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August 2006 - Posts

Thursday, August 31, 2006 8:10 AM

How to detect old versions when deploying the .NET Framework 3.0 (formerly WinFX)

I received an interesting question from a customer this weekend. They are working on a setup package that will include the .NET Framework 3.0 (formerly the WinFX runtime components) as a prerequisite, and they wanted to automatically run the vs_uninst_winfx.exe
Posted by astebner | 1 Comments
Wednesday, August 30, 2006 7:18 PM

International Windows Media Center EPG error reporting sites

A while back, I posted a link to a site that allows you to submit problem reports for Windows Media Center television guide (EPG) data in the United States. I recently found a list of similar sites that exist for some other locales that support EPG service
Posted by astebner | 6 Comments
Wednesday, August 30, 2006 7:37 AM

How to monitor progress and cancel .NET Framework 3.0 setup from a separate process

A white paper was published on the MSDN site today describing a new feature of .NET Framework 3.0 (formerly WinFX) setup - the ability of a 3rd party setup wrapper to register for progress messages and send cancellation requests when running setup in
Posted by astebner | 0 Comments
Tuesday, August 29, 2006 5:54 PM

Registry settings to control visibility of Windows Media Center mouse controls

There are 2 new settings available in Windows Media Center for Windows Vista that can be used to control the visibility of mouse-related controls in the Windows Media Center UI. These settings are primarily designed for touch-screen development scenarios,
Posted by astebner | 7 Comments
Monday, August 28, 2006 3:48 PM

Build 5536.16385 of the Windows Media Center SDK for Windows Vista is now available

We have posted the 5536.16385 build of the Windows Media Center SDK for Windows Vista on the Microsoft Connect site today. I posted this item on the Media Center Sandbox blog with a list of some of the changes that you'll notice between the previous SDK
Posted by astebner | 2 Comments
Sunday, August 27, 2006 8:07 PM

Using multiple MSIs to add a custom strip and tiles to the Windows Media Center Start menu

I have previously posted topics about creating custom strips on the Windows Media Center Start menu in Windows Vista and specifying an exact order for the tiles in a custom strip. I have received additional questions about how to implement a more complicated
Posted by astebner | 1 Comments
Saturday, August 26, 2006 8:49 AM

Updated version of Yougle (formerly YouTubeMce) now available for download

I previously posted a description of a new add-in for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 called YouTubeMce. It is a YouTube video browsing application for Media Center. Since then, an updated version of the application has been released. The name has
Posted by astebner | 0 Comments
Friday, August 25, 2006 9:27 PM

Mailbag: Error codes for Document Explorer and J# redistributable package setups

Question: I am running into a problem while trying to install Document Explorer 2005 as part of my setup package. In some cases, it fails with error code 4121 and rolls back. I cannot find any information about this error code for Document Explorer setup.
Posted by astebner | 0 Comments
Thursday, August 24, 2006 9:30 PM

Mailbag: How to author an MSI that orders tiles in a custom strip in Windows Media Center

Question: I read your previous post about customizing the Windows Media Center Start menu in Windows Vista . I would like to create an MSI that calls RegisterMceApp to register my application and also set the TimeStamp registry values to control the order
Posted by astebner | 2 Comments
Thursday, August 24, 2006 7:12 AM

How to configure post-build events for setup/deployment projects in Visual Studio 2005

While researching a previous blog post , I discovered a way to configure post-build events for setup/deployment projects in Visual Studio 2005 . I had not realized that previous versions of Visual Studio did not support configurable post-build events
Posted by astebner | 5 Comments
Wednesday, August 23, 2006 5:38 PM

Mailbag: How to perform a silent install of the Visual C++ 8.0 runtime files (vcredist) packages

Question: Visual Studio 2005 includes redistributable setup packages to install the Visual C++ 8.0 runtime files such as msvcr80.dll, atl80.dll, etc. I would like to run this setup in fully silent mode, but when I run it normally, it displays a progress
Posted by astebner | 8 Comments
Tuesday, August 22, 2006 6:49 PM

How to control the ordering of tiles in custom strips in Windows Media Center for Windows Vista

A couple of weeks ago, I posted an item describing how to add up to 2 custom strips to the Windows Media Center Start menu with up to 5 tiles each. As I was working on the examples for that blog post, I noticed an annoying behavior - when creating a strip
Posted by astebner | 3 Comments
Monday, August 21, 2006 9:16 PM

Step-by-step instructions to create a Media Center application setup package in Visual Studio

Anthony Park has been working on a Windows Vista version of his MCEBrowser application . As part of this process, he has posted a set of step-by-step instructions that can be used to create a setup package for a Windows Media Center hosted HTML application
Posted by astebner | 4 Comments
Friday, August 18, 2006 8:44 PM

Interesting scenario with capitalizing Greek strings in Windows Media Center

We were investigating a bug in the Greek version of Windows Media Center for Windows Vista this past week. As Matt Goyer previously explained , there are some instances where we automatically capitalize strings in Windows Media Center (such as when we
Posted by astebner | 0 Comments
Thursday, August 17, 2006 7:20 PM

Building and installing setup packages that require .NET Framework 1.1 on Windows Vista

I have run into this issue a couple of times recently while trying to install some of the currently available Windows Media Center applications and test them out on Windows Vista . Many of the applications that are currently available were created with
Posted by astebner | 5 Comments
Tuesday, August 15, 2006 8:44 AM

Adding HD DVD and Blu-ray movie playback in Windows Media Center for Windows Vista

I'm happy to welcome a new contributor to the Media Center Sandbox site - one of my colleagues Peter Dampier. In his inaugural post , he introduces a new feature in Windows Media Center for Windows Vista that allows you to integrate an application to
Posted by astebner | 1 Comments
Monday, August 14, 2006 9:57 PM

Why not include the Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions in Windows Vista?

