Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.6 upload error

When installing Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) it's possible to start inventory and application compatibility. ACT helps identifying which applications are compatible with Windows 7 (and Vista) operating systems. ACT is actually a collection of multiple tools. More about that HERE

In ACT it's possible to create an Inventory package, which can be deployed by Group Policy. That way an ACT Data Collector Service will be installed, which will running as long as configured in the Inventory package. The ACT service will collect application compatibility data and will send the information back to the ACT database.

But what to do when no data is returned? Just have a look at Event Viewer then. In my case there where a lot of ACT-LPS and ACTUpload errors. The ACT-LPS warning can be skipped, because it's not the problem here. The real problem is the ACTUpload error. This because I'm trying to upload inventory logs from Windows 7 SP1 devices.

The ACT v5.6 log processing server does not process logs gathered from Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 machines with SP1 installed. These logs are moved to the Failed folder on the log share and the data is not entered into the database. This is due to the fact that the ACT 5.6 database does not have an entry describing Windows 7 SP1 or Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 and therefore does not recognize the operating system of the computer that created the log.

To resolve this problem, an entry describing Windows 7 SP1 or Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 must be added to the ACT database's Dbo.OS table. This is described on Microsoft Support: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2533953

It's possible also to change the Windows version in the XML files, which can be found in the [Log share]\Failed folder. A quick look in my file showed this in the 5th line of the XML: <OsInfo Id=”6.1.1” ...>
I manually changed that number to 6.1.0 and the file got imported correctly. Version 6.1.0 is for Windows 7, 6.1.1 is for Windows 7 SP1, but that’s not yet in the ACT Database. When moving files again from the [Log share]\Failed to the parent folder (one step higher) they will be in processed and placed in the [Log share]\Processed folder.

When application compatibility data is collected, check Send and Receive Data, and choose which data can be synced to Microsoft. In return you get compatibility information on all applications that other people have tested before.

Now you have a list of all applications with Windows 7 compatibility information! Just use it for free.

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