Orion Pobursky Wrote:Actually that's the way Microsoft has been recommend since I think Win 98. They just started enforcing it better from Vista on.
I'm not completely sure what "that's" is referring to in your sentence. What I was saying was that if a program isn't explicitely written to conform with the Win7 rules, it will probably not work as expected if installed in \Program Files, as (both Vista and) Win7 does its funky virtualization for such programs, fooling the program that it has the right to write data in \Program Files, while silently redirecting the files to a hidden folder deep down in the <user> hierarchy. Any attempt to backup things by copying the folder in the \Program Files hierarchy (or use the program logged in as another user) will fail miserably, as the files are not physically there (even though it may look like that when the program is run). Library updates will also be a difficult process, as you may install new files but are not allowed to replace existing ones (unless you run an installation program, or unpack a .zip file by running unzip with elevated privileges).
Any program that doesn't have the right manifest in its resources will be treated as an 'old' program by Windows if running from \Program Files, and should preferrably be installed outside of that hierarchy. If it has the manifest, but "doesn't live up to its promises" it will also fail.