Nam, Seungho's Blog

Some application tries to write files under system32 folder.

2009-12-01T06:57:00Z

[Windows 7 Application compatibility episode 3]

Someone brought me an application complaining that it fails while installing MSVBVM60.dll...

Well, I think this application tries to write this file under System32 folder before running the application, because it needed this file but they found that some Windows XP machines don't have it.

I think the install application was detected as an "installer" by Windows 7, it won't have any problem as Windows applies a shim to make the application get succeed message returned without actually writing the file under System32 folder.

This document explains Windows Resouce Protection (WRP)

Windows Resource Protection

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc185681(VS.85).aspx

Some web pages have larger margin

2009-12-01T06:32:00Z

[Windows 7 Application Compatibility episode 2]

I met customers saying that their pop up window got wider and taller after installing IE7 or IE8.

Yes, as for getting taller (larger in height), IE7's window height accounts for the content area only, not including the frame.

This can cause the window size changes.

And IE7 also introduced minimum window sizes contraints.

If you encounter these kinds of problems, please check if these documents are helpful.

dialogHeight Property

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms533724(VS.85).aspx

In Windows Internet Explorer 7, the dialogHeight property returns the height of the content area and no longer includes the height of the frame.

dialogWidth Property

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms533727(VS.85).aspx

In Windows Internet Explorer 7, the dialogWidth property returns the width of the content area and no longer includes the width of the frame.

open Method

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms536651(VS.85).aspx

height = number

Internet Explorer 7. Sets the height of the window in pixels. The minimum value is 150, and specifies the minimum height of the browser content area.

Prior to Internet Explorer 7 the minimum height value is 100.

width = number

Internet Explorer 7. Sets the width of the window in pixels. The minimum value is 250, and specifies the minimum width of the browsers content area.

Prior to Internet Explorer 7 the minimum height value is 100.

An app runs well with Visual Studio debugger not by itself

2009-12-01T05:47:00Z

[Windows 7 Application Compatibility episode 1]

I've tested an application built for Windows XP on Windows 7 machine.

The application failed silently on Windows 7 so I checked event log. There was no hint.

So, I downloaded application verifier on the machine and attached the application to it.

I didn't give any meaningful report. So I even attached the application to Windbg. But I cannot find where I should look into the application.

Later, we decided to build the application on Windows 7 with Visual Studio 2008 so we installed VS2008 on the machine.

And tried to build the application and managed to succeed in building it. And ran it in VS2008 with the debugger.

Hmm.... it succeeded in running.... as it worked on Windows XP.

But without Visual Studio? It failed again...! What's happening here?

The answer was "Application Verifier". Not until I deleted the applicaiton from Application Verifier and close Application Verifier to save the settings, I could run the application as it runs within VS.

My guess is the application has some system specific settings with it at the beginning and when I attached it to Verfier, it saved the first settings.

But by building again with VS 2008, the settings were updated. However, Application Verifer kicked in with old settings whenever the application was launched.

If you come across a similar problem, please try to build the application on Windows 7 without Application Verifier.

My Windows 7 rebooted continuously...

2009-07-23T07:19:00Z

The other morining, I turned on my Windows 7 RC machine and went to bring some snacks...

When I came back, the machine was rebooting... just after the animation 'Starting Windows...'

And next time, it asked me if I will boot the machine in safe mode...

I chose safe mode and rebooted...

But... it didn't work....

Hmmm.... 'do I have to re-install this RC machine?' 'Is this because of the bug that RC might have?'...

At that point, It occurred to me that I ran 'verifier.exe' the previous day...

So I booted the machine in safe mode and ran verifier again and deleted the configuration that I had made...

Then... my machine came back to the normal state... :)

If your machine suffers the same... please check the verifier...

document.domain can cause invalid argument error in IE8

2009-07-14T05:02:00Z

One of my customers asked me how to mitigate this IE8's application compatibility issue.

Well, when their application tries to execute this code, it failes with 'invalide argument' error:

document.domain = somevalue;

Their web application works perfectly on IE6 and now they are considering moving to IE8.

Do you know why this fails?

This is explained in IE team blog as follows:

In Internet Explorer 7, the following set of calls would succeed:

// initial document.domain is app1.example.com
document.domain = "app1.example.com"; // 1. Domain property set to default value
document.domain = "example.com"; // 2. “Loosen” domain
document.domain = "app1.example.com"; // 3. “Tighten” domain

In Internet Explorer 8 and other browsers, the 3^rd assignment will throw an exception, because app1.example.com is not a suffix of the then-current value, example.com.

