We use Microsoft SharedView a lot at Catalyst.  Is a quick, free tool which allows us to do desktop sharing.  Yesterday one of my co-workers sent me an invitation to join a session.  I followed the link in the email which allowed me to download and install SharedView. When I attempted to install, I was presented with this message:

This forced me to resort back to my Vista partition which didn’t make me happy.  I’ve been extremely happy living in my Windows 7 world and I didn’t want to leave just to use SharedView.  I took a quick minute this evening to dig deeper into the issue.  I downloaded a copy of Microsoft Ocra, which allows you to edit the MSI database.  When I checked out the installation conditions the problem was clear. The conditional statement below was used several times.  It seems that SharedView is forward compatible as long as you are running the 32 bit version of Windows XP or greater, but only valid if you are running Vista x64.

NOT(((NOT VersionNT64) AND VersionNT>=501) OR (VersionNT64 AND VersionNT = 600))

I modified the conditions to allow for forward compatibility saved and tried to re-install again.  Success!  I am attaching a copy of the modified MSI, but with the following disclaimer.

DISCLAIMER:  I am attaching this as an example of how to modify an MSI to allow for forward compatibility not for you to install it.  If you choose to install it anyway, I am not responsible for what happens to your system.  By downloading the following attachment you agree to this disclaimer.

Download:

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Today at CES Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer (yes, the chair thrower) announced that they will be making the Windows 7 Beta available for download on January 9th.  The Windows team said to watch their RSS feed for the release notice and download instructions.  Being the optimistic type I decided to check out the MSDN subscription site and there it was Windows 7 Beta (builds x86 and x64).  It looks like the download is going to take roughly 1 hour.  Looks like it is going to be a long installation night.  With some luck, I will be giving my ASP.NET Dynamic Data Presentation at IndyNDA on a newly build Windows 7 build.

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