ASP.NET Debugging : Vista

Where do you go to find answers?

Tom — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 06:25:07 GMT

There are more and more sites coming online that allow you to ask questions. So which site(s) do you use?

Traditional

These sites are more of the old way of finding out answers, you don’t really interact, just find your answer on the existing documentation that is posted:

Forums

There have been forums for a while where you can track down information that you have questions about:

Social Web 2.0

Now there is a new class of sites coming up that allow you to have a lot more control over what gets asked and what answers are given:

There are other sites and other types. I’d like to hear if you use these sites or any others to get the answers to your questions. I know there are blogs that you can use also, so feel free to list those here as well.

The PDC this year…

Tom — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:00:00 GMT

Not sure how many people are planning on attending the PDC (Professional Developers Conference) this year, but it is going to be a fantastic conference.

We announced some huge announcements on the PDC web site. http://www.microsoftpdc.com/

We have a major lineup of executive keynote speakers representing most of the core Microsoft businesses.
We’ll have 20+ Windows 7 sessions, and we’ll be giving out the Win7 bits.
We also announced our in-depth symposia sessions including parallel computing and S+S.

If you have any questions about the PDC, feel free to check out the site listed above, or you can Ask the Brain.

The conference runs from October 27th to October 30th with the pre-conference on October 26th. You can see the full agenda here.

We have also just announced that all partners and customers attending the PDC will receive a very special gift this year: a 160GB external USB2 hard drive with all of the bits! That is a very cool gift and very useful as well. I’d love to hear if anyone is going or thinking about going to the PDC!

Code Gallery and CodePlex, how are they different and what are their benefits?

Tom — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 19:30:00 GMT

So lately I have been looking into these two web sites a lot more and it isn’t always easy to figure out which one is used for what. So I thought I would try to explain it here.

Code Gallery is a community-enabled Web site where you can share developer information and resources like samples and code snippets. CodePlex is Microsoft’s open source project hosting Web site. Code Gallery is a pure storage site, it has no project management capabilities. It is meant to put something up and leave it there. CodePlex is geared around a live code project that you need to managed and maintain.

Some projects will be put into both of them. For example, Web Client Software Factory is on Code Gallery here and CodePlex here.

The ASP.NET Support team has a Code Gallery site where we place samples and examples that we have come across and think may be useful. But since it isn’t a project we are developing, it is simply up on Code Gallery.

Both of these sites have some great information on them and I highly suggest you check them both out. If you would like to get involved in helping change code or anything like that, check out CodePlex. And if you just want to see the finished products and samples, check out Code Gallery.

There are a lot of really interesting projects on them. Everything from the new ASP.NET updates like:

To some really cool ideas like:

You can look for much more interaction from myself and my team on both of these sites in the future. We hope to start adding some projects to CodePlex in the future so keep an eye on this blog for more information as it becomes available.

I’d love to hear what you guys think of these sites. Let me know how you are using them like if you just browse them or actually get involved in some of the projects. Would you be interested in working on a project on CodePlex?

ASP.NET Tab Missing

Tom — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:47:01 GMT

A common issue we see customers having is after installing ASP.NET 2.0, the ASP.NET Tab is missing from IIS.

This tab is used for setting the version of ASP.NET and a lot of other things.

When this tab is missing, it can be rather difficult to get it to appear. So we now have a way to fix this quickly and easily. Just download the attachment to this post and follow the steps below:

This tool will run and fix the problem and get the tab to appear properly. The steps to run this tool are:

Close the IIS Management Console (inetmgr) and *any* other open MMCs.
Run the asptabtest.vbs. It will check various known issues, correct some of them, and write results to a log file. Use the output to determine whether the issue is resolved, and if not, what steps to take next.
Also note that after making any corrective changes to COM/DCOM settings, specifically DCOM security settings, make sure to either terminate (kill) ****ALL**** dllhost.exe processes, OR reboot the computer ****BEFORE**** testing again. Otherwise you may have well 'fixed' the problem, but a latent dllhost will prevent things from working. This is seen consistently when DCOM permissions were the problem.

Below is the output log of a working machine to give you an idea of the things it checks:

Bellow is what the output log of a working machine will look like... It also shows the different things the script checks.
PASS: The value of Enable32BitAppOnWin64 in metabase is set to: False

PASS: The current value of Restrict_Run is: 0

PASS: Successfully registered mmcaspext.dll

Types registered successfully
Assembly exported to 'C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\AspNetMMCExt.tlb', and the type library was registered successfully

PASS: Successfully registered Assembly

Running aspmantst.exe to test the ASP.NET Tab snap-in
Attempting to create the object as CLSCTX_LOCAL_SERVER.
Object created. Attempting to call method.
Method succeded. Result:
1.1.4322.0,C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\aspnet_isapi.dll,2.0.50727.0,c:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_isapi.dll

Attempting to create the object as CLSCTX_REMOTE_SERVER to IIS6EN1.
Object created. Attempting to call method.
Method succeded. Result:
1.1.4322.0,C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\aspnet_isapi.dll,2.0.50727.0,c:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_isapi.dll

Attempting to create the object as CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER.
Object created. Attempting to call method.
Method succeded. Result:
1.1.4322.0,C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\aspnet_isapi.dll,2.0.50727.0,c:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_isapi.dll

Special thanks to Jeremy and Vandana for creating the tool.

Upcoming virtual roundtable about Vista

Tom — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:52:16 GMT

Have you ever wanted to talk to someone about Vista and what the challenges are around adopting and deploying it?

Microsoft Technical Fellow and desktop guru Mark Russinovich will be hosting an interactive virtual roundtable—broadcast LIVE over the Internet on Wednesday, March 5^th. The subject? Windows Vista adoption and deployment. On the panel with Mark will be independent industry experts and IT pros from organizations that have already deployed Windows Vista—all openly discussing known challenges, solutions and workarounds, and sharing tips & tricks. But this event is really focused on the “virtual” participant—you!

Visit http://ms.istreamplanet.com/events at 9:00am Pacific Time on March 5th and ask your questions live during the event. Want to submit your question in advance? You can do that too by e-mailing your question to vrtable@microsoft.com anytime between now and the day of the event. The panel will answer as many questions as they can during the 60-minute event so take advantage of this opportunity to ask the experts and find out what you want to know about Windows Vista adoption.

For those of you who don’t know Mark, check out his blog at http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich. For additional guidance, resources, tools, and straight-talk articles to help address your Windows Vista adoption questions, visit the Springboard Series for Windows Vista.

This is a great opportunity to get all your questions and concerns addressed so that you understand how Vista can be adopted in your environment