Updated MS toolkit allows full Vista compatibility check

Version 5.0 of Microsoft's Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) was created specifically to allow admins to audit their entire environment—applications, computers, peripherals and even Web sites—for compatibility issues with Windows Vista.

Because Vista breaks from Windows tradition in so many ways—e.g., applications no longer run as Administrator by default, even when you're logged in as admin—Microsoft has added an entire set of data collectors and compatibility evaluators to ACT 5.0 to gauge Vista compatibility. These include:

Note: In Vista, GINA has been entirely replaced by Credential Providers, which allows for more flexibility in supporting multipl

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Microsoft has also rewritten Version 5.0 to make it all the easier to perform the collection and evaluation of compatibility data across an organization. To this one, one new component, the Application Compatibility Toolkit Data Collector, lets admins control when systems are to be evaluated, and aggregates the collected data for sending to an ACT database.

ACT 5.0 requires Windows 2000 SP4 or better, SQL Server 2005 Express Edition or better and the .NET Framework (1.1 or higher). The system you're using to aggregate and process ACT data should have at least 512MB of RAM and a 2.8 GHz processor.

About the author: Serdar Yegulalp is editor of the Windows Power Users Newsletter, which is devoted to hints, tips, tricks, news and goodies for Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows XP users and administrators. He has more than 10 years of Windows experience under his belt, and contributes regularly to SearchWinComputing.com and SearchSQLServer.com.

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