Nam, Seungho's Blog : Windows

Default Input Language Setting

nevermet — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 03:59:00 GMT

[Windows 7 Application Compatibility episode 7]

Some application that one of my customers has has this problem when running on Windows 7.

Well, this application is written in Visual Basic 6, which is not supported by Microsoft anymore.

But I heard that some applications are reported to have this problem anyway...

This application works perfectly on Windows 7 before instaling Microsoft Office.

After installing Microsoft Office, the Default Input language value is set to Office IME (I don't know about other languages, but for Korean, this value changes.)

The problem that this change causes is that language setting is automatically changed back to English whenever a user presses "Enter", even when the user wants to keep typing in Korean.

The workaround is to change the "Default input language" value back to "Korean(Korea) - Microsoft IME" (This setting can be found here: Start->Control Panel->Region and Language->Keyboards and Languages->Change Keyboards->General)

The minimum IE window size

nevermet — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 03:42:00 GMT

[Windows 7 Application Compatibility episode 6]

One of my customers came to me and asked why IE8 cannot open a 140px wide window.

Well, if you drag IE border and resize IE window to the minimum, it can be as small as 250px wide x 100px tall.

That's the minimum window, which means you cannot 140px wide window anymore with IE7 or later.

But if you use open Method, the constraints are as follows:

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.

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.

As for the height, you can set the value down to 100, not 150.

But these values are for the content, I mean these sizes don't include the frame size. So, the window can be smaller if you drag the window border.

If you want to set the window to the smallest, I think you need to use resizeTo Method

When you use this method, you can set the height to 58px and the width to 230px, which is the smallest content size.

You can also use showModalDialog Method and showModelessDialog Method, and these contraints apply the same to these methods.

So, anyway you cannot open 140px wide window anymore... I think you need to redesign your window.

Do you still use Visual Basic6?

nevermet — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 06:28:00 GMT

[Windows 7 Application Compatibility episode 5]

One of my customers is still using VB6 applications...

And this caused quite serious problems... such as 'crash'...

Well, I know VB6 is not supported by Microsoft anymore... so this article cannot be official but I think it's worth trying this...

If you use non-English application, then VB6 runtime may find your language module, such as VB6KO.dll for Korean.

But, if you look at the 'system32' folder in Windows 7, it doesn't have the file.

If your non-English application crashes pointing at msvbvm60.dll, just have a try copying the localization file... to 'system32' folder.

This was helpful in my case.

Some application tries to write files under system32 folder.

nevermet — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 06:57:00 GMT

[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

My Windows 7 rebooted continuously...

nevermet — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 07:19:00 GMT

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

nevermet — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 05:02:00 GMT

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.

How to identify Windows version and edition with VBS

nevermet — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 08:25:00 GMT

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