There have been a lot of questions on forums about the SD card support in Windows Phone 7. The SD card is not used the same way in a Windows Phone 7 device as it is in many other smartphones, and this can cause some confusion. In this post, I don’t...

Like most developers, I have overwhelming neurotic tendencies to incessantly become insanely focused on trivial issues. One particular thorn in my side is my failure to get a good triple-monitor system set up at work. (Three monitors is the only proper...

For a personal project involving SSL, I wanted to create some certificates that could be used to authenticate the client and server to each other. Nothing fancy - self-signed is perfectly fine in this case since the client would have an actual copy of...

Today's post will provide a basic introduction to the Windows Embedded CE Platform Builder Catalog. If you don't know what that is, consider yourself lucky. If you do have to deal with the catalog data, today's post might be helpful. We'll write a quick...

Steve Ball posted an article about some "glitching" issues in Vista . I can't resist adding my two cents. For me, Vista definitely glitches a LOT more than previous versions of Windows. As a fairly experienced developer, I think I understand the reasons...

A common complaint about PB 5.0 is that the OS Design View tab will sometimes mysteriously disappear. The best answer I have is that people should be using PB 6.0. Unfortunately, that answer tends to make people want to punch me. In the interest of my...

If you have to write a hash function for something important (i.e. a .NET GetHashCode method or a C++ hash traits class), don't design your own. Steal one that has been well-tested. One of my favorites for speed, simplicity, and quality is the "Jenkins One-At-A-Time hash" (aka joaat hash - "one-at-a-time" refers to one byte hashed per iteration, though the algorithm is probably still mostly ok if you use a 16-bit char per iteration instead). You can find a good description of it and many others at http://www.burtleburtle.net/bob/hash/doobs.html. For more information, see the Wikipedia entry on hash tables. If you see any locally-developed hash table implementation that requires a prime number of buckets, you might want to track down the author and suggest a better hash function that doesn't place a prime number constraint on the number of buckets. Prime numbers are not necessary if a high-quality hash function is used. (Keep in mind that the hash table author might be aware of better ways but is remaining backwards-compatible with previous releases or is protecting the clients of the hash table from their own bad hash functions.)...

When Platform Builder interacts with a CE OS build tree ("winceroot", i.e. C:\WINCE600), it needs to know a little bit about the contents of that build tree. For example, it needs to know what SYSGEN variables are available and what they mean. It needs...

Hey, PB expert guy, I have a question. Shoot. Can I run PB 5.0 side-by-side with PB 6.0? Short answer or long answer? Um, short answer, please. Kind-of. What kind of answer is that? This is a yes-or-no question! Ok. Then...

I've learned some interesting facts about MSI-based setups in the past few days. Working together, they can cause some really tricky and nasty issues if you are unaware of them. (In other words, this is why I'm still at work at 2:00 in the morning.) ...

In Visual C++ 7.1 and earlier, "catch(...)" would catch all exceptions, both C++ and SEH. The behavior has changed with Visual C++ 8.0. This has caused some confusion. The details get a bit tricky, but the generally accepted wisdom among the C++ gurus...

The consumer versions of 32-bit Windows XP and Vista have a stated limit of 4 GB RAM, but a practical limit of about 3.1 GB. A lot of partial explanations have been floating around, so I thought I would try my hand at clearing up the issue. (Wish me luck...

In my previous post , I described two issues encountered after updating our build system to Nmake 8.0 (the version from Visual Studio 2005) from earlier versions. Both issues turned out to have essentially the same root cause. Nmake's job is to execute...

I've run into this issue twice now (in different forms) after upgrading build systems from old versions of Nmake to Nmake 8.0 (the version from Visual Studio 2005), so I think that means it's time to blog about it. Scenario 1: Your stuff builds...

Around Microsoft, people talk about making things performant. They mean "fast" or "performs well". It is a real word, but according to OED , it means a person who performs something. In any case, I think it really isn't all that important (that...

I work in the Windows Embedded CE group on the "PB IDE tools" team. That might take a bit of explaining. (Sometimes, I'm not entirely clear myself.) CE is the "miniature" version of Windows. (The big version, referred to as "NT" on this blog, is familiar...

I'm a little late to the blog scene, but I hear it is all the rage, and that all the cool people are doing it. I guess it's time to get with the program. (Sorry I'm late!) They (1) say that the first blog entry is supposed to set the tone for the blog...