VinceX.NET's WebLog

Orcas CTP on Vista issue

2007-04-17T16:14:00Z

For the first message of my new life, I have an issue with Orcas CTP on Vista:

I know I supposed to use Orcas CTP in a VPC but I have only 2GB on my vista laptop and it's very paintfull to not have enough ram for both Vista and the VPC.

So, I decided to install Orcas on my laptop directly; I did it many time before with success.

Before I leave MS, I downloaded a build of Orcas (20323.00) and I had to patch it to make it work on Vista, otherwise, I got an error message :

"Error 1 Required file 'alink.dll with IAlink3' could not be found"  when compiling a WPF app. project.

I found the patch internally following a mail recommendation:

Windows6.0-KB110806-x86-ForTestingPurposesOnly.exe and I installed on many PCs with success until now;

today I got an message: "ERROR: The test signed hotfix you are trying to install has expired. Please contact Microsoft Support to get a newer version"

Someone can tell me if a new version of the Patch exists or if a more recent Orcas s build has been fixed to resolve this issue ?

if yes, where can I find it ?

Thanks very much in advance

- Vince

A new start in my life

2007-04-17T15:38:00Z

I decided to leave Microsoft to come back to my first activity: be part of a startup; in 1990, I founded a first software startup which is sleeping since years...

Leaving a company like MS is not an easy step considering be part of this company was a dream;

Microsoft is really a great company but it seems that's remains true pretty only in Redmond and not in MCS (MS service);
be part of the Microsoft Service as consultant means be part of the worst division of the company; (the real stars, bonus, etc... are for software divisions or sales)
the guy leading the service divisions come from Wal-Mart and he's truly considering people like food boxes; he is not the only one;
all news managers in this company (at least in my region) aren't coming from the original MS culture which was really loving technologies and the brand;
those guys can sales cars, software or services with same method with ONE only goal: make money; only money....
I know money is important but at a certain point, the performance improvements requested each year are so crazy I recently
didn’t met an happy consultant in this company (again in my region).
Processes, surveys, paper work, reviews and career management cause balance life work really bad; training budget has been reduced so badly that's
cause a loss in quality of skills for pretty all consultant; in same time, technologies become more and more complex....
Maybe this happened only in my sub but I'm quite sure this is a worldwide issue.

Anyway, from now on, I will using cool techno like WPF, WCF, WF, and SQL2005 in my new startup project...

Best regards

-Vince

Chris Sells Loves Vista...

2006-11-26T15:52:00Z

Chris. Sells does a great job of listing the great features of Vista. (good things to know....)

I no longer have to do Ctrl+Esc, R before I can type something to run (I'm a huge keyboard guy); I just have to type Ctrl+Esc and start typing. This savings alone has ruined me for XP. (And before you point out that I can just use Win+R, I don't like the Windows key: it's not on all keyboards and it's not always in the same place.)

If I want to search for a program in my voluminous start menu, I just do Ctrl+Esc and start typing. When the list of results contains my target, I press the down arrow to pick the one I want and press Enter when I get there.

If I want to search for content on my computer, I just do Ctrl+Esc and start typing (once search is set to index my entire computer -- I wish that were the default). If I want to be specific that I just want to search content or file name, I can use the "content:" and "name:" designators, e.g. "content:foo name:foo.cs".

If I want to find a setting in a particular control panel app, I open the control panel and start typing -- the results point me at the specific control panel applet and page with that setting.

If I want to find something on the internet, I press Ctrl+Esc and start typing, then press the up arrow (to get to the "Search the Internet" option) and press Enter, which brings up the results in my IE7 favorite search engine.

If I want to find something in my large list of installed programs, I open the Programs and Features control panel and start typing (I found the renamed "Add and Remove Programs" control panel by searching for "uninstall").

Before you narrow my list of likes about Vista to "pervasive search" (which, obviously, I love), I also really like the sidebar. It's amazing how often I glance over there to get some quick piece of info that's always being updated for me rather than start some app, interrupting what I'm doing (e.g. lately I've been waiting with bated breath for MSFT to hit 30). I'm anxious for lots more sidebar gadgets.

I love that the desktop is in the Alt+Tab list.

I love the 3D Win+Tab list.

The games, both new and old, are uniformly gorgeous.

I really love the new look 'n' feel, including the animations and the new start menu, both of which I turned off in XP.

I love that it just works on my 2-year old Dell laptop w/o any muss or fuss. I only have a Windows Experience Index of 2.0 because of my graphics card, but using Vista is still a very pleasant experience (and I have Aero glass around the edges of my windows and everything).

I really love Windows Meeting Space. I'm a big user of Live Meeting because of my remote employee status and Windows MS is a simpler, cleaner, peer-to-peer version of the only parts of LiveMeeting I every actually used, i.e. sharing apps and sharing files. To have it included for free is huge.

I love having Media Center included, too.

I love that I can do picture slide shows from zip files as well as from folders.

I like the new Sync Center, one-stop shopping for my offline folders (which I love) as well as managing my smartphone's files.

I really like the real-time thumbnail of apps when I hang the mouse over icons in the taskbar and in the Alt+Tab/Win+Tab list.

I love that .NET 3.0 is included out of the box.

I love that every app I've tried, including an app I originally wrote for Windows 95, just works.

I love that I find new features all the time.

....

.NET Framework 3.0 has been released!

2006-11-07T13:39:00Z

.NET Framework 3 News and Announcements

The .NET Framework 3.0 has officially been released! You can download the .NET Framework 3.0 components here:

Note, if you are using Windows Vista the .NET Framework 3.0 Runtime Components are installed by default.

