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March 2007 - Posts

Saturday, March 31, 2007 8:07 AM

Windows Installer PowerShell extensions project now available on CodePlex

Heath Stewart recently wrote a blog post at http://blogs.msdn.com/heaths/archive/2007/03/14/introducing-windows-installer-powershell-extensions.aspx that introduces a new project that he published on CodePlex - the Windows Installer PowerShell Extensions
Posted by astebner | 0 Comments
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Friday, March 30, 2007 4:30 PM

New Windows Vista Media Center application - Showtime Interactive

As Niall and Ian noted in their blogs earlier this week, there is a new Windows Vista Media Center application available in the Explore tile of the Online Media strip (the area known as Online Spotlight in previous versions of Media Center). This application
Posted by astebner | 0 Comments
Wednesday, March 28, 2007 9:21 PM

How to manually reset Digital Rights Management (DRM) in Windows Vista

Question: I have a system with Windows Vista and have been using Media Center to watch DRM-protected content for a while. Recently, I upgraded some hardware on my system, and now I can no longer view any DRM-protected content in Media Center. After some
Posted by astebner | 1 Comments
Tuesday, March 27, 2007 8:36 PM

Mailbag: How to perform silent installs of Visual Studio hotfixes and service packs

Question: I am trying to create a script that will install Visual Studio 2005 SP1 in silent mode. I haven't been able to find any official documentation about supported command line switches, so I downloaded the SP1 setup package and ran it with the /?
Posted by astebner | 1 Comments
Monday, March 26, 2007 5:09 PM

How to repair the .NET Framework 2.0 and 3.0 on Windows Vista

Since the Windows Vista public launch in January 2007, I have been receiving questions about how to repair the .NET Framework 2.0 and 3.0 to try to resolve various bugs. As I previously described here , the 2.0 and 3.0 versions are installed as OS components
Posted by astebner | 18 Comments
Saturday, March 24, 2007 8:19 AM

Article about how to use McmlPad during UI development

Charlie Owen has posted an in-depth article over on the Media Center Sandbox site that I wanted to provide a link to here: http://blog.mediacentersandbox.com/UserInterfaceDevelopmentWithTheMCMLPreviewToolMCMLPad.aspx This article describes techniques
Posted by astebner | 0 Comments
Friday, March 23, 2007 7:28 AM

MSDN community content sites now available in several languages

The online MSDN documentation library has introduced a feature called MSDN Community Content. This feature provides the ability for anyone in the community to contribute to the content by providing supplemental information, correcting inaccurate or confusing
Posted by astebner | 0 Comments
Thursday, March 22, 2007 4:45 PM

Congratulations to Ian Dixon on his 100th episode of the Media Center Show

Yesterday, Ian Dixon posted his 100th episode of the Media Center Show. You can view a summary transcript and download the episode from this blog post - http://iandixon.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!36983156CAA83EA9!1909.entry . Ian's guest on this episode
Posted by astebner | 1 Comments
Wednesday, March 21, 2007 8:50 PM

Tenebril SpyCatcher can cause .NET Framework setup to hang

A little while back, I wrote a blog post describing an interaction issue between Visual Studio setup and the Tenebril SpyCatcher application. Since then, I have heard from multiple customers who have experienced problems installing the .NET Framework
Posted by astebner | 1 Comments
Wednesday, March 21, 2007 10:10 AM

MSDN Magazine article describing how to integrate WiX v2.0 with MSBuild

The March 2007 edition of MSDN Magazine contains an in-depth article describing how to use WiX v2.0 and MSBuild to integrate setup into the overall software development lifecycle. You can find the article at this location: http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/07/03/wixtricks/default.aspx
Posted by astebner | 0 Comments
Tuesday, March 20, 2007 9:47 PM

Updated sample code to detect the .NET Framework 3.0

I've received a few questions recently about how to programmatically detect whether or not the .NET Framework 3.0 is installed on a system. As a result, I decided to update the sample code I previously published ( here and here ) to include logic to detect
Posted by astebner | 0 Comments
Sunday, March 18, 2007 2:54 PM

New version of Media Center Cutter for Windows Vista announced

Niall Ginsbourg posted an item on his blog this weekend describing a new Media Center Markup Language (MCML) application for Windows Vista Media Center that was unveiled recently at the Cebit 2007 conference - Media Center Cutter . Olcay Buyan, a developer
Posted by astebner | 0 Comments
Friday, March 16, 2007 6:40 PM

How to repair Media Center files and registry entries on Windows Vista

Since the Windows Vista public launch in January 2007, I have been receiving questions more frequently about how to repair Windows Media Center to try to resolve various bugs. Many of the customers I have heard from have tried some of the repair steps
Posted by astebner | 30 Comments
Wednesday, March 14, 2007 9:19 PM

Mailbag: What version of the .NET Framework is included in what version of the OS?