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/09/02/ie8-security-part-vi-beta-2-update.aspx

In this case, I think the developer who understands the application needs to find how to mitigate this issue, considering using postMessage() or XDomainRequest.

Application compatibility between IE6 to IE8

2009-07-03T09:10:00Z

A few days ago, one of my customers asked me to identify their web application's compatibility issue.

Actually, the problem was that the 3rd party ActiveX control is not shown in IE8, even though it works perfectly in IE6.

Can you guess what prevents it from being shown in IE8?

I turned off every rule related with ActiveX security but it didn't work.

Well, in IE8 there was some script error indicating that some object below the ActiveX control cannot be located.

So, we look into the code and tried to move the elements from below the control to above the control...

Then the script error disappeared...

Hmmm... let me tell you why this happened.

The problem was that some element has not complete form. A <param> element didn't have closing tag or </param>.

Yes, IE6 worked even with incomplete elements without a closing tag, but IE8 doesn't interprete the incomplete element.

After we corrected the html code, it worked perfectly.

How to identify Windows version and edition with VBS

2008-07-15T08:25:00Z

Do you need to identify the OS version and edition?

I really needed this when I make a install package application.

So, I looked it up from the web and this was really useful for me.

http://www.msfn.org/board/How-to-identify-exact-Windows-Version-t59477.html

strComputer = "."
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:" _
& "{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")

Set colOperatingSystems = objWMIService.ExecQuery _
("Select * from Win32_OperatingSystem")

For Each objOperatingSystem in colOperatingSystems
Msgbox objOperatingSystem.Caption & " " & _
objOperatingSystem.Version, 0 + 32,"Window Version"
Next

And we can see the vaules from the registry value under this:

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\Current Version

And some useful VBS reference site is:

http://www.pctools.com/guides/scripting/id/25/?act=reference

Change System Settings? SystemParametersInfo()!

2007-09-18T09:40:00Z

I needed to change ClearType settings programmatically. So, I tried to modify registry key values. It worked! But, it did after rebooting. :(

What if you would like to make it effective right away as you click ok button on the control panel?

Write some code with this function:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms724947.aspx

In case of ClearType, settings as follows work:

SPI_SETFONTSMOOTHING (TRUE)

SPI_SETFONTSMOOTHINGCONTRAST (machine specific, 1600 works for me)

SPI_SETFONTSMOOTHINGORIENTATION (depending on your monitor pixel orientation, usually FE_FONTSMOOTHINGORIENTATIONRGB)

SPI_SETFONTSMOOTHINGTYPE (FE_FONTSMOOTHINGCLEARTYPE)

WPF Resources

2007-09-06T08:05:00Z

WPF Debugging Tool

http://www.blois.us/Snoop/

http://www.beacosta.com/

http://blogs.msdn.com/okoboji/

ASP Performance (in Korean)

2007-07-28T09:16:00Z

성능 및 스타일 향상에 도움이 되는 28가지 ASP 팁

http://www.microsoft.com/Korea/technet/iis/tips/asptips17_29.asp

ActiveSync Error Code

2007-07-25T04:19:00Z

Today I've been requested to find some documents expaining what the activesync error codes mean.

These are the something to look up I've found:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/915152

http://blog.flaphead.dns2go.com/archive/2005/11/21/3202.aspx

Walkthrough: Encrypting Configuration Information Using Protected Configuration

2007-07-12T14:47:00Z

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dtkwfdky(VS.80).aspx

WPF Performance

2007-05-03T13:34:00Z

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa970683.aspx

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa969767.aspx

Visual Studio Team Test Load Test - Accessing Remote Computer's performance counter

2007-05-03T13:28:00Z

When I run VSTS Loadtest on XP machine, I can get the remote computers' performance counter just by accessing their C drives.

But, if you run VSTS loadtest on Vista, maybe you'll find that you cannot access their performance counters. This is not resolved by running VSTS elevated.

Hmmm.... try turning off UAC, it'll work. :)

Using Netmon 3 on Windows Vista

2007-05-03T13:22:00Z

download netmon3 here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=aa8be06d-4a6a-4b69-b861-2043b665cb53&DisplayLang=en

and if you don't run it elevated, you'll see the error message as follows when you click the play button:

“None of the network adapters are bound to the Netmon driver"

Read the bottom part to make it sure that you didn't make a mistake.