Drivers for old Soundblaster cards in Windows 7 and Windows Vista

A problem when Windows Vista was released some years ago was the fact that Creative wasn’t too “creative” to create drivers for older Soundblaster cards. This is where the kX Project comes in as it provides drivers for most older Soundblaster audio cards in newer operating systems.

But why on earth do I mention this now that Vista has ben out for a few years? Well the reason is that I’ve heard of users (some of which totally skipped Vista) that are testing Windows 7 on older machines and does not find a driver for their Creative Soundblaster audio card.

If you are looking for a Windows Vista och Windows 7 driver for your Soundblaster range of audio card go to http://kb.kxproject.lugosoft.com.

Fool a web site into thinking you are another browser or OS

Some time ago I wanted to see a soccer game via Canal Digitals web service but as I am running Windows 7 on my Media Center connected to my TV the web service discovered this and did not let me play this using Windows Media Player and instead offered me to view it in Flash format. Viewing the game in Flash format really wasn’t the best in quality and as I and my co-watchers discovered the game was more or less unwatchable.

In halftime I had the time to do the necessary corrections to fool the web service into presenting itself as another operating system and Internet Explorer version. This made the Windows Media stream instantly and not to mention with much better quality. This is done easilty by changing the so called user agent string which is a string which presents certain information such as OS, web browser and version and some more info.

If you want to change the user agent string and fool a web site or service into thinking it is something it is not you can do this using one of the registry fixes found at http://www.enhanceie.com/ua.aspx.

What does a Windows 7 logo’ed application really mean?

Now that Windows 7 RTM is closing in and it has been announced that Windows 7 will be available to partners as early as late July I thought I’d share a few facts about what an application being certified for Windows 7 really mean. For software developers to receive the “Windows 7” logo it must pass certain required tests. The certification process include for example the following requirements:

• No installation blocks. One common problem is that software developers check which operating system the application is trying to be installed on which causes an application to not install on the latest operating system. For an app to become certified there must be no such blocks.
• Remote Desktop Services environment. All apps must work in a multi user environment such as Remote Desktop Services (former Terminal Services) or when multiple users are logged on locally on a client machine.
• Handling crash data. The developers must actively participate and handle application crash data that is sent to Microsoft via the built in application error reporting in Windows. For instance if an application carrying the “compatible with Windows 7 “ logo is discovered to cause more than 20 percent of crashes the developers have 30-90 days to present a plan to fix the problem(s), or the logo is revoked. 
• Installation and uninstallation. Applications must install cleanly to standard locations in the file system and it must be possible to uninstall the application. 
• Support for 64-bit platform. Applications that receive the logo must fully work on 64-bit version of Windows 7, either natively or by using WoW64.

That is just a few requirements that an application must pass before it gets the “Compatible with Windows 7“ logo. More information can be found at https://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=831

Windows XP mode for Windows 7!

So it seams it isn’t a secret anymore that Windoyws 7 will get a feature (separate download) that using the latest Virtual PC technologies will make it possible to run applications in Windows XP directly integreated into the Windows 7  operating system. The feature is almost the same as MED-V which accomplishes basically the same thing, but The “Windows XP mode” has advantages like it is available for anyone running Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise or Ultimate SKUs.

With this Microsoft can guarantee compatilibty in a way no one could ever expect. This also makes the step from Windows XP to Windows 7 much easier and now there cannot be any apps holiding anyone back from upgrading the clients to Windows 7.

More information: Winsupersite

Help improve app compatibility in Windows 7

Microsoft is working more active than ever to improve application compatibility in Windows 7. Recently two Swedes announced Microsoft’s willingness to help improve application compatibility in general but also for non-English applications.

First Jesper Holmberg, working with localization at Microsoft in Redmond, announced the face that Microsoft actively wants applications in non-English languages to test with Windows 7. Second Danwei Tran, a new IT evangelist at Microsoft Sweden, offered everybody to send emails to a specific address to report compatibility issues with applications. Microsoft will then contact the developers to see how they can resolve the problems, to everybody’s benefit.

These two actions will of course make compatibility for Windows 7 superb, but never to forget, compatibility for Windows Vista will improve as well as a direct result of these actions.

Just a final note, Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.5 got released yesterday, more about this later on.

“Fix” the compatibility problems with IE8 beta

Some time during the third quarter this year the next beta of Internet Explorer 8 will be released. Microsoft is already asking people, webmasters specifically, to update their web sites to be Internet Explorer 8 compatible. IE8 follow web standards in a new way and this causes quite a few web sites to look not so good in Internet Explorer 8 native mode.

Of course the best option is to make your web site follow the standards but in any cases where this is not possible, due to lack of time, money or knowledge there is a snippet of code that you can add to your web sites to make Internet Explorer 8 render them as if they were interpreted in Internet Explorer 7.

The below snippet of code must be placed directly after the <head> tag.

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7">

Adding this tag is equal to running Internet Explorer 8 in the “Emulate IE7″ mode.

More information: Your Web site may not display correctly in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1

How to disable Vista UAC for certain applications only

As a follow up to my previous posts about application compatibility this support article from Microsoft came right to my attention. It is a step-by-step guide on how to make disable User Account Control prompts for certain applications only, without turning off UAC. The guide is called How to disable the User Account Control Prompt for certain applications, do not miss it!

Application compatibility in Windows Vista

Windows Vista contains a nice utility called Program Compatibility Assistant which tracks the applications which might have problems with running in Vista. When you start an application which is detected to have problems with Vista you will be presented with a box like the one below, and the necessary compatiblity settings are automatically applied. In some cases the Program Compatibility Assistant solution to a compatibility problem is to set it to run as in Windows XP with Service Pack 2. What the Program Compatibility Assistant do in my example case is to determine that an application need to start with elevated privileges when using User Account Control. Of course this is a problem when the user running the application is just a standard user as he or she cannot start and use the application.

Regardless of what the Program Compatibility Assistant do the compatibility settings are stored per user and application in the registry. Have a look at this registry key to manually remove or just to have a look at what compatibility settings have been applied on your computer: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers.

The solution to resolve the problem with running certain applications elevated can in many cases is resolved by turning off User Account Control as a last way out, if you have not already disabled it.