Question: I recently installed Windows Vista . When I looked in the Programs and Features (formerly known as Add/Remove Programs) control panel, I didn't see the .NET Framework 2.0 listed. Therefore I decided to install the .NET Framework 2.0 by downloading
Posted by astebner | 9 Comments
Tuesday, March 13, 2007 9:17 PM

What can happen when advertising COM information in an MSI

A long time ago (January 2005 to be exact), I wrote a blog post describing a Windows Installer resiliency repair scenario that we used to see in some old daily builds of Visual Studio 2005 . In that post, I recommended not using the Class or ProgId tables
Posted by astebner | 0 Comments
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Tuesday, March 13, 2007 8:51 PM

Links to more detailed information about using the VC runtime files in VS 2005 SP1

I have previously posted a few items about deploying the Visual C++ 8.0 runtime redistributable packages as a prerequisite for other setup packages: How to detect the presence of the VC 8.0 runtime redistributable package - http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2007/01/16/mailbag-how-to-detect-the-presence-of-the-vc-8-0-runtime-redistributable-package.aspx
Posted by astebner | 0 Comments
Monday, March 12, 2007 6:50 PM

New Media Center applications - MCEMailbox, MAMECenter and Harmony 2007

Recently, I've come across a few blog posts announcing new Windows Vista Media Center applications. All of the applications below are written in Media Center Markup Language (MCML), and it is exciting to see the new Media Center platform features in Windows
Posted by astebner | 1 Comments
Monday, March 12, 2007 12:46 PM

Visual Studio 2005 IDE tips and tricks article

I recently found an article on MSDN written by James Lau, a program manager who works on the core Visual Studio IDE. The article lists some cool tips and tricks that are not as widely known that can help boost developer productivity in the Visual Studio
Posted by astebner | 0 Comments
Friday, March 09, 2007 5:16 PM

Another workaround for Visual Studio Common IDE Package load failures in Visual Studio 2005

I recently heard from a customer who was running into a Visual Studio Common IDE Package load failure error in Visual Studio 2005. They tried all of the steps listed in my blog post about how to resolve package load failures caused by previous beta versions
Posted by astebner | 0 Comments
Thursday, March 08, 2007 8:36 PM

Creating an administrative install point for the .NET Framework 2.0 on Windows Vista

I previously posted a set of instructions for creating an administrative install point for the .NET Framework 2.0 using the install.exe external UI handler. I recently heard from a customer who attempted to use these instructions on Windows Vista and
Posted by astebner | 0 Comments
Tuesday, March 06, 2007 5:52 PM

Final version of the Visual Studio 2005 SP1 update for Windows Vista now available

I noticed this afternoon that the final release of the Visual Studio 2005 SP1 update for Windows Vista has been released on the Microsoft Download Center. You can find more information at these locations: Direct download location for the SP1 update for
Posted by astebner | 1 Comments
Monday, March 05, 2007 9:30 PM

Beta version a new MCML web application is now available for download - MCStart

I noticed a post on the Big Screen Blog over the past weekend about a beta version of a new Windows Vista Media Center application that is now available for download. The application is an updated version of MCStart, a program that can be used to browse
Posted by astebner | 0 Comments
Monday, March 05, 2007 4:40 PM

Links to Windows Vista global development information

Back in January, I wrote a blog post with links to information about the multi-lingual user interface features available in Windows Vista. Since then, some additional information has been published about developing world-wide applications for Windows
Posted by astebner | 3 Comments
Saturday, March 03, 2007 11:36 AM

How to NGEN files in an MSI-based setup package using WiX

As described in this blog post , a set of custom actions was added to the WiX toolset last year to make it easy to create native images for managed assemblies in an MSI-based setup using the .NET Framework 2.0 version of NGEN.exe . Native images are created
Posted by astebner | 6 Comments
Friday, March 02, 2007 9:51 PM

Mailbag: How can I create a loading page for an MCML application?

Question: I am building a Windows Media Center application for Windows Vista using Media Center Markup Language (MCML). My application performs some initialization tasks that are somewhat time intensive, so I would like to display a page with a loading
Posted by astebner | 0 Comments
 
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