James Finnigan

Debugging, Shell Programming, Setup, Working at Microsoft, Virtualization

Teaching Children to Program Khan Academy / Processing

I've got a new experiment going on where I'm trying to get the kids interested in the new computer...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 09/08/2012

Teaching Children to Program

I was playing Robozzle with my oldest and he was having a blast and loved that he was programming...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 04/04/2009

Hyper-V review

The hypervisor support in Server 2008 is now out in beta and it's great to see the product hitting...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 01/31/2008

Beginning again - and hiring

Well, fun times.  I've taken a position on the Virtual Machine Manager team.  I'll be one...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 11/07/2007

The Shell Extensions Approved list is not a complete list of shell extensions on the system

I've noticed that a number of different programs just look at the Approved list of shell extensions...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 09/08/2007

Supplemental Registrations (aka. Context Menu Handers (etc) - where are they loaded from...)

I've been thinking about the registration problem where you want to add a context menu (much of this...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 09/06/2007

Installing shell extensions - please complain here

So... I've been looking more closely at Wix and I think I'm going to build some custom actions to do...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 08/10/2007

Summer Fun, Full House

(Normally this kind of post is reserved for my other blog where I mostly blog about non-tech - so...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 07/26/2007

The best way to make UAC shut up for a while

Let's say you want to install a few things and want UAC to stop bugging you while you install them....

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 06/08/2007

How to stop WinDbg from going crazy and loading all the symbols

One of my favorite features of WinDbg is that it doesn't load all the symbols up-front. That's a...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 06/04/2007

Breaking when the instruction pointer leaves the module

The problem is to skip out of a kernel driver that we don't have symbols for - what's the best way...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 05/31/2007

Finding where a bad HRESULT is returned

I've looked at this a couple times, but here's another way to break when the error code you're...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 05/31/2007

How to only break on a jump when it will be taken

Here's a question that came up a work a little bit back - thought I would share the result around....

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 05/31/2007

Making an MSI that doesn't need a UAC/LUA prompt

The goal I think that most things don't need to require a UAC prompt to install - just install it...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 05/03/2007

How to launch an un-elevated process from an elevated process

Update: Please refer to Aaron's FAQ which is being maintained while this post has grown stale This...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 04/11/2007

UAC UI on oldnewthing - what the colors mean

I mentioned recently that I was the new owner of the UAC UI (from the dev side). Well, today I found...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 03/31/2007

Flat Solution Explorer

Here's a great tool for folks that use Visual Studio with large projects - it gives you a flat view...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 03/22/2007

New Beginnings...

I've moved onto the Windows Experience team. It should a lot of fun to continue to follow Guided...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 03/14/2007

Virtual PC 2007: Released, as free download

How cool is that - we're releasing Virtual PC 2007 as a free download. Why should you care? Here's...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 02/25/2007

RegNamespace sample up on codeplex

Scott, Jerry, Thayn and I have whipped up a sample of indexing the registry, as well as a shell...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 02/16/2007

Windows Live ID Client SDK alpha release

On a recent post about BITSAdmin, someone commented on how you needed to be logged into passport to...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 02/02/2007

Recruiting at BYU

Hi all - I'm at BYU for the career fair tomorrow (Wednesday). Come on down and talk to us and bring...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 01/31/2007

RE: How to get rid of that pesky Windows Welcome Center at FIRST boot

While reading blog comments about Welcome Center, I came across this entry on how to remove welcome...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 01/25/2007

Yahoo! Messenger for Windows Vista

I was just looking at the Yahoo! Messenger for Windows Vista video. Wow. It's gorgeous. It's nice to...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 01/24/2007

Bernie Klinder ♡ Guided Help

From Bernie's review of Windows Vista's killer features... Guided Help and Automated Diagnostics --...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 01/16/2007

Smile spotting - can you tell the difference?

I was taking a smile spotting survey that I found from Kathy Sierra's blog (good reading) and I know...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 01/16/2007

Using WMIC to check for predicted disk failure (S.M.A.R.T. analysis)

I was looking at the Windows Vista Reliability and Performance Monitor and noticed that the data...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 01/15/2007

Microsoft CES website - Group Shot pictures

Here's Microsoft's CES website. There's a ton of interesting stuff on here. The one that will...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 01/10/2007

WMI Folder - codeplex project

Well, I've put the WMI folder code up on codeplex. Please remember that this code is very much...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 01/10/2007

How to use BITS to transfer files

BITS is Microsoft's background intelligent transfer service. It's used to transfer files without it...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 12/23/2006

Sabarinath Nair reviews Guided Help, Vista

Sabarinath had this to say about Guided Help: Guided Help While this feature is still under beta, I...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 12/23/2006

Microsoft Junk Email Reporting Tool

This tool allows you to send in junk email so that others won't have to read it and hopefully others...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 12/23/2006

Our uninvited Christmas tree(s)

Well, there's a lot of story to the last couple days so I'm going to bite it off in pieces. Here's...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 12/17/2006

Will it blend? - Extreme Blending

I know this is stupid - but I still can't resist sharing. What blender manufacturers do when they...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 12/08/2006

Wii Damage

The Wii is just cool - I have a lot of friends asking me if I can get them a discount on it and I...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 12/08/2006

OldNewThing - Raymond Chen's new Book

Okay, I changed my mind, I wrote a book after all Back in 1993, I wrote that I'm doing this instead...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 12/07/2006

Halo 3 Beta signup

From the site... North America Halo Gamers! Register now for future Halo 3 updates and for an...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 12/05/2006

New Halo 3 trailer - Starry Night

XBox Marketplace has a new trailer up - starry night. Enjoy!

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 12/05/2006

Computer for the kitchen?

[via on10] Interesting idea - but when's the last time you looked at a well-used recipe book?...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 12/04/2006

The Problem with Programming

This is a great article in which Bjarne Stroustrup, the inventor of the C++ programming language,...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 12/04/2006

Getting a Path from an IDList

Not much to this - but I notice searches for this coming to my blog, so I might as well provide the...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 12/01/2006

Photo Album Publishing - Why print photos when you can print a book?

Did you know that you can print custom books now? I can easily and cheaply create my own book with...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 12/01/2006

Christmas Camera Shopping Technique and Recommendation

I've been thinking about good point and click cameras lately, and I'm a big fan of the Ricoh Caplio...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 11/26/2006

Windows boot screens though time

Long Zheng shows off the progression in the screen that is both the first thing we see and the last...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 11/25/2006

Windows Vista Keyboard Shortcuts

Just came across this good listing of keyboard shortcuts in Windows Vista and thought I'd share them...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 11/24/2006

Agile teams at Microsoft?

Well, I was just reading ex-MSFT guy Moishe Lettvin's entry about how the start menu put together....

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 11/24/2006

Locating the file that a function (not on the stack) was written in

This question came up in one of the internal aliases a couple days ago. While debugging, how do I...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 11/10/2006

Screencast: Video of a few Guided Help Topics running.

So Andrew, went through and put together a screencast of a few of the Guided Help topics in action....

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 11/10/2006

Photosynth is LIVE!

I talked about this cool service a little while ago - it's really cool. From the videos, it's really...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 11/09/2006

Google emails a worm

Hey, Apple gets to ship worms, it's only fitting that Google emails them. I only wish Microsoft...

Author: James Finnigan - MS Date: 11/09/2006

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