Shortcut Compatibility Settings

[Guest]

Environment - XP SP1 workstations logging into a Win2000 domain.

I'm having a problem with the compatibility settings associated with
shortcuts.
It seems that when shortcuts reside in the AllUsers profile, and a new user
logs
into a workstation for the first time, the desktop shortcuts displayed for
that user do not have the proper Compatibility settings. I've got some
programs that will not
run unless the Compatibility settings are correct...

I've tried remote profiles - but that's a joke - it takes 5 minutes or more
for
a user to log in - so I'm looking for a solution using local profiles - or a
way to make the remote profiles work quickly.

Thanks!
JeffB

 

[Guest]

It was suggested to me elsewhere that this problem had something to do with
the NTFS file system permissions - this is not the case. I've duplicated the
Compatibiliyt settings not being set properly for shortcuts in the AllUsers
profile in WinXP using a FAT32 file system.

I would really appreciate a reply from someone knowledgeable at least
acknowledging that there's a problem here and offering any information that
could be useful to resolve this. This seemingly small problem may prohibit
use from using XP on our lab workstations. Is this likely to be an issue with
Win2000 also? Where is the Compatibility information for a shortcut stored
anyway - it seems not to be in the 1.4 KB shortcut file...

JeffB

 

[Michael Niehaus [MS]]

This is a known issue. The application compatibility settings are not
stored in the shortcut. Instead, they are stored in a
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers.
Because this is a user registry key, the settings are specific to the user
that sets them. You could copy the registry entries for the apps you are
interested in to the default profile (so that they are inherited by all new
users) or you could add the keys via a logon script to each user. But the
better alternative would be to use Application Compatibility Toolkit 3.0,
downloadable from Microsoft.com. This would allow you to create a database
of application compatibility settings (an SDB file) which could then be
installed on any machine (using SDBINST.EXE). By doing this, you create
machine settings instead of user settings. This will also give you much
more granularity than the Explorer properites page provides.

-Michael Niehaus
Senior Consultant
MCS US Centers of Excellence - Deployment AOS
(e-mail address removed)
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.