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October 2006 - Posts

Tuesday, October 31, 2006 9:11 PM

Centralized article for customizing the Windows Media Center Start menu in Windows Vista

I have found myself digging through my blog archives several times in the past couple of weeks to send out links to the various posts that I have written about customizing the Windows Media Center Start menu in Windows Vista. As a result, I decided to
Posted by astebner | 0 Comments
Monday, October 30, 2006 9:47 PM

.NET Framework 3.0 setup log files

The installer for the .NET Framework 3.0 (formerly named the WinFX runtime components) chains several different MSIs and Windows hotfixes behind the scenes. If this setup fails, there are numerous possible causes due to the number of packages being chained
Posted by astebner | 24 Comments
Thursday, October 26, 2006 6:01 PM

Mailbag: How to install Microsoft Report Viewer 2005 in silent mode

Question: I have seen some of your other posts regarding how to install various parts of Visual Studio 2005 and the .NET Framework 2.0 in silent mode. I would also like to install the Microsoft Report Viewer 2005 redistributable package in silent mode.
Posted by astebner | 1 Comments
Thursday, October 26, 2006 11:11 AM

New episode of the Media Center Show - MCML Development Part 2

Ian Dixon has posted a new episode of the Media Center Show today. This episode is part 2 of an interview I did with him a few weeks ago about Media Center Markup Language (MCML) development. Part 1, which was posted last week, served as an introduction
Posted by astebner | 0 Comments
Wednesday, October 25, 2006 10:02 PM

How to add x64 build configurations to a Visual Studio 2005 solution

Last week, a customer asked me a question about the FileWriter MSAS sample application that ships in the Windows Media Center SDK for Windows Vista . This customer was running an x64 build of Windows Vista and could not get FileWriter to correctly create
Posted by astebner | 1 Comments
Tuesday, October 24, 2006 7:52 PM

New hotfix available for Update Rollup 2 for Media Center 2005 - October 2006 rollup

Today is the day for the monthly release of new Windows hotfix packages and updates, and there is a new Windows Media Center hotfix that has been released today that I want to draw your attention to: October 2006 Update Rollup for Windows XP Media Center
Posted by astebner | 9 Comments
Monday, October 23, 2006 7:24 PM

Mailbag: How to set the NoImpersonate flag for a custom action in Visual Studio 2005

Question: I have built an installer using the Visual Studio 2005 setup project wizard. It installs correctly on Windows XP but fails on Windows Vista . I investigated and found that the failure on Windows Vista is caused by a custom action that fails
Posted by astebner | 36 Comments
Monday, October 23, 2006 9:32 AM

File-based algorithm for detecting Windows Media Center version

A while ago, I posted an item describing how to use a registry value to detect what version of Windows Media Center (if any) is installed on a system. Since then, we have found a couple of scenarios where this registry value can be overwritten and left
Posted by astebner | 1 Comments
Sunday, October 22, 2006 2:52 PM

2 more new Media Center applications for Windows Vista - Big Screen Headlines and Big Screen Contacts

Niall Ginsbourg is at it again. The developer from Mobilewares , who previously created Big Screen Photos , Big Screen Business and Big Screen Weather , has released beta versions of 2 new Windows Media Center applications for Windows Vista written using
Posted by astebner | 1 Comments
Saturday, October 21, 2006 9:10 AM

New MSDN forum launched for .NET Framework setup and deployment issues

A new MSDN forum was opened yesterday to specifically discuss issues related to .NET Framework installation problems and questions related to deploying the .NET Framework as part of other setup packages. If you have problems or questions related to installing
Posted by astebner | 2 Comments
Thursday, October 19, 2006 9:46 AM

New episode of the Media Center Show focusing on MCML development

Ian Dixon has posted the most recent episode of the Media Center Show today. I talked with Ian a few weeks ago about Media Center Markup Language (MCML) development for Windows Media Center for Windows Vista , and he decided to create a 2 part show based
Posted by astebner | 0 Comments
Tuesday, October 17, 2006 1:55 PM

