Bill in Co wrote:


So I was "a bit" confused when I read all of this, and then also read that
MS is pushing these "Universal Windows Platform" Apps that will run on all
compatible MS devices (personal computers, tablets, smartphones, Xbox, etc)
on the Wiki site. Wow, what a revolutionary concept (to me) So I guess the
UWP Apps are basically the same thing as the Metro Style Apps you mentioned
above. And these apps use the "APPX" file format. Interesting, albeit a bit
confusing it seems if you want to look into it..

Well, let me see if I understand this much, at least.

So does that mean that there are two types of "programs" running on a
Windows 10 computer? One class of programs that uses the old exe style of
code (used perhaps solely for the OS related stuff), and another class of
programs (the apps you can buy) that use this universal app format thing?
(I think Steve Hayes might have been hinting at this too, but I'm not sure).
It's still a bit confusing.

I think we can safely say "there are at least two program formats".

Traditional executables still run.

There is at least one other type.

The first part of such analysis requires tools that can
positively identify each file type. And the funny looking
EXEs that don't execute, are the first mystery.

One way to start the analysis, would be to use ProcMon
and see what files get "touched" when an "App" starts.
You can see file reads and writes with ProcMon.

Paul