Virtual Store

[Don D]

The Virtual Store is a Cluster F*!!

Whoever dreamed this up needs to have their union card taken away from them.
S/he is an idiot!

As soon as I salvage the mess made in the virtual store I will format my
computer and NEVER use Vista again.

I AM Pi*ed.

 

[Nonny]

As soon as I salvage the mess made in the virtual store I will format my
computer and NEVER use Vista again.

Promise? And you won't be back in the Vista groups any more to rant?

COOL!

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

The Virtual Store is a Cluster F*!!

Whoever dreamed this up needs to have their union card taken away from
them. S/he is an idiot!

As soon as I salvage the mess made in the virtual store I will format my
computer and NEVER use Vista again.

I AM Pi*ed.

I'll bite. What is a "virtual store"?

 

[Don D]

I'll bite. What is a "virtual store"?

Vista and the stupid "virtualstore" is a DISASTER.

I happily had my Customer Data in c:\program files\yada\yada for months.
Then, by chance, one day happened to use the application to look at the
transaction history information. The history started a long time ago and
went up until March then there was a 3+ month gap and the history
information started again.

I poked around to find there was some new and different data in
\virtualstore\yada\yada. More poking around revealed the 3+ months of
missing information was where it belonged.

MS dreamed up and implemented this disaster over too many late nights in a
tap room somewhere. It is a disaster! Keep your stuff AWAY from Vista.

dd

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Vista and the stupid "virtualstore" is a DISASTER.

I happily had my Customer Data in c:\program files\yada\yada for months.
Then, by chance, one day happened to use the application to look at the
transaction history information. The history started a long time ago and
went up until March then there was a 3+ month gap and the history
information started again.

I poked around to find there was some new and different data in
\virtualstore\yada\yada. More poking around revealed the 3+ months of
missing information was where it belonged.

MS dreamed up and implemented this disaster over too many late nights in a
tap room somewhere. It is a disaster! Keep your stuff AWAY from Vista.

dd

Customer data made with what program? Did you verify that it was a Vista
compatible program before relying on it? If is not Vista compatible, did
you at least install it in XP compatibility mode? Did you back up the
customer data?

Chewing on us may be safisfying to you, but we are all volunteers helping
each other in the newsgroup. None of us work for Microsoft.

 

[HeyBub]

I'll bite. What is a "virtual store"?

"The Virtual Store is a feature of User Account Control, the centerpiece of
Vista's enhanced security. Applications that try to write to protected
system locations, including Program Files, Windows, and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
in the registry, are prevented from doing so. Instead, a compatibility
feature kicks in, and these applications write to a location in your home
directory. Registry entries are written to a special area in
HKEY_CURRENT_USER. The application mostly won't know the difference, though
there are limitations and you can get strange results. For example, if an
application deletes a file from the virtual store when a file of the same
name exists in the real location, the delete appears to succeed but the file
still exists. Virtualization also fails (by design) if the application is
run under another user account, or using Run As Administrator. The files
written to the first user's virtual store are invisible to these other
users."

So, evidently, a misbehaving program is attempting to stash user data in the
registry, Vista intercepts same and stores the data elsewhere as a
compatibility measure.

Microsoft has been telling developers for TEN YEARS not to write stuff to
Program Files or Windows folders and to NOT use the registry as a
scratch-pad. Vista now enforces that standard.

Apparently.

 

[Don D]

"The Virtual Store is a feature of User Account Control, the centerpiece
of Vista's enhanced security. Applications that try to write to protected
system locations, including Program Files, Windows, and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
in the registry, are prevented from doing so. Instead, a compatibility
feature kicks in, and these applications write to a location in your home
directory. Registry entries are written to a special area in
HKEY_CURRENT_USER. The application mostly won't know the difference,
though there are limitations and you can get strange results. For example,
if an application deletes a file from the virtual store when a file of the
same name exists in the real location, the delete appears to succeed but
the file still exists. Virtualization also fails (by design) if the
application is run under another user account, or using Run As
Administrator. The files written to the first user's virtual store are
invisible to these other users."

So, evidently, a misbehaving program is attempting to stash user data in
the registry, Vista intercepts same and stores the data elsewhere as a
compatibility measure.

Microsoft has been telling developers for TEN YEARS not to write stuff to
Program Files or Windows folders and to NOT use the registry as a
scratch-pad. Vista now enforces that standard.

Apparently.

That's laudable. However, there's no warning to the user that the OS is
destroying the data. That is inexcusable. That stupid "UAC warning" is
also outrageous. After someone sees that a bunch of times they
thoughtlessly click ok without any concern. What an abortion!

dd

 

[Kerry Brown]

I happily had my Customer Data in c:\program files\yada\yada for months.

There's the problem. You're storing user data in a system area. That's never
a good idea. The only reason it worked in XP is because you, like most
people ran XP as an administrator. If the application developer has designed
the app properly this never would have happened.

I feel your pain. I think that some of your anger is misdirected. The
application developer bears some of the responsibility for your pain. It's
never been a good idea to store data in Program Files.