ACT Microsoft Compatibility Toolkit – Microsoft Q&A

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Feb 05,  · Example:”C:\Programdata\Application X”;”Z:\ApplicationStore\Application X” This will redirect the application call from the Programdata location to the Z drive. The Z could be a user mapped drive or any location you would prefer it go to. Keeping in mind that only the EXE(s) that you specify will only be redirected. Jul 08,  · ADVERTISEMENT. Start with a right-click on the New Database (1), then Create New and from the context menu that opens “Application Fix”. This opens a new window where a program name, developer name and executable can be selected. The next page lists the compatibility modes. Locate and select RunAsInvoker from the list and click the Test Run. Assessing hardware and application compatibility needs to be part of your planning for deploying Windows App compatibility is more streamlined with Windows Windows 10 compatibility. SUBSCRIBE RSS FEEDS. Need more help? Expand your skills Explore Training. Get new features first.
 
 

Application compatibility toolkit windows 10. Microsoft Windows Application Compatibility Toolkit

In computer programming, a shim is a small library which transparently intercepts an API, changes the parameters passed, handles the operation itself, or redirects the operation elsewhere. Shims can also be used for running programs on different software platforms than they were developed for.

Each application built for Windows imports these DLLs, and maintains a table of the address of each of these functions in memory. Because the address of the Windows functionality is sitting in a table, it is straightforward for the shim engine to replace this address with the address of the shim DLL instead. In this particular case, the two objects are the application program and Windows, and the shim is additional code that causes the two to behave better together, as shown below:.

Figure 1 Before the shim is applied, the application interacts directly with Windows. Figure 2 After the shim is applied, the application interacts with Windows indirectly; the shim code is injected and can modify the request to Windows, the response from Windows, or both.

Specifically, it leverages the nature of linking to redirect API calls from Windows to alternative code—the Shim. Consequently, a call into Windows looks like:. Specifically, you can modify the address of the Windows function resolved in the import table, and then replace it with a pointer to a function in the alternate shim code, as shown in Figure 2. This redirection happens for statically linked. You can also shim dynamically linked. This is the cost-saving route—help the application by modifying calls to the operating system before they get there.

You can fix applications without access to the source code, or without changing them at all. You incur a minimal amount of additional management overhead for the shim database , and you can fix a reasonable number of applications this way. The downside is support as most vendors don’t support shimmed applications.

You can’t fix every application using shims. Most people typically consider shims for applications where the vendor is out of business, the software isn’t strategic enough to necessitate support, or they just want to buy some time. For example, a very commonly used shim is a version-lie shim.

To implement this shim, we intercept several APIs that are used to determine which version of Windows the application is running on. Normally, this information is passed on to Windows itself, and it answers truthfully. With the shim applied, however, these APIs are intercepted. Instead of passing on the request to Windows, a different version of Windows is returned for example, Windows XP instead of Windows 7.

Frequently this is all that is necessary to resolve an application compatibility problem! NOTE: As shims run as user-mode code inside a user-mode application process, you cannot use a shim to fix kernel-mode code. For example, you cannot use shims to resolve compatibility issues with device drivers or with other kernel-mode code.

For example, some antivirus, firewall, and antispyware code runs in kernel mode. If you are trying to run an application that was created for or XP and had problems running in Windows 7, you could always turn on compatibility mode for the executable on your machine.

However if you are trying to create a shim that could be used on other machines as well, you could use the following instructions to create the shim and send it. It is a very small size and once executed, will always be associated with that executable on that machine. Choose Application Fix here. In this below dialog, give the application details and the executable you would want to fix:.

When you press the next button, you will get to see the list of the compatibility modes listed by default. If you have an issue with just version incompatibility then choose the version in which the application was working earlier.

At this point I have already determined that Windows compatibility mode will work for this program. In the next window when you have combination of shims to be chosen. As shown below, you have lots of shims to choose from. Select all the shims which would fix your application. Click on Finish. This will give you the complete summary of the application and the fixes applied. Now you need to save this shim database file A small database including the shim information is created , and install it.

You can either install it by right-clicking on the shim and pressing the install button, or by using a command-line option, sdbinst. Once the Application Compatibility Database is installed, we can run the program from the location specified earlier in the first window. Now the program should be running in the Compatibility mode that you specified during the process.