Maarten's blog

I normally use Windows Virtual PC for demos of Kernel debug scenarios. For a special occasion I needed to use VMWare. There are plenty of articles how to set it up and it is almost identical to Virtual PC. You basically connect over COM1 through a named...

I was trying to run some XPerf traces to prepare for a training, when it all of a sudden stopped working. The error I got was this: xperf: error: NT Kernel Logger: Cannot create a file when that file already exists. (0xb7). Weird because I ran the...

Hardware supported NX is dependent on PAE (Windows Internals chapter 9. Memory). But why would that be? The AMD64 Architecture Programmer's Manual (Volume 2: System Programming) mentions this: No Execute (NX) Bit. Bit 63. This bit is present in the...

Yesterday I was running into a problem with Visual Studio 2010 and SilverLight 4. I asked for help internally. There was some suspician that this history might have something to do with my problem, but I had installed all kinds of tools on my machine...

The WDK has a tool called poolmon and you can use it to find leaks as is described in the Windows Internals book. You can use the NotMyFault demo app ( here ) to demo it. Instead of PoolMon you can also use WPT and X-Perf. Once installed, you run it...

This week I got a couple of requests how to install WPT from the SDK. You need to jump through some hoops. If you bing "download xperf" you get here . In there it says to install from the SDK: · Windows 7 SDK (contains WPT 4.6) WPT 4.1...

For some obscure reasons, I needed the Import Address Table (IAT) of specific modules from a kernel dump. Actually I needed them for all modules from potentially a whole lot of dumps. Getting the IAT for one module is straightforward: Get the address...

When you run powercfg /energy from an elevated command line you can get this: Warnings Platform Timer Resolution:Platform Timer Resolution The default platform timer resolution is 15.6ms (15625000ns) and should be used whenever the system...

Here’s a problem a partner ran into last month. Suppose you have an ActiveX server (in this case it was a VB6 COM Executable) registered on x64 bit Windows Server 2008 or Vista. You open up Component Services and you find your server under “Component...

Follow-up from the research on how to disable a per-application shim . When I saw the output from the shim infrastructure in DebugView, I mistakenly assumed that the application was shimmed. It apparently only means that the application is found in the...

When I go to connect and download the Windows 7 Software Logo Requirements v1.7.docx, it downloads a zip file. Unzipping the file gives me a somewhat familiar view. I've seen this before. This looks like a OPC document . Since OPC is XML wrapped...

For Windows Vista Logo, we used to have vouchers to entice early adaption. An ISV recently asked me for vouchers for Windows 7. Since Windows 7 is a "self-test" there is no need for a voucher. It is virtually free. The only cost might be that an ISV needs...

I recently upgraded to Windows 7 RTM. When I hit the Windows key, no search results were being returned. Only standard items from control panel etc. The Windows search service appeared not to be running. When I tried to start the service from services...

You can link binaries with /integritycheck. This will tell the loader to check the signature of the binary at load time. Supposedly signing with page hash (/ph) has a substantial impact on load time. Omitting /ph will require the entire binary to be loaded...

The other day I was working on an application that we apparently shimmed. I wanted to know if disabling the shim actually changed the behavior. You can download ACT and go hunt for the executable. (For some interesting reason that fully escapes me...

I am working on profiling impacts of software on the performance of the OS. I'm testing on Windows 7 RC 7100 x86. It is predominantly to get a feel for the complexity. I want to know how much effort it would entail to wrap this up into an offering for...

Suppose you are trying to get your application Vista Certified or OEM Ready. You test your application with Application Verifier and you see this error in the log: " < avrf:logEntry Time =" 2008-10-15 : 14:18:33 " LayerName =" Locks " StopCode =...

Anytime you want to do anything in a debugger, you need symbols. Best thing you can do is set up an environment variable, so you're done. Here are public Microsoft symbols. Yves has created a little cmd that you can use which I politely copy here since...

When you upgrade your project from VC2005 to VC2008 you might get these errors: mfcs90u.lib(oleexp.obj) : error LNK2005: _DllGetClassObject@12 already defined in d.obj mfcs90u.lib(oleexp.obj) : error LNK2005: _DllCanUnloadNow@0 already defined in d...

If you have a service and have told AppVerifier to monitor it, you might wonder where the logs are and how you can see them. (Two separate questions). You can find the logs here " c:\windows\system32\config\systemprofile\appverifierlogs " (or the corresponding...

While I'm trying to find out how to fix the portals, here are some links to documents we frequently use. OEM Ready program: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsvista/cc315067.aspx There is a Manual for the tool, but it is not linked from anywhere...

If you need to install components that are shared between multiple applications, you want them to go to Common Files . I found a decent description in this doc: " Windows Vista Application Development Requirements for User Account Control Compatibility...

So you're ready to test your application with Application Verifier. The OEM Ready and Certified for Windows Vista (CFWV) test documents specify you type Windbg –I from an elevated command prompt. So you add your application to Application Verifier, add...

For OEM Ready tests (and for Certified for Windows Vista) one of the requirements is to set up an interactive debugger. The documentation specifies Windbg since it allows you to do use extensions such as "!analyze –v" which will give you a ton of information...

Today I was working on an OEM Ready application. It is basically a subset of the Certified for Windows Vista program. Application Verifier is used to test reliability (heap overruns, handle usage, etc.). The test steps outline that you need to set up...