After nearly two decades providing customer support at Microsoft, I've decided to take a well-earned break. One plan for the summer is to sit in the garden sipping cool beer whilst writing a book on MSMQ. We'll see how that pans out. If you have any...

The announcement of Windows Phone 7 Series is going to cause some interesting problems for existing Windows Mobile applications that make use of MSMQ. Windows Phone is a Silverlight/XNA platform, as discussed here: Silverlight for Windows Phone...

MSMQ makes use of several protocols to do its work, including: MSMQ - confusingly the protocol name is the same as the product name (although Microsoft Message Queuing is the preferred alternative. Not as snappy, mind). This protocol is for sending...

This is something I'm glad about - the R2 numbering system just confuses people. Following is list of key capabilities that have been added to BizTalk Server 2010. Enhanced trading partner management that will enable our customers to manage complex...

This announcement has been posted to all the Microsoft-hosted MSMQ newsgroups by my colleague Ed Hickey: Hello all, Today we are announcing that we have opened a new MSDN Forum for all topics of MSMQ. The new Forum is located at http://social...

My colleague Sajay has put a Powershell script on his blog to help you create and delete MSMQ queues: Sajay's Blog

A few times now I've encountered people complaining that MSMQ isn't supported on Windows XPe. This isn't true - MSMQ has been supported on devices since Windows CE 3.0. What is actually happening is that the vendor of the device is not supporting...

Here's some data I had to pull together today about authentication (message signing) and thought may be worth sharing. When signing an outgoing message, MSMQ can use a number of algorithms depending on the version. Algorithm Available in Default for MAC...

If you are using Network Monitor or Wire Shark to view MSMQ traffic, you will see that there is a small packet sent over port 3527. This ping mechanism is used to optimise connection time to computers that are online. There is a change in MSMQ 4.0 (and...

You'd think that by now I'd know where all the web content for MSMQ was on Microsoft.com but no. Here's the page for Highlights & Top Issues . Hmmm.... "Last Review : 30 July 2009" but the KB articles referenced are all at least 3 years old...

A common request I receive is for links to MSMQ documentation. What I find is that people haven't looked at what's already available to them "out of the box", as the phrase goes. The Help that is shipped with Windows is comprehensive - even I don't know...

Here's an oddity that one of my Japanese colleagues spotted. If you have installed MSMQ in Windows 2008 then you can open up Server Manager and see Message Queuing under Features: Next you add the Application Server role by installing something...

In the past I would have been digging for hours through performance monitor logs looking for interesting spikes or patterns. Now there's a scripted tool you can run on the logs files while you are off making a coffee: Performance Analysis of...

Just watched some nice demos of Microsoft's next generation of mobile phones - the Windows Phone 7 Series. You can have a look yourself at the fancy stuff on the new website, http://windowsphone7series.com . These devices should be out in time for...

If you are seeing this error (or something similar): "MQError.DependentClientLicenseOverflow - Message Queuing server has reached the maximum number of dependent clients it can serve." then you will probably be confused as it is very unlikely...

Migrating MSMQ applications from 32-bit to 64-bit systems shouldn't be a big deal. In theory you will probably be able to just recompile / redeploy as the public MSMQ APIs are not architecture-dependent. Other parts of your own code may be, though...

Quite often I see people discussing moving messages between queues and this mildly grates on my nerves. Delivered messages can't be moved out of the queue they end up in - the only thing you can do is delete the message, either through receving it...

With the announcement of Host Integration Server 2009 R2, there has been an update to the list of Deprecated Features : COM+ AS/400 Data Queues ActiveX Control COM+ Host File Transfer ActiveX Control COM+ support throughout TI and BAHA ...

This service pack is now available for download from the Microsoft download centre . Overview Host Integration Server 2006 Service Pack 1 delivers customer requested hotfixes that improve the quality, reliability and supportability of Host Integration...

The service pack is available now from the Microsoft Download Centre . There's a list of fixes included in BizTalk 2006 R2 SP1 at the Biztalk Customer Response Team's blog and in the Knowledgebase . Here's the blurb: SP1 includes a roll-up...

Rob Fox has blogged today about how he resolved a problem where the MSMQ snap-in missing in MMC console . He found that re-registering the MQSNAP.DLL file did the trick. I've had a look at the support case archive and you may need to re-register ATL...

Let's say MSMQ is part of your company's standard server build but you have been given the objective of removing the MSMQ service from those machines that do not require it. If you are handed responsibility for servers where there is no documentation...

And 3rd in the trio created for Windows 7 / Windows 2008 R2, we have: Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ) - Removal of Windows 2000 Client Support Service where Nancy Strickland discusses the impact of installing Windows 2008 R2 domain controllers...

Here's a short (3 minute) video from December covering an improvement on performance introduced in MSMQ 5.0. I'm not sure it's worth the coverage as the number of systems with vast numbers of queues is pretty small but there you go. Microsoft Message...

Just noticed that MSMQ is featured on Microsoft Showcase as part of the "Windows 7 - Known Incompatibilites" series. Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ) - SHA-2 is the default Hash Algorithm, and how to overcome it This 8 minute video, voiced by...