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Domino Configuration Tuner and Vista's UAC Don't Mix

Tags : Lotus Notes DCT Vista UAC
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Normally the first thing I do with a Windows Vista machine is turn off the User Account Control ( UAC ) that pops up that wonderful 'Windows Needs Your Permission' message when ever you try to do anything useful with your computer like install software, move a file or even sneeze in the vicinity of the machine but I do have UAC turned on in one of my VM's and this was the VM I had decided to test the new Domino Configuration Tuner, that was part of the Notes/Domino 8.5 release, in.

When you go to the DCT interface for the first time it needs to deploy a couple of extra files to your notes installation, some of them are placed in the data directory and some of them are placed in the notes executable directory. On XP or a Vista machine with UAC turned off this is no problem, the files are deployed and you are prompted to restart your Notes client but with UAC turned on it runs into a bit of an issue, the files to be deployed to the Notes executable directory don't get deployed and because it's the notes client trying to put the file onto the hard drive the usual UAC prompt does not pop up. Even if the file deployment fails you will still be asked to restart your notes client and you wont know there is anything wrong till you start DCT again and your asked to restart the notes client yet again.

So how do you get around the deployment problem without turning off UAC? Well the good news is that it is very simple but will involve you copying the files in manually so that you can see the UAC prompt and accept it. The first thing you need to do is get the file that needs to be deployed, to do this open the DCT.NSF database up in the Domino Designer and look in the Resources/Applets section. You should see a couple of applets listed there.  The one we are interested in is the one called DCT . Highlight it and then select the 'Export' option from the action bar and save it to your Windows desktop. Done that, ok, now exit your Notes client.

Looking at your windows desktop, or wherever you saved the applet you probably won't see any file called DCT, instead you'll find a folder called JVM and inside that you'll find a folder called LIB and inside that there is yet another folder called EXT and finally inside that you'll find DCT.JAR. Now all you have to do is move that file to the equivalent directory in your Notes executable folder and you'll see the wonderful, always welcome, super, fantastic Windows Vista UAC prompt second guessing your decision to put the file exactly where it's needed.

Now you can start your Notes admin client again, load up the Domino Configuration Tuner, scan a few servers and see a list of performance improvement suggestions for your servers. DCT is a great tool and I'll heartily recommend to all Notes Admins to run it on their servers and take the time to implement the suggestions.

Vista UAC - You are coming to a sad realization, Cancel or Allow?

Comments

Gravatar Image1 - DCT doesn't seem to work on Ubuntu Linux client either. :(

Haven't had time to dig into it.

Gravatar Image2 - this resolved the same issue for me. Thanks for posting this.Emoticon