Application installer aborts due to Windows version WinXP; fix possible?

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SamPoo
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Application installer aborts due to Windows version WinXP; fix possible?

Post by SamPoo »

Hello good people,
I'll start with apologizing up front in case this question has already been answered. I would have expected it to be, but searching didn't turn up anything really useful (although I just may no be thinking of the right terms...).

Here goes: I'm trying to install an application in an emulated ROS 0.4.15-dev. At some point, the installer of that app informs me that Microsoft has terminated support for Windows XP, and therefore, to prevent bugs and problems and havoc, they refuse to install and run on this machine at all. Installation aborted.

I understand that ROS is indeed targeting WinXP compatibility. However, when running into these kind of issues under WINE, there's a configuration option to set the version of Windows exposed to applications, and this usually works quite well.
Is there a similar switch in ReactOS? Perhaps through regedit (didn't find it)?

Thanks!

Edit: Forgot to mention, I did try to catch the extracted setup executable from temp and run it with compatibility mode (Win7), but this only produced complaints about memory references that could not be read.
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dizt3mp3r
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Re: Application installer aborts due to Windows version WinXP; fix possible?

Post by dizt3mp3r »

Well, not at the moment. I imagine your utility uses NT6 APIs that have not been implemented in ReactOS as it is not yet NT6 based. I can see no other reason why such a message would pop up and your program not run. The devs would not care whether their program ran on XP or not, only whether it would fail. So, it uses NT6 APIs almost certainly.

Even if such a switch was implemented, it would fix nothing as if the required NT6 API does not exist, the program would simply fall over in a heap.

To ensure compatibility in all my programs, I have used only NT5 APIs to provide backward compatibility. If I have to use an NT6 API then I will always provide a compatibility mode for XP which reduces functionality somewhat but that's how it is. Your developer did not want to waste the time providing backward compatibility.
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SamPoo
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Re: Application installer aborts due to Windows version WinXP; fix possible?

Post by SamPoo »

Thanks for replying!
The installer message sounded to me like some corporate cya announcement. It pretty expressly stated that installation would now stop due to the detected OS being officially unsupported.
Anyway, I've learned that there is no such switch. Fair enough. :)
Thanks again!
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dizt3mp3r
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Re: Application installer aborts due to Windows version WinXP; fix possible?

Post by dizt3mp3r »

When ReactOS reaches or nears 1.0 release, or possibly even during Alpha, those NT6 APIs will start to be introduced as developers feel like coding them. If a program uses one of those and it has been implemented, then that program will have a better chance of starting to work. If you can find out which APIs your program uses then you can think about what work is required to implement that/those APIs. Then it is simply down to you to see how you could help provide those APIs yourself, that is, if running your program on ReactOS is that important for you.

I suggest you read the ReactOS WIK FAQ https://reactos.org/wiki/ReactOS_FAQ and see what it has to say regarding helping the ReactOS team.
Skillset: VMS,DOS,Windows Sysadmin from 1985, fault-tolerance, VaxCluster, Alpha,Sparc. DCL,QB,VBDOS- VB6,.NET, PHP,NODE.JS, Graphic Design, Project Manager, CMS, Quad Electronics. classic cars & m'bikes. Artist in water & oils. Historian.
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dizt3mp3r
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Re: Application installer aborts due to Windows version WinXP; fix possible?

Post by dizt3mp3r »

I suppose it could be that the developers of that particular tool were just a little dum and didn't want the hassle of supporting XP, however, it is a strange thing to do.

A lot of these restrictions have been found to be arbitrary and artificial and are often overcome by a little testing and analysis.There is something called ReactOS compatibility mode which allows you to try and test slightly different configurations. I haven't tried it for a while and it may work for you or not but worth a try, it cannot fully simulate NT6 but it can try to fool the program into thinking it is on a later version of Windows.
Skillset: VMS,DOS,Windows Sysadmin from 1985, fault-tolerance, VaxCluster, Alpha,Sparc. DCL,QB,VBDOS- VB6,.NET, PHP,NODE.JS, Graphic Design, Project Manager, CMS, Quad Electronics. classic cars & m'bikes. Artist in water & oils. Historian.
SamPoo
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Re: Application installer aborts due to Windows version WinXP; fix possible?

