Comsense Software and Microsoft Windows Vista™
Compatibility
Microsoft’s much anticipated Windows Vista™ has finally been released,
and with it comes many usability advancements and security enhancements.
Unfortunately increased security
naturally leads to reduced usability. Microsoft has done it’s best to
make it easy for users to live with the increased level of security in the
new operating system. Many software vendors, including Comsense, are
now working to ensure that their applications operate as seamlessly as
possible with the new systems in Windows Vista™ in order to offer the most
enjoyable user experience possible.
AHM
With each release of Windows, Microsoft has moved farther away from its
MS-DOS roots. With this most recent release Microsoft has removed
support for 16-bit applications in its DOS environment. AHM is a
16-bit application, and therefore will not run natively on Windows Vista™.
There are a number of workarounds for this development, the most practical
being to run AHM in a Terminal Services or Citrix environment. As we
perform more research of AHM on Vista scenarios we will publish our findings
and recommendations.
Opening Suite – Advantage and Specwriter
Comsense Advantage and Comsense Specwriter client applications operate
normally on Windows Vista™. There are several compatibility issues
that users must be aware of however.
Windows Vista™ introduces a new security concept called User Account
Control, or UAC. Essentially, what this system does is ask the user
each time a system level operation is attempted, regardless of the user’s
group membership. The theory is that malicious software will no longer
be able to do harm to a user’s machine without them knowing about it. The
Program Update mechanism used by the Comsense Advantage and Comsense
Specwriter requires elevated privileges, but Windows Vista™ isn’t aware
enough to ask for authorization to launch, so instead UAC just prevents the
program updates from running. The workaround for this situation is to
disable UAC. Comsense is updating our Program Update mechanism to
ensure that UAC on Windows Vista has the information it needs to properly
ask for permission to launch our updaters without requiring users to disable
UAC.
Another element of Comsense Advantage and Comsense Specwriter that is
impacted by Windows Vista™ is our database engine. Our Opening Suite
products operate with a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 data store. SQL
Server 2000 has been a proven, reliable and scalable database system for
over 6 years. For reasons that are likely as much marketing as they
are technical, Microsoft is not supporting SQL Server 2000 installations on
Windows Vista™. Instead they insist that users upgrade to SQL Server
2005 SP1, which is fully supported on Windows Vista™. What this means
to our users, is that for the time being, standalone installations of
Comsense Advantage and Comsense Specwriter, where the database engine is on
the same machine as the client software with no use of a database server is
unsupported. Comsense is currently in testing with SQL Server 2005 to
ensure the application operates correctly with this new database system.
When we are confident that we have full compatibility, we will begin
upgrading all of our customers from their current SQL Server 2000
installations to SQL Server 2005.
Opening Suite – Enterprise
Comsense Enterprise is compatible with Windows Vista™. However,
Enterprise shares the Program Update system of Advantage, thereby suffering
from the same compatibility issues with UAC. Again, the workaround for
the time being is to disable UAC.
We will continue to update this page as our compatibility scenarios and
knowledge change.
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