Dave Cragg wrote: > > Hi all > > Be warned! The new dawn is what you'll see after working all night > to see if your old apps still run on XP. :) > > First, Metacard seems to run fine. I've had no "engine trouble" so > far. But XP's new security enforcement may catch you out. (It caught > me out.) > > Two main problems so far: running an installer and writing files to > places you shouldn't. > > But there's an extra twist. If you install XP over a previous OS (NT > for exmple) it retains the basic security setup of the old OS. This > is what I did at first, and everything seemed to run as before. I > told my client that it performs fine under XP (we'd had a report of a > user not being able to run the app with XP), and he went away happy. > > A day later, I re-installed XP following some hardware problems. This > time I made a clean install. I tried to run the client's app again, > and things were different. After starting the installer ( older > version of Wise), I was greeted with a very pretty system message > that an Administrator password should be used to install applications > (I was logged in as a plain user). But it gave the option to install > under the current user account. I tried with the user account, and > the installer failed with an error about access restrictions. I'm > guessing it was when writing to the registry. > > I installed again, this time giving an Administrator password, and it > installed fine. But when I ran the installed app from the user > account, I immediately hit problems. The app writes a file locally in > the same directory where the standalone is. This is mainly > configuration data, and I think a number of users on the list use > this technique. Anyway, this was a no-no. No writing to the Program > Files directory for plain users. > > However, I found that by copying the complete directory that contains > the standalone and other stacks out of the Program Files directory, > it would run fine. > > I'm now trying to work out what you can and can't do, and also find a > better strategy for running and deploying the application. But I > can't find any clear documentation on this, only a number of > references to thing being different depending on environment: XP > Home, XP Pro, installed on a workgroup network, installed on a > domain, etc. So far, it looks like security through obscurity to me, > but I guess there's a method to it. If someone knows a good reference > for this, could you let us know.
Microsoft is rewarding its users for buying their new OS the way it knows best ;-). But then, what else did you expect? I read about this and other goodies of the wonderful XP on www.theregister.co.uk. > > Cheers > > Dave Cragg > Andu Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm Please send bug reports to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, not this list.
