Running Borland StarTeam 2006 on Windows Vista

First of all I should point out that this configuration is not supported officially by Borland and therefore if something goes wrong with your data when you try to use this configuration, you are on your own. There you go, that's the formalities out of the way, now let's have a look at how we can actually get the application running:

NOTE: Additionally I should add that I started off using Windows Vista Business Edition, but later (as of 26th March 2007) rebuilt my test machine with Vista Enterprise Edition

First off, the install anywhere installer for StarTeam 2006 won't work on Windows Vista, so it is therefore necessary to run the install application in Windows XP compatibility mode, I found that when I ran the installer in this mode (right click the installer executable, then select the compatibility tab, and select “Run this program in compatibility mode for Windows XP (Service Pack 2)“), this will allow the program to install on Vista.

After the installation is complete, you may or may not have chosen to install the sample configuration, presuming that you have you will find that you are not able to start or initiate the configuration. You are also not able to create any new StarTeam configurations from the console, this is because of the more comprehensive security model used by Windows Vista as oppose to XP.

To get around this, you run the installed server application as the administrator (right click on the icon and choose 'run as Administrator') Once you have done this, you should have enough permissions to create the registry keys, etc that are need to start and create StarTeam configurations

Edit 26th March 2007:

If you like to run your StarTeam Server as a windows service you may experience additional problems when trying to set StarTeam your server to run as such. Part of the problem here is caused by the 'service hardening' that is part of the new security in Vista, by default the StarTeam service seems to be set to “allow service to interact with desktop“ which is a setting that is no longer available in Vista. I managed to get the StarTeam Server Service to run by simply unchecking this box. Please note though, that the StarTeam server console will probably not function as you expect it to with this option unchecked. I haven't yet managed to find a good solution to how you would use the console with this option unchecked.

Edit 24th Aug 2007:

StarTeam client version 2006R2 now offers Windows Vista support.