Welcome to MSDN Blogs Sign in | Join | Help

Browse by Tags

All Tags » Windows Server » Windows XP   (RSS)

Why Flash memory is good for your computer

Simply put, flash memory will enable a revolution in improving computer performance in daily utilization scenarios. Your computer will boot up faster. It will launch applications significantly faster. (Hey, it will shutdown faster as well.) The problem Read More...
Posted Wednesday, July 05, 2006 2:17 AM by AdiOltean | 6 Comments

Passwords: Bad "best practices"

So, you think that your password is secure? Let's see: does it contain a mixture of uppercase/lowercase letters, punctuation marks and digits? Yes? Well, even in this case, your password might be still completely insecure. Read ahead why... To understand Read More...
Posted Monday, April 24, 2006 11:17 PM by AdiOltean | 11 Comments

How to run Defrag on a scheduled basis

On Windows XP, it's simple. Just run this command and you are done: schtasks /create /TN defrag /RU "NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM" /SC weekly /TR "defrag %systemdrive%" Read More...
Posted Friday, April 07, 2006 12:18 AM by AdiOltean | 5 Comments

Using NTBackup to achieve P2V

I always thought about writing a post about physical-to-virtual migration strategies in combination with VSS, but I never got to it. So it's not surprising that others started to uncover this trail :-) One particular technique in this area is described Read More...
Posted Friday, January 20, 2006 1:48 AM by AdiOltean | 4 Comments

Windows Backup - highlighted as one of the main Vista features!

Whoohoo! Windows backup is there. Proeminently: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/features/default.aspx#wvC2 They also mention the Shadow Copy (aka Previous Versions). This is a standard feature now in Windows Server 2003, which is invaluable for Read More...
Posted Thursday, January 05, 2006 12:20 PM by AdiOltean | 2 Comments

How to stay safe with the new Windows vulnerability

As previously published here , this is a quick-and-dirty method to get yourself in a relatively safe position: 1) Click Start, click Run, type "regsvr32 -u %windir%\system32\shimgvw.dll" (without the quotation marks), and then click OK. 2) Restart the Read More...
Posted Tuesday, January 03, 2006 7:35 AM by AdiOltean | 5 Comments

How to do atomic writes in a file

Let's assume that you want is to write some simple code that writes to a text file. A few assumptions: 1) You need avoid corruptions of any kind. 2) Either all of your writes have to make it to the disk, or none of them. 3) The file is updated serially Read More...
Posted Wednesday, December 28, 2005 2:51 PM by AdiOltean | 3 Comments

Singularity - a new research OS from Microsoft

Here it is: http://research.microsoft.com/os/singularity/ There are several interesting ideas in this new operating system. It's not just an "OS written in managed code". There are a new set of techniques in modern software development: contracts, verifiability Read More...
Posted Sunday, November 06, 2005 9:40 AM by AdiOltean | 3 Comments

DOSDEV.EXE - a misterious tool

Once in a while, you might encounter this tool in some Microsoft-provided SDKs, or Resource Kits, for example in the Windows Resource Kit, the Exchange Report Toolkit, and others. But this tool never came with any relevant documentation. It just displays Read More...
Posted Tuesday, October 04, 2005 6:51 PM by AdiOltean | 4 Comments

Are there any COM programmers out there?

Even with all this new wave of .NET stuff, I still find myself in the XXI century doing good old COM programming - and I enjoy doing it... So is anyone still interested in blog posts around COM programming? (especially around COM servers, COM security, Read More...
Posted Friday, September 30, 2005 11:56 AM by AdiOltean | 10 Comments

CMD programming - elements of style

Everyone knows how to write CMD scripts. And this is the reason why we have so many messy CMD scripts around. Unfortunately, I haven't seen anywhere some guidelines on how to write clear, maintenable batch files. So here is my take: 1) Think about discovery Read More...
Posted Thursday, September 22, 2005 11:51 PM by AdiOltean | 0 Comments

VSS writers and inconsistent shadow copies

A few days ago, a customer told me that he encountered a weird error while using NTBackup to backup the system. The error text looked like this in backup log: Media name: "System State.bkf created 8/29/2005 at 5:38 PM" Volume shadow copy creation: Attempt Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 31, 2005 9:19 PM by AdiOltean | 0 Comments

Managed Speech APIs and other cool utilities...

New speech-related utilities here . A new addition is BuildAppLex: BuildAppLex Speech Utility for Microsoft Speech Technologies BuildAppLex.exe is a command-line tool that allows you to create an Application Lexicon, using the Speech API. It takes one Read More...
Posted Wednesday, July 13, 2005 3:33 PM by AdiOltean | 0 Comments

When CoCreateInstance returns 0x80080005 (CO_E_SERVER_EXEC_FAILURE)

A sneaky error The following post summarizes my personal experience with a subtle COM error. CO_E_SERVER_EXEC_FAILURE (0x80080005) is an error which can be randomly returned by CoCreateInstance() if you are using an out-of-process COM server. As far as Read More...
Posted Friday, June 24, 2005 7:29 PM by AdiOltean | 3 Comments

Windows - what are the memory limits?

I keep forgetting this all the time, so I cut & paste the necessary data in my blog so I will not where to look for it next time :-) Note that the memory limits have changed between Windows Server 2003 RTM and SP1, especially for 64-bit support. The Read More...
Posted Thursday, May 26, 2005 6:02 PM by AdiOltean | 2 Comments
More Posts Next page »
 
Page view tracker