A Taste of Logic : General

Purchase My Books in the Microsoft Company Store

jamesche — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 04:18:14 GMT

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 employee or otherwise have access to the Company Store in Redmond, please drop by and buy my book! At this time, the book will not be available at other Microsoft campuses, nor will it will be available on the online Company Store. That may change if this pilot is successful.

Jim

Why don't my .NET Framework patches install?

jamesche — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 23:43:00 GMT

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 he couldn't explain. Even though SMS reported a successful installation on all of his workstations, it also reported many of these same workstations as unpatched on successive scans. Something was obviously awry.

Upon investigation, we found a log file in the customer's temp directory that contained the following:

[2007-09-22 01:00:00] ProcessFiles completed.
[2007-09-22 01:00:06] PatchExec: Unhandled Exception Microsoft.WindowsInstaller.InstallerException: The configuration data for this product is corrupt. Contact your support personnel.
    at Microsoft.WindowsInstaller.Installer.get_Products()
    at Microsoft.DDPatch.PatchInstallation.ApplyPatchToInstalledProducts(String mspFile, String target, TargetProduct[] targetProducts, Boolean quiet, String logfile, String& lastPatchedProductName)
    at Microsoft.DDPatch.PatchInstallation.Install(String targetProduct, Boolean quiet, String logfile)
    at Microsoft.DDPatch.PatchExec.Main(String[] args)
[2007-09-22 01:00:15] Process returned: 0

This sure doesn't look right. Obviously something didn't go well during the patch installation, but the return code we see here is 0. No wonder SMS believed that the patch successfully installed.

What happened? This particular patch (and some other .NET Framework patches) consists of a Windows Installer patch file (a .msp file) along with some wrappers around some APIs for the Windows Installer. These wrappers provide, among other things, support for rollback and for proper installation of the patch. In this particular case, one wrapper called an API that enumerated products installed by the Windows Installer. That API enumerated the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/Installer/Products registry key which contains a GUID for each product that's installed, but in my customer's case, it also contained some textual string values that were written to it by a bad installer from a third-party company.

When the API encountered this bad registry key, it returned an error code to our wrapper. Our wrapper then wrote out the failure to the log file and returned 0 because it had successfully done its job and logged the failure. Unfortunately, the other wrapper got the return code of 0 and believed that the install was successful.

It's worth pointing out that this is an extremely uncommon scenario. The keys written to the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/Installer/Products registry key should be added using the Windows Installer API. The Windows Installer API will create valid GUID keys and all will be fine. However, not all installation packages play by the rules, and in this case, we got bit.

WARNING: If you encounter a problem like this, it's important that you not just extract the .msp file out of the patch and install it manually. If you do that, you'll lose the ability to fully roll back the patch. Instead, you should try and locate the offending registry key and remove it.

In the long term, you won't have to worry about this. We've fixed this problem in our wrappers in order to provide a more fail-safe installation experience. The new wrappers should be incorporated into our .NET Framework patches soon.

Get Hotfixes Without Calling PSS

jamesche — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 17:40:00 GMT

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 and we'll send the hotfix to you automatically.

Jim

Please listen carefully as our menus have changed.

jamesche — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 08:05:00 GMT

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-light syndrome. That prompted a call to Microsoft Xbox support, and despite what many Microsoft outsiders think, Microsoft employees have no special access to such assistance. Both of these experiences required me to listen to a long menu of choices (and for some reason, all of these services have menus that have "recently changed" so you are encouraged to "listen carefully" to the entire, drawn out thing.)

Wouldn't it be nice if you had a way to look up a company's number along with the "secret" codes to punch in to get directly to a real, live human being? If only there were a massive network with information such as this that any person with a computer could access. It just so happens that there is just such a thing! It's called gethuman, and it includes a database of hundreds of companies and how to get straight to a real person. Very cool!

WPF Provides the Best of Times

jamesche — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 19:24:00 GMT

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 large papers. I have a little experience with the publishers of these papers, and I wouldn't prop them up as technical visionaries, but in this case, Pinchy might just be right!

