Windows Vista Support
Last Updated
15 December 2008
This document provides
information about running P Squared Products on Microsoft
Windows Vista.
If after reading this document you have any
further inquiries please contact your sales account manager
via sales@psquared.net
or email
support@psquared.net
Microsoft®
Windows Vista®
represents one of the biggest challenges facing the software
industry in decades. As part of Microsoft's drive to improve
security and reliability, they have almost entirely
re-written Windows from the ground up to ensure that they
can offer a reliable platform for many years to come.
Many of these changes
are to prevent rogue applications taking control of a
computer if they are installed accidentally by a user,
but some are designed to make the Operating System more
reliable by preventing regular users from interfering
with files that Windows needs to operate normally. One
example is User Account Control (UAC) which asks users
to enter a password every time a major system change is
requested by software so the user can check to see if it
should be allowed to happen.
Another huge change is
the way that the Audio Subsystem works, as over the
years Microsoft have written 4 or 5 different audio
engines to work in different situations and all of these
worked largely independently of each other, often
leading to problems with some applications refusing to
run with others. In Windows Vista, there is only 1
unified Audio Subsystem that is designed to appear to
applications in whichever flavour they are expecting.
This should increase reliability significantly for users
running multiple applications at the same time.
This progress comes at a
significant cost as almost all software designed or
written before 2007 need changes to allow them to run on
Windows Vista. In some cases these changes are minor and
Vista does include several facilities to help 'legacy'
applications operate without too many problems. Vista
Service Pack 1 also includes more updates to smooth the
transition.
However, some
applications do require quite extensive changes, and
most users will find that most - if not all - software
will have problems either installing or running reliably
on Vista.
The problem is that for
years, application developers have followed Guidelines
issued by Microsoft about where to store data like
configuration data and file databases. Windows XP saw
the start of a change to these guidelines and Vista now
enforces these by making the old locations (such as the
Windows directory and common Registry areas) unavailable for applications to use
practically.
The P Squared product
range is no exception to this rule as many of our
applications are based on a common engine that was
designed before these Guideline changes were introduced.
This is a deliberate decision that we took so we could
keep our software running on older operating systems
such as Windows 2000 and before that Windows 9x for as long as possible.
An example of this is
that Myriad v2 will most likely install on Vista, but if
you logoff and back on as a different Windows User then
Myriad will need to be re-configured as the settings are
now stored per-user rather than per-machine.
Another significant
problem is that some of our applications won't even
install correctly on Windows Vista. This is because we
use several components that use a reverse-engineering
prevention system and this is not compatible with
Windows Vista. When you try to install these versions
the installer may show an error message saying that it
can't 'Register' a certain file, or when you run the
application for the first time you receive an error
message saying that a file can't be found. We have been
actively working on replacements for these files for
some time and the first of these are now being used in
our applications.
We run a large number of
long 'test computers' that run our applications 24 hours
a day to make sure that they have the high level of
reliability that we expect, and our customers demand.
Until recently these
have all been running Windows XP, but as more and more
of our applications are converted to work under Windows
Vista, we have started migrating test computers to
running Windows Vista instead to ensure testing on both
Windows XP and Windows Vista.
As well as actually
developing and testing applications on Windows Vista,
another problem faced by Software Companies is providing
high quality Technical Support for end users running on
Windows Vista.
Our Technical Support
team have access to every application we have ever
produced so whenever a customer calls with a query they
can quickly get the same screen in front of them to help
walk users through to a solution. This also applies to
queries with the operating system - for instance if a
customer calls with a query about how to stop the "ding"
noise whenever a message box is shown in Myriad, we need
to be able to walk the user through Control Panel>Sounds
to explain how to control the Windows System Sounds.
All of our current
Technical Support computers run Windows XP as that is
the operating system used by the majority of our
customers. As well as architectural changes, Windows
Vista also has many 'front-end' changes meaning that
users really need to be in front of a Windows Vista
computer rather than Windows XP to explain the procedure
more accurately.
More complicated queries
- such as how to adjust Windows Vista's security
settings to get the best from our Applications are even
more reliant on the engineers having access to Windows
Vista in front of them.
We are now starting to
migrate some of the Support computers to Windows Vista,
but this is a long process (not to mention costly!) and
each user then needs to train on the new operating
system to make sure they can offer the best support.
Myriad v3.5 was the first P
Squared product designed to run under Windows Vista
as well as Windows XP and we are actively working on
updating our other main applications to follow suit.
Scoop v3 is also compatible with Windows Vista starting with version
v3.0.36.
Nexus v1 is also compatible with Windows Vista starting with version
v1.0.7.
Although we aren't in a
position to publish timescales for all products, we are
internally working on the assumption that all mainstream
products should have a version that offers basic
operation on Windows Vista by Autumn 2008.
The following table shows
the status of each product that we have tested on Windows
Vista. Each product is shown with a rating showing it's
level of compatibility with Windows Vista. If a product is
not listed then it has not been tested on Windows Vista and
is unlikely to be tested except in exceptional
circumstances. It should be assumed that it will not work
correctly.
The applications were
tested under the following conditions, and therefore you
should expect to do the same if you want to run on
Windows Vista:
-
Service Pack 1
Installed and fully Windows Updated
-
User Account Control
disabled (see
Configuring UAC)
-
Running as an
Administrative User
The following ratings
are used:
 |
Operates fully and has been designed and tested on
Windows Vista |
|
Operates normally, but is not
optimised
to work on Windows Vista |
|
|
Generally operates normally, but some minor features
may not work. |
|
|
May install but does not work reliably or is
missing major features |
|
|
May or may not install correctly, but will not run
at all. |
|
