Program Compatibility Assistant (PAC) stipp popping up on Windows 7

Question

Hi,

I have a problem with the PAC popping up after a program of ours on Windows 7  (W7 Ultimate SP1)

• The file name does contain "Install" because it's the first thign to run for an installation. 
• The exe contains an embedded resource with UAC level "asInvoker" and compatibility GUID for Windows 7 
• at least the "asInvoker" seems to be recognized correctly

MSDN seems to be still stuck in Vista land, the best info I found there is this: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb756937.aspx sying the UAC level is enough.

This blog post: mentions it is outdated for Windows 7, and the compatibility GUID's are required: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/cjacks/archive/2009/06/18/pca-changes-for-windows-7-how-to-tell-us-you-are-not-an-installer-take-2-because-we-changed-the-rules-on-you.aspx

However, that's still not enough I get the "The program might not have installed correctly" popup.

Anything else I can do? Is there a way to verify the Manifest is well-formed and correctly recognized as "compatible with Windows 7"?

 

Answer 1

Use the shim SpecificNonInstaller Fix: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd638326(WS.10).aspx (if you are an IT Pro)

Please download ACT latest version from: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=7352#filelist and configurate this shim for your application.

Sincerely,

---

Bob Bao [MSFT]
MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us
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Answer 2

Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately, this does not seem to selve my problem. 

As I understand, this requires installing a custom shim database on the client machine before the executable itself runs. Is that right?

As this is for our end users, not in-house-IT, this doesn't sound like a suitable way to deal with this (as echoed by some users that seem to have more experience with this). Also, the executable in question is the one that binds together all the things that need to be installed - it is the one the user should run first.

 

Apparently, changing the name (and meta data) to not contain "install" seems the eaiest route, but to be honest, I am not very comfortable to hunt around for a name that maybe doesn't trigger magic functionality in the absence of proper documentation. Also, I want to convey to my end user what will happen when they start the program, calling it "MostlyHarmelss.exe" somehow defeats the purpose.

Any other suggestions?

Answer 3

Other two way we can do, please read the "Excluding Programs from PCA" section in this document: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb756937.aspx

• setting HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Compatibility Assistant key,
• Turn Off Program Compatibility Assistan in Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Application Compatibility in the group policy

 

Sincerely,

---

Bob Bao [MSFT]
MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us
Get or Request Code Sample from Microsoft
Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help.

Answer 4

This issue rather seems as malware intrusion. Same kind of issue I faced with Firewall warning. McAfee, Norton and all other giants could help me disinfect the files I had in other partitions. I had to sacrifice my files as they were corrupted.

Then I used Linux to locate and and remove the malware traces. Reinstalled Windows. ...and issue was gone.

If u r not a Linux expert, u better re-partition ur HDD and reinstall Windows. If u try backing up files now, issue never resolve... I fear.

Note: These kinds of messages with PAC and Firewall seem harmless; but ur PC is already affected.