Neeraj Agrawal

Explorer.exe is crashing on Vista frequently

2009-03-15T11:21:00Z

Check the source of problem. if it is because of CLMedia.dll. To do this run "wercon" and you will all the hangs and crashes happened in your system. Select the APPCRASH event for explorer and you would see something like the following as detail of the problem.

Problem signature:

Problem Event Name: APPCRASH

Application Name: Explorer.exe

Application Version: 6.0.6000.16549

Application Timestamp: 46d230c5

Fault Module Name: CLMedia.dll

Fault Module Version: 2.0.0.1627

Fault Module Timestamp: 41a31653

Exception Code: c0000094

Exception Offset: 00002545

OS Version: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.768.2

Locale ID: 2057

Additional Information 1: d6aa

Additional Information 2: 550813108d42c370043e28bb37aac5af

Additional Information 3: d6aa

Additional Information 4: 550813108d42c370043e28bb37aac5af

So try these (in order)

1. Open Explorer. Goto organize -> "Folder and Search Options" -> click on "View Tab" -> check "Always show icons never thumnails" and then click apply.

2. Go to this site and install this patch it'll definitely solve your problem. http://www.cyberlink.com/oem/microsoft/enu/index.jsp

Error in registry for extension "Exchange Extensions;?

2008-05-07T11:46:00Z

---------------------------
Microsoft Office Outlook
---------------------------
Error in registry for extension "Exchange Extensions;?". The syntax or format of the registry entry is incorrect. Check the registry settings and compare the registry for this extension to other extensions in the registry.

Some fine day my Outlook 2003 denied to start with the above error message. Either starting it in Safe Mode did not helped. Finally I have to use the ultimate google for rescue and got numerous links for handling htis problem. Almost all of them asked me to either delete "Exchange Extensions" registry key or set to a specific value. Nothing worked for me and my outlook was consistently not opening, to be specific it hangs.
At the end I opened "Control Panel->Add Remove Programs", clicked on "Microsoft Office Standard Edition 2003" entry and clicked on Change->Repair. After it was over I started my outlook and it asked for "Detect and Repair" which I allowed him to go ahead 'patiently'. Once that is done I was able to open my Outlook successfully.

On the other hand I am not sure why did it occured however my guess is because of some software I installed which also installed the outlook extension and in that course it corrupted the outlook registry.

Creating windows shortcut for "Stand by"

2008-05-07T11:27:00Z

If you are a laptop user and prefer to go "Stand by" instead of "Hibernate" or "Log Off" to save time, the quickest way to do is to use the keyboard shortcuts on the laptop keyboard (for my Dell laptop its Fn+Esc) which I use very often. However if you use external keyboard (with dock station) you are deprived of the direct laptop keyboard access and hence the only way I figure out so far is to go through Start->Shut Down and then select "Stand by" option there which I found quite irritating because of the no of clicks.

You can create a desktop shortcut and even assign a keyboard shortcut to achieve the same. Here is what you need to do:

- Right click on the desktop and click on New->Shortcut

- In the "Create Shortcut" dialog, type the following and click Next:

%windir%\System32\rundll32.exe powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState

- Give a name to this shortcut (ex StandBy) and click Finish.

You will see a new shortcut on the desktop which you can double click to get you laptop/system in Stand by mode. If you want to assign some keyboard shortcut, right click on the shortcut and select Property. In the "Shortcut key" text box, select the shortcut that you want to be used for ex. Ctrl + Shift + Atl + S.

Configuring BSNL Modem with Airtel Broadband

2008-02-11T05:35:00Z

This blog is relevant for Broadband service providers in India.

I had BSNL broadband service and in that course I also bought Huawei ADSL modem which worked perfectly fine with BSNL (as it was pre-configured to be used with BSNL). The problem arises when I moved to new apartment and BSNL did not have their broadband service to the new location. So I moved to Airtel broadband service and the plan that I selected was charging me Rs 50 per month for the Airtel ADSL (Beetel) modem. Doesn't make sense if you have some other modem and all that matters is configuration. So here are the steps to configure your Huawei modem with Airtel service provider:

Configuring PPPoA/PPPoE (Airtel) with Huawei modem
========================================
Connect to Modem directly and set the following for TCP/IP properties (I am in Hyderabad region and the default gateway might be specific to this zone. Check with the Airtel Service Engineer about this detail if you are located in some other area)
IP-192.168.1.41
Subnet- 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway- 192.168.1.1

After the LAN is connected, go to your modem configuration page (must be http://192.168.1.1 or something similar. Check your modem documentation).