Post by SamPoo »

dizt3mp3r wrote:didn't want the hassle of supporting XP, however, it is a strange thing to do.
I tend to agree, but I also feel some sympathy for those developers. XP is yet another suite to test against, and one that has even been abandoned by its manufacturer. Still, spitting out a warning/disclaimer and wishing me good luck would have been a better solution imho.
dizt3mp3r wrote:There is something called ReactOS compatibility mode which allows you to try and test slightly different configurations.
If you're referring to the compatibility mode available in the properties panel when right clicking the app's icon, I already tried that, without success (see first post). Guess that means the app is really technically incompatible with XP.
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dizt3mp3r
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Re: Application installer aborts due to Windows version WinXP; fix possible?

Post by dizt3mp3r »

Have no sympathy. They made a decision and it was a short-sighted one. Unless what you are coding really needs an NT6 API then there is often an alternative. What makes Vista + such good oses are those underpinnings in the form of all those NT5 APIs. In my own software I have already discounted the use of several useful NT6 functions that I could have used. You have to find an alternative or you code it yourself but in truth I always code with ReactOS in mind.

There are often alternatives to the s/w you are running, there perhaps is an older version out there somewhere.
Skillset: VMS,DOS,Windows Sysadmin from 1985, fault-tolerance, VaxCluster, Alpha,Sparc. DCL,QB,VBDOS- VB6,.NET, PHP,NODE.JS, Graphic Design, Project Manager, CMS, Quad Electronics. classic cars & m'bikes. Artist in water & oils. Historian.
learn_more
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Re: Application installer aborts due to Windows version WinXP; fix possible?

Post by learn_more »

Good thing you included the app you wanted to try,
so people could look into getting it working.

(Or at least include a debug log from the crash?)
SamPoo
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Re: Application installer aborts due to Windows version WinXP; fix possible?

Post by SamPoo »

Hey learn_more, thanks for taking the time to respond to my question. Acridity is always the way to go for any thriving OS community.
I did not ask for development efforts to getting any particular app to run, as it will likely be a waste of time, considering the targets of ROS. It's tax software, and so will change each year in content and frameworks. WINE is doing a fine job so far at running it.
My question was aiming for a more general viability of ROS as an alternative to WINE or ancient Windows VMs, for this or other newer Windows software. As I have learned, that is unlikely, for the reasons stated above. Which, to preclude misinterpretation, I understand and accept as a consequence of aiming for WinXP compatibility.
And there was no crash.
Last edited by SamPoo on Mon Apr 19, 2021 10:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
learn_more
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Re: Application installer aborts due to Windows version WinXP; fix possible?

Post by learn_more »

SamPoo wrote: Mon Apr 19, 2021 10:00 pm Hey learn_more, thanks for taking the time to respond to my question. Acridity is always the way to go for any thriving OS community.
I did not ask for development efforts to getting any particular app to run, as it will likely be a waste of time, considering the targets of ROS. It's tax software, and so will change each year in content and frameworks. WINE is doing a fine job so far at running it.
My question was aiming for a more general viability of ROS as an alternative to WINE or ancient Windows VMs, for this or other newer Windows software. As I have learned, that is unlikely, for the reasons stated above. Which, to preclude misinterpretation, I understand and accept as a consequence of aiming for WinXP compatibility.
And there was no crash.
Your first post suggests a crash:
Edit: Forgot to mention, I did try to catch the extracted setup executable from temp and run it with compatibility mode (Win7), but this only produced complaints about memory references that could not be read.
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dizt3mp3r
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Re: Application installer aborts due to Windows version WinXP; fix possible?

Post by dizt3mp3r »

Acridity?
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SamPoo
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Re: Application installer aborts due to Windows version WinXP; fix possible?

Post by SamPoo »

dizt3mp3r wrote:Acridity?
I was referring to the irony. Been seeing a wee bit too much of it lately, not ever making anything better under any context, and imo, people living in the world in its current state are not in need of more of it. That said, I'm probably oversensitive in this respect at the moment...
learn_more wrote:Your first post suggests a crash:
That is, of course, true, I stand corrected. However, it was only after flicking a switch of unknown function (to me) that the error occurred, and I didn't want to mix this up with the actual question (I also did not save any logs). When running the installer under ROS 'as is', it exits cleanly and on purpose.

For me, the original question has been answered, and unless the behavior of this particular tax app is of high interest to someone here for ROS development, I'm happy to leave it at that.
Thanks again for your time! :)
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