An interesting "philosophical" question was posed recently that I just noticed over this past weekend - why not include Visual Studio 2005 (such as the already free Express Editions ) as a part of Windows Vista ? The idea was first suggested in this blog
Posted by astebner | 5 Comments
Saturday, August 12, 2006 2:05 PM

Mailbag: How can I customize an MSI in the Visual Studio setup/deployment project?

Question: I am using the Visual Studio setup/deployment project to create an MSI to install my application. I would like to add some functionality to this MSI that does not appear to be supported in the Visual Studio IDE (such as modifying the default
Posted by astebner | 22 Comments
Friday, August 11, 2006 9:42 PM

.NET Framework 3.0 (WinFX runtime) administrator mode and deployment readme

I previously posted an item describing the .NET Framework 3.0 (formerly known as the WinFX runtime components) deployment guide . I noticed this morning that there is also a detailed administrator mode and deployment readme file for the .NET Framework
Posted by astebner | 2 Comments
Thursday, August 10, 2006 8:21 PM

Bug that blocks install of non-English Visual Studio 2005 on Windows Vista x64

A bug was discovered recently in the x64 .NET Framework 2.0 language pack setups. This bug will cause attempts to install non-English, non-Japanese versions of Visual Studio 2005 on a non-matching language of x64 Windows Vista x64 to fail. In other words,
Posted by astebner | 1 Comments
Wednesday, August 09, 2006 8:02 PM

Official lists of language codes, country codes and LCIDs

I have previously written a few blog posts describing how to use Visual Studio IDE language switching ( here , here and here ). I got some follow-up questions based on those posts asking if there was a complete list of locale ID (LCID) values or language/country
Posted by astebner | 0 Comments
Tuesday, August 08, 2006 7:44 AM

How to make Visual Studio 2005 ignore return codes from pre-build events

While working on some Windows Media Center development scenarios over this past weekend, I ran into an interesting scenario that I could not figure out how to accomplish in Visual Studio 2005 - I wanted to be able to run a pre-build event command line
Posted by astebner | 5 Comments
Monday, August 07, 2006 6:56 PM

Adding custom tiles to built-in Windows Media Center Start menu strips

Last week, I posted some instructions explaining how to create custom strips on the Windows Media Center Start menu and populate the strips with tiles. There is an additional way that you can customize the Start menu that I wanted to cover separately.
Posted by astebner | 3 Comments
Monday, August 07, 2006 7:28 AM

Mailbag: How do I fix problems preventing installing the .NET Framework 2.0 MSI directly

Question: I saw your previous post about deploying the .NET Framework 2.0 using the MSI directly. I have been trying to install the .NET Framework by running this command line: dotnetfx.exe /q:a /c:"msiexec.exe /i c:\temp\netfx.msi using_exhuih=1 /qb"
Posted by astebner | 0 Comments
Sunday, August 06, 2006 8:36 PM

Benign error messages appear when running ngen update on Windows Vista

If you have tried to update native images on a Windows Vista beta 2 or later build by running %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\ngen.exe update, you probably noticed that a series of error messages appear in the NGEN console output. I have listed
Posted by astebner | 0 Comments
Saturday, August 05, 2006 2:54 PM

More new Windows Media Center development topics have been posted on the Media Center Sandbox

I have posted a couple of new items on the Media Center Sandbox site in the past week or so that I want to cross-post here in case you missed them over there. The first topic, titled How to debug a running Windows Media Center application in Windows Vista
Posted by astebner | 0 Comments
Friday, August 04, 2006 5:50 PM

Adding strips and tiles to the Windows Media Center Start menu in Windows Vista

As those of you who have seen Windows Media Center in Windows Vista already know, there has been a redesign of the Start menu. Windows Media Center now has the concept of strips and tiles on the Start menu as well as horizontal and vertical navigation.
Posted by astebner | 11 Comments
Thursday, August 03, 2006 7:50 PM

Checking for the .NET Framework at application runtime, not just at setup time

I posted some updated sample code last night that can be used to detect whether or not the various versions of the .NET Framework are installed on a system. To go along with this sample code, I wanted to also mention a consideration that developers should
Posted by astebner | 4 Comments
Thursday, August 03, 2006 5:55 AM

MSDN Magazine article with details about new globalization features in Windows Vista

A while back, I posted an item introducing the beta version of the Microsoft Locale Builder for Windows Vista beta 2. I just noticed that there has been a MSDN magazine article published since my previous blog post that provides a ton of in-depth information
Posted by astebner | 0 Comments
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Wednesday, August 02, 2006 9:52 PM

Updated sample .NET Framework detection code that does more in-depth checking

I previously posted some sample code to detect the version(s) and service pack levels of the .NET Framework that are installed on a computer ( here and here ). The original version of the sample code that I wrote queries the officially documented registry
Posted by astebner | 9 Comments
Tuesday, August 01, 2006 10:19 PM

New location for Sonic CD/DVD burning log file in Windows Vista

A while back, I posted instructions describing how to cause the Sonic CD/DVD burning engine in Windows XP Media Center Edition to create a log file for debugging purposes. I found out recently that the location for this log file has been changed in Windows
Posted by astebner | 0 Comments
Tuesday, August 01, 2006 6:56 AM

How to fix Visual Studio 2005 setup projects on Windows Vista post-beta 2 builds

I ran across a mail thread today describing some problems that folks have run into while trying to use the setup and deployment project types in Visual Studio 2005 on post-beta 2 builds of Windows Vista . I want to describe the symptoms and how to workaround
Posted by astebner | 10 Comments
 
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