Software Sleuthing

Software Testing, Development, and Related

Blog Migration

For more flexibility in my posting options, I'm moving off of blogs.msdn.com. New posts can be found...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 10/22/2011

Your Password is Too Secure

For obvious reasons, Microsoft employees are asked to refrain from bashing other teams or products...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 09/13/2011

WinDbg / i386kd Primer

A handful of people on my team are working with the Windows code base to ensure we don't break them...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 08/29/2011

Console output with a transparent background color

In Windows land, if you want to print out colored text to a console, you will probably end up...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 07/26/2011

How Testers Test versus How Users Use

With the emphasis on SDETs and generic Engineering teams, I've seen a growing disparity in how...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 07/11/2011

Hex Conversion via a Batch File

Occasionally, when something bad happens, an application will return an exception code (which is...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 06/29/2011

Common Process Termination Values

When your application does something the OS (or the application itself) doesn't like, often the...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 06/13/2011

Batch File String Substitution with Nested Environment Variables

The SET command has some nice extensions that let you do various manipulation operations on...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 06/03/2011

Limits of OLEDB and Access Passwords

People that know me know I hate useless error codes. During code reviews if I see someone attempting...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 05/25/2011

The Many Faces of Visual C++

Microsoft has an uncanny ability to confuse and befuddle users with the ever changing names of...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 12/15/2009

Magic Numbers: Integers

After many moons of sitting in a queue somewhere, the MSDN Tester Center just posted my intro...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 10/09/2009

Test Plan Template

While looking at some of the traffic statistics for the MSDN Tester Center, I noticed that a bunch...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 10/02/2009

The Brute Tester

A co-worker of mine was working on a tool to watch our release share for the appearance of a test...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 06/01/2009

Crashed Conference Room (ɯooɹ)

So we have these fancy touch screen displays on the outside of our conference rooms which will tell...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 05/21/2009

Upcoming Testing Conferences (2nd half of 2009)

Here is my semiannual post on testing conferences that will be occurring later this year. CAST July...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 05/13/2009

Communication is Optional

Clear communication is essential to our jobs and yet it always amazes me how poorly we do it. I...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 04/14/2009

Top 25 software errors

SANS, along with a coalition of individuals and software organizations, just released their list of...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 01/12/2009

New Black Book

Before the holidays, there was a big re-organization of personnel here in Xbox land. As a result, I...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 01/07/2009

MiniDumps and "Bad" Stacks

A fellow reader sent a comment outlining the following problem: I'm using the DMPSTK example from...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 11/10/2008

Upcoming Testing Conferences (1st half of 2009)

Here are the links and dates for some of the testing related conferences which are...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 11/04/2008

New Xbox Experience

This blog has been pretty quiet for a while since we've been busy doing the last push getting the...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 11/03/2008

Off to StarWest

I'm off at StarWest, so the blog will be a bit quieter this week. If you happen to be in Anaheim,...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 09/29/2008

Save My Image File's Metadata

The relatively new "Metadata Working Group" just released their first publication on guidelines for...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 09/25/2008

Running 32bit dependent scripts in a 64bit world

As seen earlier, it can be problematic to run scripts which rely on 32bit COM objects on a 64bit...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 09/18/2008

CreateObject fails with 0x80040154

I've got a handful of stand-alone script files (mostly JavaScript) which I run from cscript.exe or...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 09/17/2008

Testing when "the code is the documentation"

Throughout the course of my testing career, I've often heard this dreaded statement. Despite the...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 09/03/2008

Security Tools: Codenomicon

About three years ago, when the Xbox 360 was getting close to launching, we went through a security...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 08/26/2008

Bad Error Messages: "Operation Failed"

Here is an error message from a Microsoft product that falls into the completely useless category....

Author: Josh Poley Date: 08/26/2008

Developer Tip: Add a blank macro so testers can inject code

While I was working on writing some API tests for a module that was being integrated into the Xbox...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 08/11/2008

Upcoming Testing Conferences (2nd half of 2008)

I was talking with a test manager yesterday about recruiting opportunities, and he was wondering...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 07/30/2008

Leave well enough alone

I was reviewing a check-in the other day, and one of the changes was to fix a line of code which...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 07/17/2008

Digital LEGOs

So I recently ran across the LEGO Digital Designer, which is a free download enabling you to build...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 07/15/2008

Custom "View Source" Application on IE

In the process of setting up a 64bit Server 2008 box, I ran into a little issue trying to convince...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 07/07/2008

Compile First, then Check-In

We've had a recent rash of build breaks, so the team has been getting hardcore about requiring a...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 07/02/2008

Free Security Book: HAC

The Handbook of Applied Cryptography is being offered for free download (for personal use of course)...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 06/30/2008

Know Thine Product's Language

As a technical tester (SDET), you are expected to help find bugs that are written in the programming...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 06/25/2008

Automating Crash Dump Analysis: Some Final Thoughts

For a reference, here are some links to the previous parts in this series: · Prolific Usage of...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 06/23/2008

Showing the Disassembly from a .DMP File (Automating Crash Dump Analysis Part 4)

When investigating a crash, it can often be beneficial to see the assembly leading up too, and even...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 06/17/2008

Getting the Crash Details from a .DMP File (Automating Crash Dump Analysis Part 3)

Aside from a stack trace (the "where"), you probably want to know something about the crash (the...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 06/06/2008

Getting the Stack from a .DMP File (Automating Crash Dump Analysis Part 2)

So now that we have a memory dump file, and know how to open it, we will want to pull some useful...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 06/02/2008

Opening a Crash Dump File (Automating Crash Dump Analysis Part 1)

So let's assume for the moment that you have a collection of crash dump files from your team's...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 05/27/2008

Prolific Usage of MiniDumpWriteDump (Automating Crash Dump Analysis Part 0)

As a precursor to a series on programmatically querying crash dump files, I wanted to first talk...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 05/19/2008

New Old Group

Just a quick note to let you all know that I moved back over to the Xbox platform team today (the...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 05/19/2008

Résumé Tip: Don't turn on revision tracking

At one point, I ran across a résumé (in Word format) which had revision tracking turned on. It...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 05/14/2008

Automating Large Image Conversion with Photoshop

So fairly recently, I've merged my fascination with extremely large images with my fascination of...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 05/12/2008

You Don't Need a Zune to use the Zune Software (aka "yet another free media player")

With the release of version 2.5 of the Zune software, I thought I would point out a fairly obvious,...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 05/06/2008

Colossal Handle Leak

So I was un-installing an application (which I won't name) and just happened to notice a rather...

Author: Josh Poley Date: 05/05/2008

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