Okay, I've previously written some random posts about how to set up windbg and how to troubleshoot OutOfMemoryExceptions . I thought I'd take a few steps back and review some of the basics in order to help you get started on using this fantastic tool...

Install Windbg Windbg is the tool for the ASP.NET support engineer. It is free and it's available at www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/default.mspx . The learning curve is steep to say the least, but if you're interested in finding out what...

I got the following question from a reader the other day: I've been trying to figure out how to change permissions on a folder in PowerShell. I've looked at the Get-Acl and Set-Acl, but I can only use them to copy the settings from a pre-existing object...

Is your mp3-collection perfectly sorted? I know mine wasn't. I thought I'd address that while creating a pretty good demo-script to show some basic filtering, script structures, etc. Since I also wanted the script to extract the metadata from every file...

If your application crashes, hangs and deadlocks it will cause/require the application pool to recycle in order to be resolved, but sometimes your application pool inexplicably recycles for no obvious reason. This is usually a configuration issue or due...

This is a continuation of my previous post with the imaginative name Getting started with windbg - part I . I'll be assuming that you've read it, so if you haven't I suggest you check it out first. We're still working with the same sample dump, so I'll...

Yesterday an early Alpha of Windows 9 was released on the corporate network and I couldn’t resist installing it. I started up the installation, which went very smoothly by the way, filled in the necessary details, clicked “Finish" and left it running...

Did you know you can build your own advanced commands using for each, if, etc? The complete list of control tokens are: .if .else .elseif .foreach .for .while .do .break .continue .catch .leave .printf .block Using these command tokes you can send quite...

Prerequisites This post will require some basic knowledge of windbg and the sos extension. For this I recommend looking at the following posts: Getting started with WinDbg - Part I Getting started with WinDbg - Part II For more information on Exceptions...

Using the WebClient.Upload method for posting large files will eventually leave you stranded with OutOfMemoryExceptions. This is because WebClient.Upload reads the entire file to memory by default. This is great for smaller files, but not so great if you're working with very large files. This post shows you how to build your own uploader and resolve the problem....

This morning I found the following in my inbox: I had set my web servers running on IIS 6 to recycle if they hit 700 MB (Maximum used Memory). Can I run a report to know how many times per day or week the W3WP got recycled. Any suggestions please....

This is a subject that has been covered before and I have no intention of writing the ultimate post on the subject. Still I think this is something that every good developer should know. Why do I need to know this? My colleagues and I are quite often...

Problem: You've written an ASP.NET application that is getting OutOfMemoryExceptions. Cause: Let's find out... Resolution: Use Windbg to take a look at the heap. Is it a leak? Take a look at the memory usage of you application using perfmon. If memory...

Problem: A customer called in. They had a Web Service running on a single IIS6. Memory usage would slowly increase and not be released. As a workaround they'd currently set the application pool to recycle at 500 MB, causing a few failed requests upon...

What do you do when your StateServer is running high on CPU and your application log is filling up with alerts like: Unable to make the session state request to the session state server.
Please ensure that the ASP.NET State service is started and that the client and server ports are the same. If the server is on a remote machine, please ensure that it accepts remote requests by checking the value of HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\aspnet_state\Parameters\AllowRemoteConnection. ...

Due to the architecture of web services and web applications they can be quite slow to start. For example on my Windows 2003-box the initial localhost-call to a simple “Hello World!”-web service takes approximately 8 seconds, while the next request is...

A customer called in the other day and told me that his web application took a long time to start. My initial thought was (off course) that it was a matter of the classic slow-to start web services I’ve written about earlier. ( What to do about the slow...

I've written a lot of PowerShell posts lately and here's another one. :-) I got a question from one of the account managers if it was possible to alter the FTP Authorization Rules for a specific folder on his IIS. The appcmd for the operation was appcmd...

This is a continuation of part I . If you haven't read it I suggest at least going through the summary at the end of the post. Working with Drives In your basic command prompt you have the normal file system drives that you use to access your hard-drive...

Over the past months I’ve been holding a couple of workshops on PowerShell. It’s quite an interesting topic, but not something I originally thought would be suitable for this blog and its web-development theme. Still, having given this a bit more thought...

A recent case I worked on involved the following scenario. Problem description The client was building a kiosk-like application. I.e. a WinForms application with the WebBrowser control slapped onto it. The application worked fine for the most part, but...

Problem: When using Visual Studio 2005 to debug a web application under IIS7 you will find that after 90-120 seconds the debugger will time out and you will get an appropriate error message in your browser. Visual Studio will return to it's "non debugging...

Quite often I am met with the incorrect assumption that out of memory exceptions can be resolved by adding more memory. I can understand why you'd think that, but actually it won't matter at all. Additional RAM may increase performance, but an additional...

Scenario: A quite common scenario when working in the support industry is a call along theese lines: "My application worked just fine, but now that I've upgraded to IE7, IIS6, Vista, etc. it doesn't work any more. This has got to be a bug! This new version...

What do finalizers and weak references have in common? Well more than you might think actually. Finalizers Finalizers are clean-up code that will be run at the end of an objects life-cycle. You should only release native resources in the finalizer. When...