Application Support
Application Compatibility Research Tools
- Many applications created before Windows 7 may or may not be compatible with it. These ap-
plications represent a signif cant dollar investment for many companies and individuals. For
some operations these applications form a backbone for productivity that must be up and run-
ning. However, many of these applications may have compatibility issues with Windows
- There may be many reasons why these applications cannot be made fully compatible. Per-
haps the applications cannot change without disrupting the business process for a company.
Some applications could come from vendors that no longer exist. The vendor may have up-
graded other applications, but the new versions have not been implemented or purchased
by the user or company. If the application was developed in house, perhaps there has not
been enough time and resources to train the developers in new methods and also rewrite the
application
- The Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) V5.5 is currently available as a free
download from Microsoft. The tool is a lifecycle management tool for the applications required
by a user or company. It assists in identifying and managing which applications must be reviewed, assists in reporting and tracking application compatibility issues, and helps you deploy
Windows 7 as fast as possible with the required compatibility changes. As the toolkit evolves,
new editions are released to embed new knowledge and procedures to evaluate applications with
newer operating systems. Even after application compatibility concerns with Windows 7 are addressed, the tool can be used to help evaluate application compatibility issues after specific Windows updates are applied. This means that, in a corporate environment, the use and maintenance
of ACT will be an ongoing administrative task.
- The following main components of ACT are:
- Application Compatibility Manager: It is the administrative console that the It administrator uses to control the overall discovery, collection, and analysis process.
- Compatibility Administrator: It is a tool for the It administrator to collect and resolve compatibility issues.
- Standard User Analyzer: It is a tool that monitors what happens when an application is run as a user without elevated permissions.
- Setup Analysis Tool: It observes what steps and changes are made during the installation of an application.
- Internet Explorer Compatibility Test Tool: It monitors what happens when a Web site is opened in IE 7 or 8.
- Microsoft Compatibility Exchange; It allows the Application Compatibility Manager to connect to external knowledge bases.
- Application Shim support: Application shims can be used to interact between the application and the operating system to translate operations between the two and achieve some degree of compatibility.