Lesson 3: Troubleshooting Installations and Upgrades

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Lesson 3: Troubleshooting Installations and Upgrades

After you have logged on successfully to a computer that you have upgraded to Windows

Vista, the only way back to Windows XP is to format the hard disk drive and to reinstall from

scratch. If you have a significant number of applications installed and you find that some of

the most critical ones do not work, you might begin to regret starting the upgrade process in

the first place. In this lesson, we examine several techniques that you can employ to get recal-

citrant applications working with Windows Vista. We also examine the techniques that you

can employ to recover Windows Vista when something goes horribly awry.

After this lesson, you will be able to:

■ Resolve application compatibility problems.

■ Troubleshoot Windows Vista installations.

■ Troubleshoot Windows Vista upgrades.

■ Select an appropriate System Recovery Tool option.

■ Create and use system restore points.

Estimated lesson time: 30 minutes

Resolving Application Compatibility Problems

Applications that were written for previous versions of Windows will not always work with

Windows Vista. The primary reason for this is that Windows Vista is a significantly more

secure operating system than previous versions of Windows. Programming techniques that

worked in prior versions of Windows no longer work because the methods that the applica-

tion used to interact with the operating system were similar to methods used by viruses and

worms to infect the operating system.

Application compatibility problems generally come in two varieties:

■

The application expects to run in an environment like that of an earlier version of

Windows.

■

There are problems with User Account Control.

When Windows Vista notes that there is a problem running an older program, it invokes the

Program Compatibility Assistant. This automatic function attempts to resolve conflicts with

User Account Control or run the program in a mode that simulates an earlier version of

Windows. Sometimes the assistant does not get it right, and you have to manually alter set-

tings to get the program to run yourself.