Re: My Findings - VB6 Apps on Vista
- From: "Michael C" <nospam@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2006 11:55:33 +1000
"Anthony" <Anthony@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:450EF68A-90FD-42A1-8467-D0CA2F7B26E4@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Therefore, a standard user under Vista (again, this is THE DEFAULT), in
order to install most software, will need to run the installer as admin.
Will
our users understand how to do that? Hmm.. I think they might just think
its
broke, or, doesn't work with Vista, and move on to another piece of
software.
People don't read instructions -- they double click, and click OK OK OK.
If
the message says RUN THIS INSTALLER AS ADMIN etc etc, they are just going
to
click OK. Nothing will happen, and they will wonder what is going on. They
will not understand what 'AS ADMIN' means, and my guess is, we will lose
half
of our prospects!
Is your installer an msi? You might get extra rights if it is. Although I
suspect users will get used to this. Other OSs have been working like this
for years and most of their user's get by. In that case it asks for the
admin password, the user enters it and they continue. If all software is the
same then it won't be a disadvantage to you.
1) Wrap the OCX and DLL files into the EXE.
There is a very nice software program called molebox that enables you to
wrap your dll and ocx files into your vb6 exe. When your user runs the
exe,
the dll and ocx are extracted into MEMORY instead of getting registered
with
the registry. We are still testing it out, but so far, it has been a dream
come true. Highly recommended!
Sounds like a good idea.
2) Set the default install path to the Vista equivalent of c:\documents
and
settings\all users\application data\appname\ (I am not in front of my
Vista
Beta box right now, but I believe it is c:\users\public\application
data\).
I don't like doing this, but right now, I dont see any other way to enable
Vista users to be able to install software without having to understand
the
admin rights system. The net result of installing here is what a user
running
Win98 or WinME gets - just double-click the installer, click NEXT NEXT
NEXT
or OK OK OK, and it gets installed.
Can't say I like that idea either. I'm sure it's not the correct way to do
it.
Up until now, we have installed all applications and its data files
together
-- in other words, everything gets installed into c:\program
files\appname\,
and the .exe expects to be able to read and write files and folders within
that directory.
This is NOT a good idea even now. I've done this with my current app in dot
net and it's come back to bite me because some non-admin users don't have
permissions to update the data there. Luckily it's only the ini file so I
can move it :-)
Apparently since Windows 2000, the recommended methodology is to write the
data files to c:\documents and settings\all users\application
data\{companyname}\{appname}\ or c:\documents and
settings\{your_user_name}\application data\{companyname}\{appname}\. YUK!
No
offense, but our users are not developers or very technical. Add the fact
that the \application data\ folder is HIDDEN by default, there was just no
hope to using this.
This directory is only for hidden files that the user never sees such as ini
files. If it's a file they can move/copy/delete/email etc themselves then it
should be in My Documents.
Vista changes (or forces upon us) a revisit to this. You see, in Vista,
EVEN
IF YOU ARE THE ADMINISTRATOR running an application, the application
itself
DOES NOT RUN with admin rights. This means that the application CAN NOT
WRITE
to its own folder in the c:\program files\ folder. In other words, if you
application sits inside of c:\program files\app1\, and tries to write a
file
named c:\program files\app1\data.txt, it will fail in Vista! Note: You can
FORCE the application to run using admin rights, but most users will not
know
how to do that, and, it takes several extra steps to do it.
The solution:
1) Recode our software to point all of its reading and writing to the
..\application data\ folder mentioned above. I personally don't like this,
but, perhaps in the long run, users will get used to it. I think the
application, and its data, should be in one place - I may be in the
minority
on this though.
I think you are. There is no reason for the users to even see the exe file
at all (eg on my palm pda you can't see exe files). But user's do need to
see data files depending on the app.
Michael
.
- References:
- My Findings - VB6 Apps on Vista
- From: Anthony
- My Findings - VB6 Apps on Vista
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