VirtualAcorn Technical support:
Running VirtualAcorn Products on Windows 7

Before using any version of VirtualRPC on Windows 7 please read the whole of this article.

Windows User Account Control (UAC)

User Account Control (UAC) was introduced in Windows Vista. Under Vista UAC could only be turned on or off, under Windows 7 this has changed. Before you unlock a copy of VirtualRPC on Windows 7 you will need to change to Windows 7 User Account Control setting to Never Notify.

The User Account Control slider shown in the above example can be found from the Windows Control Panel. Having altered the UAC slider and clicked on the OK button you will be prompted to Restart your Computer. This restart must be performed before trying to unlock your VirtualAcorn installation. Having restarted your computer you can now unlock your VirtualAcorn installation in the normal way.

You must leave UAC at the Never Notify setting and must not alter it again unless you are not going to run any VirtualAcorn products on this machine again.

Running VirtualRPC produces an error

On a small number of machines running Windows 7 double clicking on your VirtualRPC icon to run it can cause an error message from Windows. There can be several possible causes for this, however the most common is related to ntdll.dll. This article is not the space for a technical description of this problem, luckily solving it is very easy:

• Firstly right click on your VirtualRPC Shortcut on the Windows desktop.
• Then click on Properties from the Windows menu which opens.
• The VirtualRPC application Properties window will open.
• Click on the Compatibility tab.
• The following window will open.

• Click the Run this Program in compatibility mode for: button.
• Choose Windows 98 / Windows Me from the list.
• Click on Apply then on OK.

Now run VirtualRPC in the normal way. The product registration window should now open and you will then be able to request an unlock code.

Once you have entered your unlock code and clicked on the VirtualAcorn Unlock button you will need to go through the Licence Agreement and depending on your version of VirtualRPC the Select Model window. At this point VirtualRPC will start to initialise RISC OS. With the Compatibility Mode enabled RISC OS will operated very slowly. Don't worry about this. Wait until RISC OS has entered the desktop and the hourglass vanishes, this may take several minutes. Once the entire RISC OS desktop has appeared simply click on the close icon for the VirtualRPC window using the White Mouse Pointer. Now you need to disable the Compatibility mode:

• Firstly right click on your VirtualRPC Shortcut on the Windows desktop.
• Then click on Properties from the Windows menu which opens.
• The VirtualRPC application Properties window will open.
• Click on the Compatibility tab.
• Untick the Run this Program in compatibility mode for: button.
• Click on Apply then on OK.

Now when you run VirtualRPC you will find that it behaves normally and the problem will not re-appear.