (planned for later this Summer/Fall), we’ll discuss the options and approaches for using virtualization tools In depth to address application incompatibilities – including presentation virtualization, desktop virtualization and application virtualization. We’ll be sending out more details and posting information to www.microsoft.com/springboard for part 2 as the dates are finalized.

As part of the “virtual” experience, you may submit your questions about Windows 7 Application Compatibility to the panel live during the event—or submit questions in advance to vrtable@microsoft.com.

Are Your PCs Ready For Windows 7?

Stephen L Rose — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 23:42:15 GMT

When planning for migration to Windows 7, specific knowledge about each computer on the network and its readiness for migration is essential. Manually conducting a detailed network inventory is time consuming and costly; and existing assessment management tools typically require software agent installation on each machine, creating a security risk. How do you gather comprehensive knowledge about your existing IT environment quickly and cost effectively? The Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit 4.0 Beta gathers essential infrastructure information to answer the question “are your PCs ready for Windows 7?” This tool also assists you with Windows Server 2008 R2 readiness assessment.

What is the MAP Toolkit?

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit is a powerful inventory, assessment and reporting tool that securely assesses IT environments for various platform migrations and virtualization without the use of any software agents. This versatile toolkit:

· Quickly discovers clients, servers, and applications across your IT environment

· Conducts migration and virtualization assessment for your IT projects

· Auto-generates reports and proposals

· Scales well to small businesses and large enterprises

Accelerate Your Migration to Windows 7

Quickly and effectively collect the detailed infrastructure information you need for planning your migration to Windows 7. Create a client inventory report, and let MAP 4.0 analyze the data to assess Windows 7 readiness for your unique IT environment.

With MAP 4.0, you get the following reports and proposals for migration to Windows 7:

· Hardware Inventory Proposal. Identify currently installed Windows Client operating systems, detailed analysis of hardware and device compatibility, and recommendations for migration to Windows 7.

· PC Security Report. Identify desktops with anti-virus and anti-malware programs installed and Windows Firewall status.

REMINDER: Windows 7 Beta expires Aug 1st. Reboots every two hours start July 1st. Upgrade to the Windows 7 Release Candidate today! Click here to download the RC

Windows 7 Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.5: Interview with Jeremy Chapman

Celine Allee — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 15:15:00 GMT

Hello again from Redmond. Let’s talk compatibility – a big component of any operating system deployment project is knowing what applications, hardware and devices your users have and whether they will work on the new OS. With Windows 7 approaching fast, Windows Senior Community Manager Stephen Rose sat down with Jeremy again and discussed the latest with the Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) 5.5.

Stephen: Hi Jeremy, what have you been up to lately?

Jeremy: I’ve been traveling quite a bit over the last few weeks. We met with top industry bloggers and journalists in New York and San Francisco a few weeks back, then we had the MVP Summit in Redmond, and then it was off to Belgium for TechDays. I’m just catching up now.

Stephen: Wow, welcome back. So tell me about the Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.5. What’s new?

Jeremy: The Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.5 is a tremendous resource to inventory your applications, hardware, and devices; evaluate compatibility of applications and Websites; and even fix applications using Compatibility Fixes or “shims.” What’s new is that we now support pre-RTM versions of Windows 7 with ACT.

Stephen: How much different are Windows 7 compatibility evaluators compared to ACT 5.0 for Windows Vista?

Jeremy: Well, the good news is that they are nearly identical. ACT 5.5 uses the exact same compatibility evaluation checks as the Windows Vista evaluators, but now we detect for calls to Windows Mail aka Outlook Express. Windows Mail was deprecated from Windows 7, but on the organization/business side, we don’t see many customers using Windows Mail and the CoStartOutlookExpress API fails gracefully, so the impact of that removal should be very low. If you do encounter any issues, the fix is to get Windows Live Mail or another e-mail client.

Stephen: That’s it? It is Windows Vista evaluation plus the check for the CoStartOutlookExpress API?

Jeremy: Yes. To be fair, there are other things that can lead to compatibility issues for applications and drivers, like the change to the minor OS version numbers and the version of Internet Explorer. As pointed out on the Engineering 7 Blog, every effort was made to fulfill the goal that applications written for Windows Vista continue to work on Windows 7. If you want the deep details about Windows 7 application compatibility, check out the Application Quality Cookbook on MSDN.

Stephen: Yes, the Windows 7 resources keep growing. So what else is new in ACT 5.5?

Jeremy: We made the process of sending and receiving files to the application compatibility web service much more transparent in ACT 5.5. Now you can tell exactly what are sending through to the web service from your application inventory. This is the fastest way to sync application data with the same data used in the Windows Compatibility Center. This is what you see now when using the “Send and Receive” function of ACT 5.5:

And you can review all data before sending within an ACT-populated TXT audit file:

Stephen: So if you see something you don’t want to send, you can cancel out of the process. Nice.

Jeremy: You can also remove applications from the list by clicking on your application in Application Compatibility Manager and using the Action : Set Send and Receive Status control:

Stephen: So I know ACT as the tool that uses an agent to collect application information and report that up to a central database. Does it do anything else?

Jeremy: Now in ACT 5.5 you can label your Data Collection Packages (DCP), so if you inventory the finance department one day and sales department the next with different DCPs, then you can sort your database by the DCP label you assigned. Beyond applications, ACT also reports back detailed hardware and device information. In many cases, you can find out if a driver is in-box with Windows or available via Windows Update. ACT also finds all of your attached devices, printers, displays and so on and reports back against those.

Stephen: So it goes beyond straight applications. What about web apps?

Jeremy: The Internet Explorer Compatibility Test Tool in ACT will also detect potential Website issues with Internet Explorer 8 for your Line-of-Business applications and recommend ways to fix the web applications as well:

Stephen: That’s pretty powerful. So it scans the applications, hardware, devices and even the Websites users are hitting and reports back compatibility findings wherever it can. Hey, thanks for taking the time to introduce ACT and everything it can do. It’s available for anyone to download from the Microsoft Download Center.

Jeremy: One last thing… We will have a version 6.0 of the tool coinciding with Windows 7’s release. ACT 5.5 is a point release, but expect to see more enhancements and coverage in ACT 6.0.

Stephen: Looking forward to it. As always, for the latest on compatibility, visit Microsoft.com/springboard and check out the Application Compatibility and UAC zone. Thanks again, Jeremy.