I recently worked an issue with a customer who was seeing an error in his application due to a null reference. The error was perplexing because the object that was null was populated on the logon page of the application, but the error was occurring after...

Any programmer knows that logic errors are among the most difficult to troubleshoot. I was recently working with a developer who was encountering an obscure logic bug concerning session variables, and the case raised an interesting (and important) point...

Windows Home Server is a great product, but it's been plagued by an infamous bug known as the Data Corruption Bug. Yesterday, the Windows Home Server team released a public beta of Power Pack 1. In addition to some new features and enhancements, Power...

We've had a few cases recently where customers are using third-party ASP.NET server controls (either written by a third-party company or by the customer) and finding that the controls are not rendering correctly in the Visual Studio 2008 design surface...

We've just launched a completely revamped and overhauled IIS 7 website with new content. Visit the premiere IIS 7 resource at www.iis.net . Jim

Now that Windows Server 2008 is out the door, we're starting to see more customers using IIS 7. I recently worked on a case where one of our engineers was dealing with a customer using Visual Studio 2005 and IIS 7. He was encountering an error message...

We recently released a hotfix rollup that fixes numerous issues in Visual Web Developer 2008, both the Visual Studio release and the Express edition. News of this rollup has circulated through many blogs and websites, but we're still seeing a fair number...

Scenario: My customer is experiencing a hang and I see many threads with an identical stack. I also see that the customer has one thread that is running a component that is an OCX. What I want to find out is whether that component is referenced in the...

If you haven't had a chance yet to mess around with IIS 7, you should take the time. One of the changes that will impact everyone is configuration. Not only have we changed where configuration settings are stored, but we've also released a very cool command...

A while back, I wrote a post regarding slow startup of ASP.NET 2.0 applications due to a lookup on a bad account. The hotfix for that issue is now available. The KB number is 944157. You can get the fix by calling PSS or by using our online automated...

We've seen quite a few issues recently from customers having network problems on Windows Server 2003 SP2. These issue range from connections being reset to seeing things like database mirroring issues, etc. In other words, anything involving network traffic...

I recently worked an issue with a customer who was experiencing high CPU. Performance Monitor data showed that the % of Time in GC was 46%. We generally recommend that you not be in GC more than 5% of the time, so this was a point of interest. One of...

I received notification today that Microsoft has decided to carry a small number of non-Microsoft Press books in the Microsoft Company Store in Redmond. One of those books will be mine, most likely my latest book on ASP.NET 3.5 . If you're a Microsoft...

Yesterday morning I replaced my iPod with a new Zune 2. I've owned 4 iPods over the years, and I've always loved them. When the first Zunes released, I wasn't tempted at all to replace my trusty iPod. That all changed when I heard of the new features...

I have been working with the product group on a new hotfix that allows you to run ASP.NET 2.0 applications without associating the My_Computer_Zone code group with the Full Trust permission set in Code Access Security. The new hotfix is available now...

I have worked several issues recently regarding long delays on the first request to an ASP.NET application. These delays are much longer than typical app domain startups and JIT compiles. To troubleshoot these issues, I get hang dumps of the process to...

I was recently working on an issue with a large international hosting company. This company hosts many websites in a shared hosting environment, and one of their customers had uploaded a page that performed some tasks using ASP.NET that greatly concerned...

Visual Studio has a cool user interface for publishing a website using the Publish Web Site dialog, accessible by selecting Build, Publish Web Site. You can use this dialog to pre-compile your website and avoid having to deploy source code. Visual Web...

With the impending release of Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Web Developer 2008, along with the .NET Framework 3.5, there is a bit of confusion around version numbers for ASP.NET. Before I get too far into this, let me just say right now that this post...

I recently worked an issue with a customer who was rolling out some patches to over 50,000 computers across his enterprise using SMS. SMS reported that the patches successfully installed on all workstations, but my customer noticed a strange anomoly that...

We recently announced the RTW of Visual Studio 2008 beta 2. What you might not know is that beta 2 also introduces the new Visual Web Developer Express Edition 2008. ASP.NET developers should be pretty excited about the new features, and this product...

You can now get a hotfix from Microsoft without having to call PSS! Just browse the the following site. https://support.microsoft.com/contactus2/emailcontact.aspx?scid=sw;en;1410&WS=hotfix When you get there, enter the requested information...

I recently had to call Samsung customer service due to a broken TV set. (It's actually a very long story that involved many calls over a 2-month period, but I won't bore you.) Shortly after that debacle, my Xbox went belly up with the dreaded three-red...

New York Times publisher Pinchy Suzberger recently told Haaretz Daily Newspaper Israel, "I don't know if we will be printing in five years, and you know what, I don't care." My dad was in the newspaper business for many decades and worked for a few very...

If you're just getting around to checking out Visual Web Developer (whether as part of Visual Studio or by using the free Visual Web Developer Express Edition,) you might want to test out your application in a real-world hosting environment. Then again...