The Readme for the released version of the .NET Framework 3.0 is available here. If you have a previous CTP installed, please be sure to review the uninstall instructions. If you have questions about installing the .NET Framework 3.0, please post your questions to the .NET Framework Setup Forum.

Free E-Learning Clinics for .NET FX3.0 (WPF, WF & WCF) for a very limited time - Register Today

2006-10-12T15:38:00Z

Do you want to get yourself familiar and up to date with .NET 3.0 Framework? Then this is your best chance to do so for FREE. Go to this site and register and you can choose to conduct 3 x 2 Hours premium clinics about the new capabilities provided by .NET 3.0. The 3 trainings include Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Workflow and Windows Communication Foundation. The best thing is that once you've registered, you don't have to do them immediately, you can do them at your own pace within the next 12 months. But remember this is FREE for a very limited time, so register today.

Click here to register today.

WindowsNow

2006-10-02T11:27:00Z

Longhornblogs is dead......

viva WindowsNow

An Update on Visual Studio Support in Windows Vista

2006-09-28T15:20:00Z

Found on LonghornBlog this interesting postfrom Robert McLaws

{

Last night I posted about Visual Studio Support on Windows Vista. Scott Guthrie, GPM from the Developer Division, had this to say on a blog this morning:

The big technical challenge is with enabling scenarios like advanced debugging. Debuggers are incredibly invasive in a process, and so changes in how an OS handles memory layout can have big impacts on it. Vista did a lot of work in this release to tighten security and lock down process/memory usage - which is what is affecting both the VS debugger, as well as every other debugger out there. Since the VS debugger is particularly rich (multi-language, managed/native interop, COM + Jscript integration, etc) - it will need additional work to fully support all scenarios on Vista. That is also the reason we are releasing a special servicing release after VS 2005 SP1 specific to Vista - to make sure everything (and especially debugging and profiling) work in all scenarios. It is actually several man-months of work (we've had a team working on this for quite awhile). Note that the .NET 1.1 (and ASP.NET 1.1) is fully supported at runtime on Vista. VS 2003 will mostly work on Vista. What we are saying, though, is that there will be some scenarios where VS 2003 doesn't work (or work well) on Vista - hence the reason it isn't a supported scenario. Instead, we recommend using a VPC/VM image for VS 2003 development to ensure 100% compat. Hope this helps - even if the answer isn't entirely what we'd all like it to be, Scott.

So all the developers out there need to take a deep breath and chill out. Microsoft isn't trying to screw you. The Windows platform changed on so many levels that the advanced capabilities of the VS debugger are difficult to support, especially under UAC. That's why a fix is going to have to be put out for VS2005. VS2003/2002 will still run, it just won't be supported. Look, a lot of companies are going to have to put out service packs for their apps to improve compatibility with Vista. Did you honestly think Vistal Studio was going to be any different?

}

The Truth About Visual Studio Support on Windows Vista

2006-09-28T15:13:00Z

Found on LonghornBlogs this interesting post from Robert Law...

{

I was briefed earlier today on Visual Studio support on Windows Vista, and I wanted to clear the air... because there seems to be some confusion.

Visual Studio 6.0 - Supported on Windows Vista
Visual Studio 2002 - Not supported on Windows Vista
Visual Studio 2003 - Not supported on Windows Vista
Visual Studio 2005 SP1- Supported on Windows Vista, currently has UAC-related compatibility issues that may get in your way. This issues will be fixed after Vista RTMs. (I suspect if you shut UAC off you won't have these issues... but of course I don;t recommend that)

What does this mean for developers? Well, it's important to remember that the .NET 1.1 runtime will still be compatible with Vista, so your apps themselves will continue to run fine. But for the tools, it would take a lot of work to bring those apps up to speed, and Microsoft has to make hard choices on how it allocates its resources.

If you're in a large organization, and you still have to support .NET 1.1 code, chances are pretty good you're on Software Assurance, and you'll have a copy of Windows Vista Enterprise. Time to utilize one of your 4 VPC image license and fire up your development environment in Virtual PC. If you're not in a large organization, Virtual PC / Virtual Server is still free. Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta 2 (say that 5x fast) has a new utility called VHDMount that lets you mount a VHD as a physical hard drive on the host. You can store all of your source code in a separate VHD and access it from both the host and the guest.

UPDATE: Don't forget about MSBee, which lets you compile to .NET 1.1 on VS2005.

The other solution is to migrate most of the organization to Vista and keep the developers on XP/2003. You can still develop for .NET 3.0 on those platforms, so most apps shouldn't have a problem (unless you're hooking into something like dwmapi.dll)

Anyways, is Microsoft trying to purpously force people to upgrade to .NET 2.0/3.0? Absolutely not. But you have to ask youself a question: Would rather Visual Studio "Orcas" be delayed until the end of 2007 to get 2003 running on Vista? I know my answer is "hell no", and yours probably is too.

It's a bad deal, but in the end, it's the right call to keep other products on track. I wish Microsoft baked VPC into Vista like virtualization was built into OSX for OS9 compatibility... but I'm just a crazy man.

}

WPF:Application = Code + markup

2006-09-13T14:35:42Z

Book:Applications = Code + Markup: A Guide to the Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation (Pro - Developer) (Paperback)
by Charles Petzold

is available in bookstore

ADO.NET Tech Preview: Entity Data Model (Winfs Update)

2006-06-26T12:24:00Z

Found MSDN Article on WinFs Update

Read here