Planning Your Vista Deployment with BDD

There are four steps to running ACT: configuration, creating a collection package, deploying the package, and analyzing the data. Before you configure ACT, create and share a folder in which to log the inventory data. Open Application Compatibility Manager (ACM) from Start, All Programs, Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.0. The ACT configuration wizard runs the first time you launch ACM. There are two modes: Enterprise mode and View and Manage Reports Only mode. Choose Enterprise mode to create, view, and manage ACT projects and reports. Next, choose your SQL Server or SQL Server Express database. Select the shared folder you created earlier in which to log the inventory data. All computers that will log inventory data need read/write access to the shared folder. Finally, supply a user account and password that will collect that log information in the database. If you choose a specific account, that account must have Log on as a service user rights and read/write access to the shared log folder you created and to the database. If you need to edit these configuration settings later, just select Settings from the Tools menu within ACM.

Create a data collection package from ACM's Collect pane by selecting New from the File menu. Give the package a name, choose the compatibility option, and specify when the monitoring should begin and in which database ACM should store the collected information. To select the type of information to be collected, click Advanced and choose the compatibility evaluators (i.e., agents) you want to deploy. There are compatibility evaluators for collecting information on inventory, Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE), User Account Control compatibility, updates (evaluates Windows updates), and Vista (determines if that computer is upgradeable or not).

After you've selected your compatibility evaluators, choose Save and Create Package from the File menu. A self-extracting .exe is created that you can deploy via Group Policy, email, CD-ROM, or a network share. When the collection package is deployed, the compatibility evaluators are installed locally on each computer. The compatibility evaluators run based on the schedule you've set in your collection package.

The last step is to analyze the data that has been collected. Reports identify Vista, XP, IE 7, and Windows Update upgradeability. You can then use the ACT community to view assessments from other companies or create your own assessments.

Developer and Tester Tools
The tools designed for developers to test their applications are the Internet Explorer Compatibility Test (IECT) tool, the Setup Analysis Tool, and the Standard User Analyzer (SUA) tool. These tools are found at Start, All Programs, Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.0, Developer and Tester Tools.

The IECT identifies potential problems with existing Web sites or Web-based applications before you upgrade them to IE 7. Start IECT and choose Logging Enabled from the Tools menu. Now, open IE and browse to a Web site or launch a Web-based application. In IECT under Issue Description (at the bottom of the screen) is a list of possible problems you can address before upgrading.

The SUA tool monitors the installation of an application and reports problems that need to be addressed before the application will run properly on Vista. Once you have a list of problems, you can apply fixes. These fixes are called "mitigations." Mitigations allow you to resolve some of the issues. SUA requires Microsoft's Application Verifier 3.3 (which is a separate download from Microsoft). Once you've downloaded and installed Application Verifier, open SUA, browse to an application's .exe file, then click the Launch button.

As you can see in Figure 5, there are nine tabs that display information showing you exactly what changed, files that were added or edited, registry keys that were added, and so forth. The App Info tab records the steps of the installer program. Changes that the application made to files, the registry, or .ini files are recorded in the File, Registry, and INI tab, respectively. Using the Privilege tab to find privilege levels can be a huge help.

This completes our quick trip through Microsoft's planning tools. They will make your life much easier by helping you identify and resolve Vista upgrade problems.

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