Windows Vista Team Blog : UAC

New Application Compatibility training available

Peg McNicol — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 19:19:00 GMT

When we talk about application compatibility for our large customers, it goes beyond making sure the latest game or end user application works. Our enterprise customers sometimes have hundreds of thousands of PCs to manage. That means a lot of different applications, from many different companies, some custom and some customized. To help these customers we created a suite of enterprise tools called the Application Compatibility Toolkit (see my earlier post), and also worked with partners to create a service called the Application Compatibility Factory (see here).

One thing you may not know is that we also have a team of specially trained consultants who work with customers on some of these very large deployments. We try to make sure all our customers can take advantage of the team's knowledge, so we send them to events like TechEd or IT Forum and they contribute significantly to the content you find on TechNet and MSDN. Unfortunately it's not always possible for customers to have one-on-one interaction with this team. That's why we are pretty excited that one of the consultants, Caio Chaves Garcez, recently recorded the full 2 day training the team usually presents to these large customers. The training covers most common application compatibility issues found with Windows Vista, as well as how to use the various tools we make available. Whether you are an IT Pro starting your deployment or a developer trying to make your older applications work with Vista, the content of this webcast is well worth the just over 8 hours it will take you to get through it. If you want to learn more about what the team is working on, you can also check out Chris Jackson's blog.

Download the training

It's Windows Vista Week at Channels 9 and 10

Nick White — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 18:21:00 GMT

Windows Vista Week has begun at Channel 9 and Channel 10. Over on Channel 9 they're covering Windows Vista from the developer side, focusing on building apps for Windows Vista as a user-centric operating system. What technologies underlying Windows Vista make it what it is for the user? And what can developers get out of those technologies to improve the user's experience with their Windows apps? Channel 9 will take a deep-dive into those technologies this week. Expect topics to range from UAC to the networking stack and beyond.

Also, Channel 9's Charles Torre has posted his interview with Michael Wallent on the 'what' and 'why' of Windows Vista's developer appeal. Incidentally, I had the opportunity to interview Michael about Windows Vista product quality back in November, and he had some illuminating things to share, so I'm sure his words for devs will be equally valuable.

On Channel 10, the team will be covering a wide range of Windows Vista topics, too, in this case targeting power users (is that you?). For instance, Tina Wood works hands-on with Ernie Booth while installing Windows Vista, and Laura Foy interviews Windows Mobile's Mel Sampat (creator of FlexWallet) about getting Windows Sidebar Gadgets to run on your Windows Mobile device.

Should be an interesting week ...

Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.0 Released

Peg McNicol — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 00:41:00 GMT

Hi I'm Peg McNicol, the product manager for application compatibility in Windows Vista.

In the midst of all the excitement around the general availability of Windows Vista, it's almost strange to talk about IT Pro & developer tools, but if you are an IT Pro, or developer, this should be pretty exciting too. Today the final version of the Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.0 was released. If you are already familiar with ACT 5.0 make sure you download the new bits and the refreshed product guide here. If you want to learn more about the tools and resources around application compatibility for Windows Vista - please visit our TechNet site.

For people new to ACT, it is a single toolset that can help detect, diagnose, and mitigate compatibility issues found in Windows Vista. I think the single coolest feature of this tool is that you can deploy it in your current environment, Windows 2000 or Windows XP and get an inventory of your applications and see how they'll work with Windows Vista. Other highlights include the Standard User Analyzer (SUA) tool; there have been many changes made to improve overall security and reliability in Windows Vista, and this tool looks for possible issues resulting from those changes for users running as Standard Users, which is what every user in a business environment should be in this new paradigm we’ve delivered. There’s also the new Internet Explorer 7 Test Tool to test apps for use with the latest version of Internet Explorer, and the Setup Analysis Tool which detects any issues your setup packages might have with installing on Windows Vista. Finally, IT Pros can use the new and improved Compatibility Administrator to pull compatibility fixes from a database of existing fixes and apply them to apps one-by-one, or in predefined groups.

Overall, this toolkit is going to be a huge timesaver for the IT Pro community and a great resource for developers to analyze and test their apps. Even if you are just starting to think about planning or deploying Windows Vista, you should download ACT 5.0 and start taking an inventory of your current environment so can scope your workload and be ready to go when the time is right for your company.

Download ACT 5.0 now

Accessible UAC Prompts

James Senior — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 18:20:00 GMT

There have been some comments on the blog recently suggesting that the UAC dialog boxes in Windows Vista are not accessible and I just wanted to clear up the confusion here.

First, to set the scene though. When a user attempts to access an application or setting that requires elevated privileges to run, they are presented with a UAC prompt, the appearance of which will vary depending on the type of user they are or the type of application that is trying to run. This diagram shows the types of dialog boxes that you might see and the process flow that triggers each type:

There is also a credential prompt which will be displayed if the current user is not an administrator:

These prompts are protected from receiving communications from other applications so that malicious software cannot simulate the actions of users. This is obviously a problem for screenreaders or other applications that need to use UI Automation in order to provide interaction with the User Interface. This problem has a solution though.

In order to gain access to the UAC prompts - or other processes running at a higher privilege level - an application must be trusted by the system and run with special privileges. To make this happen the application should be built with a manifest file that includes the following elements and attributes:

<trustInfo xmlns="urn:0073chemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3">

<security>

<requestedPrivileges>

<requestedExecutionLevel

level="highestAvailable"

UIAccess="true" />

</requestedPrivileges>

</security>

</trustInfo>

The important tag to note is the UIAccess, which must be true in order for the application to gain access to the UAC prompts.

There is an MSDN article which you should refer to for more information: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms742884.aspx

eWeek Labs Praises Windows Vista’s UAC

Nick White — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 21:39:00 GMT

eWeek Labs recently took some time to dig deeper into Windows Vista’s User Access Control (UAC), praising Microsoft for their dedication to securing Windows Vista. "With Vista's UAC, Microsoft has finally gotten serious about securing the Windows operating system by limiting a user's rights during day-to-day computer usage," Andrew Garcia from eWeek writes. Andrew also says that UAC "finally brings the Windows operating system up to speed with just about every other major operating system available today."

Check out more of eWeek's findings on UAC.