Spat's WebLog (Steve Patrick)

lerp

2009-11-09T16:26:00Z

I needed a quick function to return a point.. Spat public Point Lerp( Point p0, Point p1, double amtInterpolate) { double xlerp = p0.X + ( p1.X - p0.X ) * amtInterpolate; double ylerp = p0.Y + ( p1.Y - p0.Y ) * amtInterpolate; Point newPoint = new Point (xlerp, ylerp); return newPoint; }...(read more)

Debugging managed code.. from a newb for managed code debugging

2009-11-09T15:25:00Z

Debugging managed code in WinDbg has never been my idea of fun. I wasn’t forcibly exposed to it enough I guess. For example, if you look at http://blogs.msdn.com/spatdsg/archive/2009/02/23/there-and-back-again-the-life-of-a-bug-and-fix.aspx there is like a 5 step process for setting a breakpoint, instead of !bpmd. Well, the other day I dug deep into debugging some code to which I had no src or symbols, so I learned a bit – at least what I needed to in order to solve the issue :) – so this post is...(read more)

Why am I using VMWare?

2009-11-02T15:33:00Z

Well, I have had to resort to VMWare. I don’t have anything against it really, I used to use it exclusively, but I would rather use an MS platform if it does what I need it to. Unfortunately the VPC version for Win7 does not support 64 bit guests and I run a bunch of DCs etc.. and need to have 2k8R2 ( Win7 Server ) as well - but Win7 Server dropped support for 32 bit versions. So, I made and ISO of the setup files and download the latest VMWare player.. when I input the ISO file, I repeatedly get...(read more)

Playing with Silverlight..

2009-11-01T17:40:00Z

Testing a few things with SL, eventually want a TFS integrated reporting tool. But, this was more for just fun....(read more)

Cool new features in 2k8 R2 for Certificate Services

2009-09-17T17:36:00Z

I really dont like posting about another post.. but its too cool not to in this case :) There are some really awesome new features for Cert Services in 2k8 R2.. check it out in the Certificate Enrollment Web Services Whitepaper Original post: http://blogs.technet.com/pki/archive/2009/09/15/certificate-enrollment-web-services-whitepaper.aspx Doc download link: http://download.microsoft.com/download/C/2/2/C229E624-36E4-4AD8-9D86-F564ED539A16/Windows%20Server%202008%20R2%20Certificate%20Enrollment%20Web%20Services.do...(read more)

Logging for MUI language packs

2009-09-15T20:19:00Z

Quick post.. If you are having errors when installing the MUI language packs on Win7\Server 2008 R2 - the logs are located in the users profile appdata path: C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Local\Temp\lpksetup folder Here is a snip of a log for an example:\ SNIP: 15:30:50:034 : PERF: Create language from CAB (C:\tools\langpacks\zh-hk\lp.cab) - ENTER 15:30:53:495 : DEBUG: CreateFromIdentity("Microsoft-Windows-Client-LanguagePack-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~zh-HK~6.1.7600.16385") 15:30:55:014 : DEBUG:...(read more)

How to enable WPP tracing for a component at boot time?

2009-09-08T17:30:00Z

Been away for a while , busy with lotsa interesting online services projects ( my "new" group ) . I'll see if I can blog about any of those interesting tidbits.. in the meantime. WPP tracing is all over the place in Win7 – a quick count of registered providers shows 672 available providers via “logman .exe query providers” We can choose a random one to pick on today – like BITS ( background intelligent transfer services ) . Here we can view the available flags for this provider. C:\>logman query...(read more)

How to determine virtual machine host name "virtual server"

2009-04-03T17:22:00Z

Recently had a problem where the lab folks forget where my VM was installed to and I needed some RAM added to it. I needed to find the physical host name of the machine the VM was running on. Turns out that there is a handy dandy reg key one the VS devs pointed out to me: HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Virtual Machine\Guest\Parameters\PhysicalHostName Hope it helps someone, I spent quite some time trying to figure it out on my own. spat...(read more)

More Kerberos fun with PAC’s- decrypt the PAC

2009-03-26T17:38:00Z

I had been meaning to blog about this for a while, and recently was teaching a class when a friend of mine looked into the exact steps and issues – thanks Woody. It may be interesting to peek into the PAC every once in a while and make sure everything is OK. Yaknow – like a long lost cousin. See http://blogs.msdn.com/spatdsg/archive/2007/03/07/pac-validation.aspx for more info on PAC data This is good for labs – not so much for production. But here goes. It’s laid out here: http://wiki.wireshark.org/Kerberos...(read more)

Informal survey..iPhone VS Windows Mobile..

