Musings of an Application Packager

When you apply a compatibility mode manually (either by doing it through the Program Compatbility Assistant or through File Properties, the result is that the settings get saved in the registry located at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers. To apply the fix for all users, click on "Change settings for all users", and it will relaunch the same properties screen, and the compatibility setting will then be saved to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers You can also apply compatibility modes this via a shim, but if you were to author your package and include this key in your package, this would bypass would the need for a shim (if it were the only compatibility fix that needs to be applied). It's worth noting that this compatibility mode is essentially the same as what a the WinXPSP3VersionLie shim would do.