One of the questions that comes up about debugging dump files is how to debug a dump file that was created from a 64-bit process. The reason why this question comes up is because Visual Studio itself is a 32-bit application and therefore, cannot debug...

Now that the DinnerNow.net 3.1 sample application has been released, I thought I'd share some information about the project to help developers learn more about DinnerNow.net and what they can expect after downloading it. The following table summarizes...

DinnerNow.net 3.1 follows in the footsteps of the 3.0 release of DinnerNow.net by adding support for new Microsoft operating systems and platforms. New in DinnerNow 3.1 is support for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Also, DinnerNow 3.1 adds support...

On Windows Vista, to install IIS 7.0 from the command line, you can use a tool called the Windows Package Manager (Pkgmgr.exe) . For example, the command line for installing IIS 7. 0 on Windows Vista might look something like the following depending on...

When you try to install Windows Mobile Device Center 6.1 (drvupdate-amd64.exe) on Windows Server 2008 R2, you'll probably end up with the following cryptic error message which isn't very helpful: Windows Mobile Device Center Driver Update -----------...

In a previous post , I explained how to use Code Analysis in Visual Studio 2010 to detect dead code. In that post, I described the following five Code Analysis rules in detail and how these set of rules form the basis for detecting dead code: Private...

As 64-bit machines become mainstream, one of the problems that developers run into is dealing with registry keys and directories. This is because many applications and runtimes are designed to run on both 64-bit and WOW64 . The problem comes about because...

In an earlier blog post , I mentioned that NetCFSvcUtil.exe (available as part of Power Toys for .NET Compact Framework 3.5) is broken on the following operating systems: Window 7 RTM Windows Server 2008 R2 Windows Vista SP2 Windows Server 2008 SP2 Specifically...

If you are a developer and you are planning to write applications for Windows 7, then one of the best places to start is the Windows 7 Training Kit For Developers which was released today. The Window 7 Training Kit has everything you need to get started...

As early as Visual Studio 2002, Visual Studio has supported the ability to see the dependencies between projects in a solution. However, the experience is somewhat clunky in that you can only see the dependencies one project at a time. In the example...

Software quality is a subject that is near and dear to my heart. At PDC 2009 this year, there is full day workshop on how to use Visual Studio Team System 2010 to develop high quality software . I'm really excited about this workshop since it covers a...

In a previous blog , I covered how to debug a LINQ to SQL query using the Historical Debugger. In this blog, I'll discuss using the Historical Debugger to debug an exception. The are a couple of reasons why the Historical Debugger is so useful when it...

Formatting strings is a very common task in .NET development. Examples include formatting dates and currencies, composing a HTML response, creating error messages, etc. One of the downsides of string formatting is that if done incorrectly, you can end...