If you haven't already checked out the beta of the Times Reader, you should. It uses Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) to display the Times in a very readable format. WPF is part of the 3.0 version of the .NET Framework, and it's darned impressive!

When you install the Times Reader on Windows XP SP2, you'll have to install the .NET Framework 3.0 as well. If you're on Vista, you're set and the download will be small. When you run the Times Reader, it downloads all of the content to your machine, so you can read offline if you want. However, if you stay online, the Times Reader will run in your system tray and keep your news updated on the fly.

While the Times Reader is in beta, you'll be able to read the paper free of charge.

Love, Hate, and Barenaked Ladies

jamesche — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 20:50:00 GMT

I hate DRM. Absolutely hate it. I love Barenaked Ladies. (It's a music group, Mom. I'm not opening any closets.) Barenaked Ladies have always been great about making their music available for download without being burdened by DRM. A buddy at work recently pointed me to this article regarding Barenaked Ladies's latest album, Barenaked Ladies are Men, which is available FREE right now. The bad news? I just bought this album a few days ago, but you can still take advantage of this great deal on great music. Unfortunately, you'll have to wait until Aimie Street (the provider of the download) gets their site back up and running. (Maybe they should be using Windows Server 2003 and ASP.NET instead of the free OS, free web server, and PHP.)

This is just one of the cool ways you can enjoy Barenaked Ladies. If you visit their bootleg web site, you can download concert shows they've done and enjoy much more of this great group. Albums are affordable and high quality.

Lastly, you can join eMusic and get free MP3s as you try them out. If you like it, pay a little and get more non-DRM music. If you don't like it, cancel and keep the music you already have. eMusic has a lot of indie music (which is great,) but they're also starting to gain ground in the mainstream music area. Of course, bands like Barenaked Ladies who want people to actually buy their music are available on eMusic.

Thank goodness for an 80GB iPod. ;)

Apple FUD

jamesche — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 03:31:00 GMT

Apple has launched a campaign of FUD against Windows Vista. You know what FUD is, right? Fear, uncertainty, and doubt, and that's just what Apple relies on in their "you need a new computer for Vista" campaign. While Apple's commercials show the same cool factor and quality of production that they always have, they have one flaw; they're hogwash!

Don't get me wrong. I'm not your typical anti-Apple Microsoft employee. I own an iPod, not a Zune, I actually prefer iTunes 7 to Media Center 11, and there's a decent chance that my next notebook will be a MacBook Pro. I like Apple, but I resent their implication that Vista is a resource hog that will require most computer users to buy a new computer.

I've been running Vista for a long time. I've installed it on a lot of different computers. Some of those computers are fast machines running modern hardware, but I've also installed it on one of my older computers, and it runs great on that machine. I upgraded the video card to an Nvidia 6800 GS AGP on that machine and it now runs Aero Glass with excellent performance, so I get all of the cool graphical effects. This machine is about 5 years old.

Another common misconception I've heard repeated time and again in podcasts that I listen to is that Vista really requires 2GB of memory. I did upgrade my laptop to 2GB for Vista because it uses a shared-memory graphics chip that sucks system RAM in order to run Aero Glass. It runs great until I install SQL Server and a few other memory-intensive apps on there. The older machine I mentioned above has 1GB of RAM in it, and Vista runs incredibly well on it; every bit as snappy as Windows XP.

I'm not the only one in this boat. I've talked to a lot of friends who say that they were incredibly surprised by how well Vista ran on older hardware. While I think that's great, the only reason that they were surprised is because they had been brainwashed into thinking that you can't run Vista on anything older than a year old.

If you want to know if Vista will run on your computer, I'd advise you to check out the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor. When you run this, keep in mind that if the Upgrade Advisor flags an area, it does it for a purpose. For example, if your video gets flagged, you might not see Aero Glass when you run Vista, etc. Still, it will give you more helpful advice than Apple. You may not have to buy a new PC.

Until next time, remember not to smile.