New Vista User

Charlie Wolfe · Post by **Charlie Wolfe** » Thu, Feb 22 2007, 4:56PM

After an agonizing 6 weeks of intermittent problems with my crashing 5-yr-old Windows XP-based system - yea, I'm stubborn - I finally made the leap to a new Core duo system. Unfortunately, one of the options on the system was NOT XP.

So, I am an unwilling Vista user - a full 2 days into the experience. I found out today that eCabs is not supported on Vista, although the tech folks are testing. I have seen some strange things happening with other applications' file structuring (Firefox, for ex) compared to XP. So, I'm not surprised eCabs is holding off blessing Vista until they have some more experience with it.

I got my eCabs loaded today. Nothing major so far. But, I got a number of file-related errors when I tried fill a cabinet with drawer fronts that had drawer boxes associated with it. Bottol line was that I could not do it. I am not a very accomplished user, so, some of the things I see may be operator error.

I assume the tech resources at eCabs are focused on upgrades to build 12/5.1 and beyond and not compatibility testing with Vista. Near term, I am looking at a multi-boot set up with XP & Vista, although I see from the MS site that can be problematic, too.

Anyway, is anyone interested in hearing what problems Vista users like me are having with eCabs (& perhaps to smirk and say, I told you so\"), or would that just be clogging up the bandwidth - particularly with the new release about ready?

Charlie

Todd Miller · Post by **Todd Miller** » Tue, Feb 27 2007, 3:13PM

Charlie,
At the moment our guys have not had much time working with Vista. I am sure that in the upcoming weeks we will have more Q and A on this matter.

Kirt F. Bowman · Post by **Kirt F. Bowman** » Wed, Feb 28 2007, 11:07AM

Charlie I am going to be using Vista also, I did see that you can run a compatability wizard so that you can tell it that you are running XP

more to follow as I get into it

Kirt

Rick Deskins · Post by **Rick Deskins** » Fri, Mar 02 2007, 4:15PM

New info on installing, updating and running eCabinets on Vista.

Do to the way vista disallowed writing to the program files by default, there is a couple of things that need to be done to insure the install, patches and program runs fine.

When installing Version 5.0 from disc, the user needs to cancel the setup when they first insert the disc. Go to windows explorer, right click on setup.exe and click Run as Administrator. (Note if the setup disc contains Run1.exe and Run2.exe, you will need to do this to each of them instead of setup.exe).

Before you run ecabinets for the first time, you need to right click the shortcut icon for ecabinets and select properties. select the compatability tab and check the Always run as Administrator box. Now a shield icon should appear on the eCabinets icon.

When you are installing a new patch/build, you need to do the same thing. Download the patch to your hard drive, right click on the exe file and Run as Administrator.

DanEpps · Post by **DanEpps** » Fri, Mar 02 2007, 5:23PM

Rick

A question of curosity: Why is eCabinets designed so that it requires administrator to run? That is a big no-no in the world of computer security. All applications, especially those that connect to the internet as eCabinets does, should be designed to run as user.

justin mason · Post by **justin mason** » Fri, Mar 02 2007, 5:31PM

I bought my wife a new computor recently, with vista, so ofcourse I had to put ecab on it. It works great, I like vista, as far as i can tell.

Rick Deskins · Post by **Rick Deskins** » Sun, Mar 04 2007, 10:03AM

A question of curosity: Why is eCabinets designed so that it requires administrator to run? That is a big no-no in the world of computer security. All applications, especially those that connect to the internet as eCabinets does, should be designed to run as user.

The Run As Administrator needs to be done in vista because of something called the Vitural Store. eCabinets like most xp programs writes data back to the c:\\program files directory. In Vista, this is not allowed by the standard user, only a program run as administrator. Vista Adminstrator accounts now run most programs as a stardard user. So when you install the patch without administrator, it will put the new patch files in the Vitural Store. When ecabinets reads a mdb file from c:\\program files, vista does not redirect the reads to the Virtual Store, only the writes. So now we have a stituation where vista is writing new data to the virtual store and ecabinets is trying to read all its data out of c:\\program files.

I do not believe you would have this problem if you installed ecabinets on vista to c:\\ecabinets;

In XP, as along as the user installs ecabients with administrator rights to setup the Crypto key, ecabinets should be able to run as stardard user.

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/VistasSho ... ation.aspx

DanEpps · Post by **DanEpps** » Sun, Mar 04 2007, 10:26AM

The whole idea of the virtual store is to isolate the Program Files directory from writes by users, thus providing a layer of security from hackers.

Changing permissions on the directory or giving users admin privileges defeats the purpose of the security feature. Running a program as administrator \"half-way\" defeats the security as well. I say half-way because, while the user does not have to have admin rights, the program is overriding a builtin security feature of the operating system.

I know eCabinets is not \"Vista-ready\", but this issue could be eliminated by using relative rather than hard-coded path names for data files. Doing so would allow files to be stored in the virtual store and would also allow storage of cabinet files on a shared drive (like a server) so they could be accessed by multiple computers.

Believe me, I know that doing this is a far more difficult than saying it, but it is certainly something worth considering for the next version.

Rick Deskins · Post by **Rick Deskins** » Sun, Mar 04 2007, 10:56AM

The Run as Administrator was a fix to get vista users running with minimum problems with the current version of ecabinets. Its not the final solution. At some point, ecabinets will be vista-ready.