Windows XP single sign-on applications will fail on
Windows 7, businesses were warned today.
ChangeBase, a company
specialising in application compatibility testing, said a wide
range of applications would not work under Windows 7.
They include
biometric devices,
smart card authentication and virtual private network for
remote user authentication.
Users attempting to migrate from Windows XP to Windows 7 will
need to update their single sign-on applications, said Greg
Lambert, technology director.
The problem follows a change in the Microsoft authentication
component, orginally introduced in
Windows Vista.
Windows Vista has gained little traction in business, making
the problem a non-issue for most organisations until now.
But Microsoft plans to use the technlogy to provide user
authentication on future Windows operating systems, including
Windows 7 and Windows 2008 Release 2.
Microsoft has confirmed the problem on its Microsoft Developer
Network blog. It explains that Microsoft has replaced
The
Graphical Identification and Authentication (GINA) component
from Windows XP with two components, LogonUI and WinLogon.
"The user will not be able to successfully install custom logon
applications," Microsoft says. "The user will not be able to log on
using custom logon applications using the Windows XP
technology."
The popular iPass
virtual network product is one of the technologies affected.
Matt Cooke, senior product marketing manager at iPass, says,
"GINA is one of the configurations people can use [on iPass] for
single sign-on. There are a few tweaks we have to make with Windows
7 to address incompatibility. We will have a beta release of iPass
for Windows 7 from October."
But as Matt Cooke notes, some of the other changes Microsoft has
made might make it easier for his company in the future. "The
Windows 7 Direct Access VPN feature supports the NDIS device driver
standard for network cards, which will make it easier for us to
support mobile broadband."
Microsoft has made changes to its authentication component to
simplify how applications run single sign-on. In the long run,
applications should run better, but in the short term, businesses
could face difficulties porting their existing authentication
applications to Windows 7.
| Windows 7 support for Windows XP and Vista
applications |
|---|
| Microsoft faced resistance from users to migrate from Windows
XP, when it launched Vista two years ago. |
| "The reason why Vista did not take off was because far too
many applications did not run. With Windows 7, Microsoft has
listened. Applications that run on Vista should run on Windows 7.
Existing Windows XP applications have not been proven to work very
well on Windows 7, but users can run a virtual engine," says Clive
Longbottom, service director at Quocirca. |
| This virtual engine, called
XP Compatibility Mode, is Microsoft's attempt to address the
incompatibility issues with Windows XP. It enables XP applications
to run on Windows 7 in a virtual machine. |
| Longbottom expects that a PC running XP Compatibility Mode
will take a performance hit, as it needs to run two operating
systems, Windows 7 and Windows XP. |
| There is likely to be an IT management overhead maintaining
and patching the two operating systems on the same PC. He urges
users to try to get applications running natively on Windows 7,
rather than solely relying on XP Compatibility
Mode. |