Data redirection evolves in Windows 7

August 4th, 2009 | Tags: , , ,

I know there is a lot of buzz about Windows 7 at the moment, which is great because this was not so much the case when Vista was launched. However one of things that Vista did introduce was user access management (UAC) and as with a number of Vista “enhancements” it was criticized heavily. Whilst this is still present in Windows 7 it has been toned down and instead of on or off there are several sensitivity settings.

UAC is of course not just about prompting you when heightened levels of access are required, it also works around the issue by redirecting the changes to lower risk folders or registry trees – this is referred to by Microsoft as “data redirection” or “UAC virtualisation”.  I remember my first deep-dive experience of this when I ran an old Usenet client that by default located its download folder in program files, when I tried to locate downloaded files they were nowhere to be found? As it turned out the application was not developed to support UAC (yet) and Vista “redirected” the heightened access to the Vista virtual store (an area used for pre-UAC compatible applications).

The Windows Blog team are encouraging developers to take UAC plunge (so to speak) and have in lay terms explained the process of assessing your applications.

I’d encourage system administrators and developers to go see!

  1. September 2nd, 2009 at 10:28
    Reply | Quote | #1

    Excellent site, keep up the good work