The App Compat Guy

This is a question that has been coming up a lot lately, so I figured I would answer the question once here, so I can just start handing out the link when it gets asked again in the future. Here is the essence of the question: “I am trying to create a...

I receive a number of questions on the compatibility evaluators in ACT that revolve around one central question: what are they actually good for? Seems kind of a harsh question, eh? Well, I’m not intending to be rude. However, I do try to help people...

(Wow, I’m doing a lot more posting today than normal. Things kind of piled up while I was on leave.) There is a ton of activity going on in the world regarding Windows 7 deployments, and one of the hottest topics we’re finding is x64. People are very...

A long time ago (2 years ago – that’s like the Paleolithic era of computers – weren’t we all running TI-99/4As back then?) I put together a post about running Application Verifier as a tester . There were a couple of things I would do differently with...

In the run-up to any operating system release, we start to see a lot of “world tour fever” and Windows 7 is no different. Windows has a huge partner ecosystem, and we want to make sure that we at least stand a fighting chance of helping you get it done...

If you come to me for advice about how to become a debugger, chances are that I’m going to give you a couple of must-read reference books, an then tell you to start paying attention. Because, unless you’re drastically more lucky than I am, stuff is probably...

Updated: Added co-presenter info, and corrected 2 typos. The 2009 conference season has begun, launched with an internal Microsoft conference: TechReady 8. So, while not everyone can be there, it’s fairly representative of what there is to come at the...

In the world of app compat, sometimes you get lucky and have the app itself clearly not working, and you debug it. (Well, I guess if you’re really going to get lucky, you’ll have the app just work.) Things get murkier when an app has a bad interaction...

There is a huge amount of excitement about Windows 7, and people are looking to get moving with app compat immediately so they can start deploying Windows 7 right away! In the enterprise, however, there are a number of risk mitigation strategies that...

Here is an issue I see pop up sporadically, so I figured I would spend the time to dissect how it happens: an application appears to work great on Windows XP, but when you run it on Windows 7 (or Windows Vista), it has a strange black background which...

Next week is an internal Microsoft conference for field technical people – TechReady 11. I’m presenting a couple of sessions on migrating from Internet Explorer 6 to Internet Explorer 8, a session on debugging and fixing Win32 applications, and my (now...

With relatively little fanfare (in other words, with no fanfare that I am aware of) we released an update to the Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.6 . One of these was the fact that a piece of the StockViewer app wasn’t working, which was pointed out...

A couple of weeks ago, I had a chance to sit in on a webinar delivered by Flexera Software and chat about Windows 7 Application Compatibility. The recording of the webinar is now online and available here: http://mktg.flexerasoftware.com/mk/get/BPWin7CompatApp_wbnr...

From time to time, I get an email about Standard User Analyzer that includes a screenshot or a MessageBox text copy (you do know you can control-c a MessageBox and paste just the text, right?) that looks something like this: Failed to load log file c...

OK, so it’s not as famous as e=mc 2 , but here is the rule I apply for when to test an application for app compat.   You should test your applications when: cost failure × probability failure > cost testing   You should otherwise not bother...

There have been a number of efforts we’ve been going through lately to promote users running modern versions of Internet Explorer. We have been marketing and advertising since release of course, and over the summer we added a prominent advertisement ...

The same question came up two times in 26 minutes (on the same discussion list, no less), so I figured I’d answer it once here as that seems a reasonable indicator that others may have the same question. What is the deal with shimming on Windows Vista...

I had a conversation with a customer (via email) the other day, and I wanted to to into a bit of detail here explaining what is going on. Essentially, the customer was attempting to pass information to another application while launching it using environment...

I had a number of great conversations at TechEd 2008 IT Professionals down in Orlando. I mentioned in a previous posting that how you evaluate sessions at conferences has a fairly significant impact on where the take content in future conferences. To...

Every now and then, I see email sent to a discussion list that includes something like the following: "Please use Reply to All I am not a member of this discussion group." And sometimes you see something like this instead: "Please little-R, I am not a...

Here's an interesting lesson which, quite honestly, I haven't thought about for a while. But it turns out it's rather important. A little over a month ago, I talked about a change to Windows Vista in SP1 regarding per-user COM registration , indicating...

2007 was really a fun year - I had a blast. I finally started to get some traction documenting the shims provided in Windows - hopefully you like some of the changes Liz made in ACT 5.0.2 to add good documentation here. I've been talking about it all...

I had my worldview challenged today. I had gone on record saying that, if you are deploying to Standard Users, then UAC really can't hurt you - it can only help you. But then I saw something I really did not understand - two identical machines, side by...

I want to take a moment to go back and review some of the terminology I have been using, to ensure that there is no confusion. The reader will kindly indulge any ambiguity in my language up to this point – I am quite literally making this up as I go along...

When discussing the evolution of software, I have spent some time discussing genetic algorithms. When trying to think 10 or 20 years into the future, these algorithms provide us with a proven way to explore a large problem domain (caused by the combinatorial...