2009-03-09T17:25:00Z

Coming from support, I have seen many different causes for crashes and hangs, memory leaks and BSOD’s. Of course, again I am colored by my experiences and it reflects in the title of my blog “When things go wrong.. “ I only see the bad side of things. But, I have long held the opinion that Windows is a stable OS for the most part, and I know for a fact that many many root causes of cases I saw were 3rd party applications and drivers. Anyway, to the point. I was rebooting my Samsung Epix ( again ) the other day and was quite frustrated with the experience. I started to think, maybe I have too many applications running. ...(read more)

There and back again.. the journey of a bug in ADFS

2009-02-23T18:27:00Z

Let's look at a bug fix.. end to end. So back in November, my friend Jim Simonet had posted a question about a problem with ADFS using ADAM as the auth store and specifying that it connect via LDAP over SSL. He could connect to ADAM via LDP on 636, so we knew ADAM and the certificate validation\chaining process seemed OK. With SSL it was failing and the logs show: 2008-10-28T17:11:41 [INFO] Client is unauthenticated. Attempting to collect credentials. 2008-10-28T17:11:41 [INFO] Requesting token for...(read more)

Joining a domain via Smartcards

2008-12-10T18:35:00Z

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc721959.aspx undefined A snip from the article: Smart card root certificate requirements for use when joining a domain When using a smart card to join a domain, the smart card certificate must comply with one of the following conditions: The smart card certificate must contain a Subject field that contains the DNS domain name within the distinguished name. If it does not contain this field, resolution to the appropriate domain will fail, causing the domain...(read more)

More fun with Kerberos and Web Sites

2008-11-17T18:27:00Z

SPN’s. Service Principal Names. I am not going to go into the details of how SPN’s are used right now, see my other posts on Kerberos or go use your favorite search engine to determine how they are used. Most of this post will relate to web sites and access to sites via Kerberos. Scenario: Servername: 2k8STS1.CONTOSO.COM A Record =2k8STS1.CONTOSO.COM CNAME record = ALIAS.BOGUS.COM So of course, now when I ping ALIAS.BOGUS.COM it will hit 2k8STS1.CONTOSO.COM Now – from IE, when I type in HTTP://ALIAS.BOGUS.COM...(read more)

James saved me many hours of pain..

2008-11-11T19:51:00Z

Gotta love the internet. The Tubes. I was trying to install\reinstall IIS in Windows Server 2008 and it would not install. Web Server (IIS) Error: Attempt to install IIS Management Console failed with error code 0x80070643. Fatal error during installation Error: Attempt to install Static Content Compression failed with error code 0x80070643. Fatal error during installation Error: Attempt to install HTTP Logging failed with error code 0x80070643. Fatal error during installation Error: Attempt to install...(read more)

Honey, I lost the (private) keys -- EFS keys missing?

2008-10-20T17:40:00Z

Interesting EFS issue the other day.. Customer was rolling out EFS so they set up DRA's and this worked great. When they encrypted files the DRA's showed up just fine in the file information. However, when they went to decrypt a file via the assigned DRA account – it failed to recover the file. Efsinfo.exe showed: Users who can decrypt: CUST\bob (bob(bob @CUST.com) ) Certificate thumbprint: A453 6DE7 2AB7 93EA DF34 D30E F542 FEF5 960E 56EF Recovery Agents: Unknown (DataRecoveryAgent1(JOE1 @CUST.com)...(read more)