On Fri, 10 Aug 2018 14:58:48 -0700, David E. Ross wrote:

I have Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64. I can verify that I at least have
some variety of Windows 7 by various installed applications. These
include:
* Belarc Advisor from http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html.
* ProduKey from http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/product_cd_key_viewer.html
* Windows Update (showing an update that I have not yet installed)
* Computer (both the Properties when I right-click on the icon and the
display when I select [Help About Windows] in the open window)

However, I cannot install updates to two applications whose Web pages
indicate they are compatible with Windows 7. Both throw up error popups
claiming my Windows version is not compatible. These a
* Thunderbird 60.0 (update from 52.9.1)
* Skype 8.27.0.85 (update from 7.36.0.150)
Note: I attempted to install these from complete downloaded installer
files. I disabled my Internet connection and my anti-virus application
AFTER downloading and scanning the files.

What is going on here? Is there something I can do to make these
recognize Windows 7 on my PC? Or is the problem with the installer files?


My guess is that there may be some "compatibility mode" settings in the
registry, which tell Windows to run the installer program in compatibility
mode for an older version of Windows.

"Thunderbird Setup 60.0.exe" is just a 7zip self-extractor. The actual
installation is done by the program "setup.exe" inside the self-extractor.

When you run "Thunderbird Setup 60.0.exe", it is obvious when it is the
self-extractor running and when it is "setup.exe" running. You can see
which one is throwing the error popup. (I can't, because I am not seeing
that error popup.)


--
Kind regards
Ralph