What is the User Account Control Compatibility Evaluator?
Applies To: Windows 7, Windows Vista
The User Account Control Compatibility Evaluator (UACCE) enables you to identify potential compatibility issues due to permission restrictions enforced by User Account Control (UAC), formerly known as Limited User Accounts (LUA).
UAC restrictions include:
Identifying applications and installation packages that prompt the Standard User (SU) for credentials
Identifying potential failures experienced by applications that do not comply with the UAC
Providing guidance to work around or fix the compatibility issues
UACCE works with the Application Compatibility Toolkit by:
Running previous versions of your operating system on your existing production computers
Running the Windows® Vista or Windows 7 operating system on your test computers
Providing compatibility reports, workarounds, and solutions based on your running Windows Vista or Windows 7, by using the Protected Administrator (PA) or SU account with UAC enabled
Important
UACCE is optimized to run silently in the background of your production environment. It is not a testing tool.
Common Scenarios
The following sections describe common UACCE scenarios.
Identifying User Account Control Issues
UACCE enables you to identify potential UAC issues at installation or run time. After deploying UACCE to your client computers, the compatibility evaluator enables UAC logging, according to your specifications and settings. When the logging completes, UACCE reviews the events and issues, creating a log file for upload to the ACT Log Processing Service. It also creates reports for review in the Application Compatibility Manager. UACCE reports issues based on the account types described in the following table.
| Account type | Issue reporting |
|---|---|
Built-in Administrator (BA) |
UACCE does not report issues against installations to the BA account. |
Protected Administrator (PA) |
UACCE reports the following issues against installations to the PA account:
|
Standard Users (SU) |
UACCE reports the following issues against installations to the SU account:
|
Reporting User Account Control Issues
UACCE enables you to view reports about your potential UAC issues from the Application Compatibility Manager. The reports display the total number of issues and potential workarounds or solutions to fix your UAC issues.
Technologies Related to the User Account Control Compatibility Evaluator
The following sections describe the technologies related to the UACCE.
Application Compatibility Manager
The Application Compatibility Manager works with the UACCE to:
Configure the compatibility evaluator, enabling you to select when UACCE runs, how long it runs, where to log issues, and so on.
Provide reports about your client computers, including the installed applications and potential issues due to applications running under PA or SU accounts.
User Account Control Compatibility Evaluator Dependencies
The following sections describe the UACCE dependencies.
Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit Data Collector
The Application Compatibility Toolkit Data Collector (ACT-DC) packages, installs, and deploys UACCE to your organization's client computers for assessing and fixing compatibility issues with a new operating system. After installation, the ACT-DC schedules the compatibility evaluator to run, collecting information (such as evidence or indicators, applications, and system properties), which is sent to your ACT database. By reviewing the evidence, UACCE determines potential compatibility issues due to an application running under a PA or SU account on Windows Vista.
Inventory Collector
The Inventory Collector examines each of your organization's computers, identifying the installed applications and system information, returning the results to be displayed on the Analyze screen of the Application Compatibility Manager. After determining your application inventory, UACCE reviews the evidence, searching for UAC issues.
Bucketizer
The Bucketizer (bucketizer.exe) is a post-processor module that processes the raw XML evidence collected by the UACCE, sending the data to a centralized location. Consolidation of the data reduces the frequency of data transmissions and potentially reduces repetitive data transfers.
See Also
Concepts
User Account Control Compatibility Evaluator (UACCE) Technical Reference
Phase 1: Collecting Your Compatibility Data
Phase 2: Analyzing Your Compatibility Data