Application compatibility warnings when launching Visual Studio 2005 on Windows Vista RC2

I installed Windows Vista RC2 a couple of weeks ago and started working on some of the remaining issues for the Windows Media Center SDK for Windows Vista. The first time I launched Visual C# 2005 Express , Visual Basic 2005 Express and Visual Studio
Posted by astebner | 4 Comments
Sunday, October 15, 2006 9:46 PM

Sample code for launching Windows Media Center and browsing to a specific experience

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a description of an algorithm that can be used to launch Windows Media Center and automatically browse to a specific experience. At the end of that post, I mentioned that I was working on a Win32 sample application to demonstrate
Posted by astebner | 0 Comments
Saturday, October 14, 2006 9:09 AM

Mailbag: How does Media Center decide which extensibility application is launched by SendMessageTimeout?

Question: I saw your previous post describing an algorithm for launching Windows Media Center and automatically browsing to an experience. In that post, you stated that using WPARAM value 13 will browse to an extensibility application. If I have multiple
Posted by astebner | 0 Comments
Friday, October 13, 2006 10:59 AM

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

I have previously written blog posts describing how to add up to 2 custom strips to the Windows Media Center Start menu in Windows Vista with up to 5 tiles each, and how to specify an exact sorting order for the tiles in a custom strip in the Start menu.
Posted by astebner | 1 Comments
Thursday, October 12, 2006 6:03 PM

Small update to Visual Studio project template examples I previously published

A couple of weeks ago, I posted an article describing how to create MSI-based setup packages for Visual Studio project templates, item templates and starter kits using WiX . Since then, I found out from Bob Arnson (who works on the Visual Studio team
Posted by astebner | 0 Comments
Thursday, October 12, 2006 4:12 PM

RC2 build (5744.16384) of the Windows Media Center SDK for Windows Vista is now available

We have posted the RC2 build of the Windows Media Center SDK for Windows Vista on the Microsoft Connect site today. It is version number 5744.16384 and is designed to install on the RC2 build of Windows Vista, though it will likely work on other builds
Posted by astebner | 1 Comments
Tuesday, October 10, 2006 10:11 PM

How we almost shipped a timebomb in Visual Studio, and how I came of age at Microsoft

I've been meaning to write a blog post to tell this story for a while, and I figured that now that we've passed the 5 year anniversary of when it happened that I should finally take some time and type it all out. Before I describe the details of the problem
Posted by astebner | 1 Comments
Monday, October 09, 2006 6:00 PM

New Windows Media Center Presentation Layer (MCML) application now available - Big Screen Weather

Niall Ginsbourg from Mobilewares (who has also created the Big Screen Photos Flickr photo browser and the Big Screen Business financial application for Windows Media Center for Windows Vista ) has created a new Windows Media Center application, this time
Posted by astebner | 2 Comments
Friday, October 06, 2006 10:22 AM

How to prevent the Windows XP welcome screen from appearing after installing the .NET Framework 1.1

Some of you have noticed an installation issue with the .NET Framework 1.1. If you have a Windows XP-based OS (Home, Professional, Media Center, Tablet PC) that is configured with a single user account so that it will boot directly to the desktop when
Posted by astebner | 5 Comments
Monday, October 02, 2006 6:22 PM

Updated version of Reporting Add-in that fixes package load failures in Visual WebDev 2005

A while back, I posted an item describing a possible package load failure when installing the Reporting Add-in on a system that has Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition to a non-default path. At the time I wrote that blog post, I confirmed that there
Posted by astebner | 0 Comments
Sunday, October 01, 2006 7:47 PM

How to create setup packages for Visual Studio project templates and starter kits

When I started working on the Windows Media Center SDK setup for Windows Vista , I did some research to figure out how to install and register project templates and item templates for Visual Studio 2005 . I did not find much documentation describing how
Posted by astebner | 1 Comments
 
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