Welcome back to your free windows 7 training course.
In this video I will look at the free tool available from Microsoft called the Application
Compatibility Toolkit otherwise known as act.
For the 70 680 exam, it is beyond the scope of the exam to go into too much detail about
the tool kit, but I will cover the basics.
So far I have looked at how to configure compatibility options on a single computer.
If you are supporting an enterprise network, you are not going to want to configure each
computer individually.
The application compatibility tool kit is a collection of applications to help you run
old software on windows 7 when you are running in an enterprise environment.
The tool kit is a free download from Microsoft.
The main tool included is the application compatibility manger.
This tool allows you to collect information from your network about what applications
are running and what compatibility problems you may have when upgrading to windows 7.
This tool does require that you have either a SQL server on your network or the SQL express
edition installed locally.
The next tool is the application compatibility administrator.
This tool contains a collection of fixes you can apply to allow old applications to run
under windows 7.
The next 3 tools are more aimed at the developer.
If you want to check your web sites to see if they are compatible with internet explorer
8, the compatibility tool kit includes the internet explorer 8 compatibility test tool
to test your web pages.
The next tool, the setup analysis tool can examine existing setup programs to see if
there are any problems running them on windows 7.
Lastly there is the standard user analyzer tool which looks for problems with user account
control.
User account control is the system that displays windows like these asking your permission
to proceed.
Some applications and installers can have trouble working with user account control.
Let’s have a look at how to install and use the application compatibility tool kit
on a windows 7 computer.
First off you need to download the application compatibility tool kit from the Microsoft
web site.
I already have the web page open.
You can find it easily using a search engine.
On the web site there are also a number of documents you can download that will help
you use the application compatibility tool kit.
To use the tool kit however, all you need to do is download the setup executable.
In this case I will save it to the desktop.
Since I do not have an SQL server on this network, I also need to download SQL server
express.
This is a free scaled down version of SQL server.
I have already open the web page for the download in this tab.
This web page is easy to find using a search engine.
Once I select the download link, I will be taken to a web site in which I can select
the language for the installer I want to download.
This particular file, Microsoft has supplied a download manger to download the file.
The download manger will be able to continue the download if the download is interrupted.
Once I have downloaded the file, I can close all the internet explorers and run the SQL
server express setup I saved to the desktop.
One the setup has started I can select the first option to install a new SQL server on
this computer since I do not have SQL server already installed on this computer.
Next I need to accept the license agreement.
Once past the license screen I will be taken to the components screen.
In this case I will accept the default components.
For the rest of the install you can accept the defaults.
On I have accepted all the screens in the wizard, SQL server will start to install.
The process takes about 10 minutes or so, but I have speed up the process.
Once complete I can close the wizard for SQL server.
Now that SQL server has been installed, I can run the setup program for the application
compatibility tool kit.
The install is a simple one.
The only option you can set is where to install the program files.
Now that the application compatibility tool kit is installed, I can run my first tool.
Remember that the application compatibility tool kit is a collection of tools, not just
the one tool.
To collect data from the network I need to run Microsoft applications compatibility manager
from the start menu.
The configuration wizard will start up on first run.
You will notice that once pass the welcome screen I have two options.
The first option, Enterprise configuration is grayed out because the program was not
run with administrator rights.
You will notice how the wizard gives you the option to launch itself again with administrator
rights.
Once I select this option, the wizard will run again and this time I can select the option
enterprise configuration.
On the next screen I can select the SQL server that I want to connect to.
In this case I will select the local computer.
I will also need to create a database which I will call “act”.
Once the database is created, I can move on to the next screen and select a share for
the computer on the network to save data onto.
On this computer I have the public folders shared out so I will select one of them to
save the network data to.
Remember this; this computer will collect compatibility data from other computers on
the network, so the computers on the network need to be able to access this share.
Next I can select an account for the software to run under.
That’s it for the wizard.
Notice by default the tick box send ACT usage data to Microsoft is ticked.
This is statistical data Microsoft uses to help improve the product.
If you don’t want to send data to Microsoft, you can always un-tick the tick box.
Once I complete the wizard, the computer is now set up to collect data from the network.
It is beyond the scope of the exam to go into too much detail on how to set up this application
and collect data from the network.
However, if you had being collecting data, you could select analyze you can view the
reports about the data that has been collected.
At the top are the reports for windows 7 clients.
This will show you which applications on the network do not work with windows 7, applications
that have minor issues and application with no known issues.
Down the bottom of the screen is also a section for devices.
The tool has reports for Windows Vista computers with service pack 1 and service pack 2 installed
and finally windows vista with no service packs installed.
Using this tool you can view problem applications on your network and hopefully correct the
problems before you upgrade the computers.
The next tool in the tool kit is the compatibility administrator.
Once I open this tool from the start menu, I can see a list of known fixes for applications.
When you have a program that crashes, if you have selected take part in the Microsoft customer
improvement program, this data is collected in a file and periodic sent to Microsoft.
This information is used to generate this list of fixes.
By selecting any application on the right hand side, the fixes that need to be applied
to that application to work correctly under windows 7 are shown.
If I select a different application, for this application to work correctly it needs to
be run as an administrator.
Also below this there are some other fixes that need to be applied for the application
to work correctly.
If there is no fix for your application, you can create a custom fix called a shim.
If I close the compatibility administrator now and go back to the start menu, go back
to application compatibility toolkit and select developer and tester tools.
I can run the tool internet explorer compatibility test tool.
Before I can start using this tool, I need to select the option enable at the top of
the screen.
Once selected, I can then open internet explorer.
With internet explorer open, down the bottom of the screen you will see and icon showing
that internet explorer is logging compatibility information.
All you need to do now is open any web site that you want to test compatibility information
with.
Once you have all the information that you need, close internet explorer and go back
to the internet explorer compatibility test tool.
Here you can see the issue types that it has identified with the web page and running with
internet explorer 8.
Hopefully using the tools that I have shown you in this video and the last video, hopefully
you will be able to get your applications to run.
Even with all the hard work that Microsoft has put in to getting applications to work
in windows 7, some application may still not work with windows 7.
To fix problems like these, Microsoft has introduced XP mode.
XP mode allows you to run your applications in a virtual windows XP machine.
XP mode is the topic of our next video.