Windows version autodetection

[Damjan Jovanovic]

On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 1:27 AM, Chris Robinson <chris.kcat at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sunday 21 December 2008 02:46:37 pm Scott Ritchie wrote:
>> Right, but none of that would be necessary if the heuristic worked in
>> the first place.  By having a good heuristic we could at least
>> dramatically cut down on the apps needing this logic.
>
> But how do you tell when an app needs the Windows version changed because it
> won't work in the default mode, and it's not just hiding a Wine bug? For
> example, Wine is buggy with some device drivers, which some games will load
> in XP mode. Set the Windows version to 98 (or Vista, or sometimes even 2k),
> and they may not, allowing the game to work. In such a case, you don't want
> to change the Windows version, you want to fix the bug.
>
>
>

The heuristic isn't "app works on this Windows version", it's "app is
designed for this Windows version". If a heuristic tells you a game
needs 98 when it needs XP, the heuristic is broken, even if the game
works better in 98 because it doesn't load a driver.

Also, the existence of driver loading APIs in DLL imports is probably
a good heuristic to tell that an app needs XP.

Damjan