Edit ATM Setting: [For BSNL it's 0/35]. For Airtel
Set VPI as 1
Set VCI as 32

-In PPP section provide your Airtel user name and password

- PPPoA/PPPoE:PPPoE

- Enable 'Use DNS'
DHCP Mode to 'DHCP Server'

Save and Reboot (from Menu)
It should now be able to connect to Airtel broadband....

Happy Surfing

Signing a existing .NET assembly

2006-10-12T10:01:00Z

I could'nt find any support for signing a unsigned .NET assembly in .NET Framework 2.0 SDK. Provided I have the source code and option to rebuild the assembly, I can sign it in the process of assembly generation. Thankfully ILMerge tool came for the rescue. It can be downloaded from

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=22914587-b4ad-4eae-87cf-b14ae6a939b0&displaylang=en

Command to sign: ilmerge weak.dll /keyfile:key.snk /out:strong.dll

Ever wondered why your .CHM file(s) does not work?

2006-04-26T17:03:00Z

I had couple of .CHM files, specially for C# .NET related stuff and I saw some of the chm files when I open them I see "This page cannot be displayed" error. Finally I figured out that there could be two reasons for this:

[Option 1 courtesy chan.chawla from the posted comment, adding as the first option to be tried out before going any further]

1. Double click the .chm file. It will open a security dialog. Uncheck "Always ask after opening this file". Alternatively, right click on the file you want to open, click Properties and then click Unblock. This should do the trick.

2. If you chm file name or the path contains '#' character, just get rid of that and I guess you would be able to start viewing your chm files again.

3. If nothing works, try this.

Because of a Microsoft Service Pack, the chm files does not have enough permissions (by default). This case is usually when you try to open .chm files over network. The resolution for this is as follows:

Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
Locate and then click the following subkey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\HTMLHelp\1.x\ItssRestrictions [If this registry subkey does not exist, create it]
Right-click the ItssRestrictions subkey, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
Type MaxAllowedZone, and then press Enter.
Right-click the MaxAllowedZone value, and then click Modify.
In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
Quit Registry Editor.

For more information check http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896358.

Handling ThreadAbortException

2006-01-30T18:04:00Z

By definition ThreadAbortException cannot be stopped. Even if you have something like catch (ThreadAbortException) or catch (Exception), the ThreadAbortException invocation will follow the catch blocks. But as soon as the block ends the same exception is raised again.
The only way to eat out this exception is to catch and call Thread.CurrentThread.ResetAbort().
[http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.threading.thread.resetabort.aspx]

Why doesn't my process terminate even after main thread terminated

2005-09-04T20:12:00Z

Sometimes you may wonder why your .NET application didn't terminated even after the main thread is terminated. Infact I was boggled with this problem for some time.
Finally I figured out that .NET does not terminates a process on the termination of main thread if there are other threads running. The new definition for determining process abortion is as follows:
"Once all foreground threads belonging to a process have terminated, the common language runtime ends the process by invoking 'Abort' on any background threads that are still alive"

This means that if you want your application to exhibit the same behavior (as I was expecting [:)]), make sure that you set all the threads background property to true (except for main thread). For complete details on this thread property, follow http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpref/html/frlrfsystemthreadingthreadclassisbackgroundtopic.asp

validation pattern for allowing non-empty string in xml file

2005-08-12T09:52:00Z

I was trying to validate a xml file using xsd wherein a node value should be non-empty. Means there should be atleast one non-whitespace character into that. After lots of googling, I finally wrote up a small pattern to validate that. Here is the fragment.

Define a new type derived from string type and apply the pattern constraint.

<xs:simpleType name="NonEmptyString">

<xs:restriction base="xs:string">

<xs:minLength value="1" />

<xs:pattern value=".*[^\s].*" />

</xs:restriction>

</xs:simpleType>

Now use the new type "NonEmptyString" for all the nodes you want to enforce non-empty constraint.

<xs:element name="Name" type="NonEmptyString" />