Over this past weekend I installed Windows 7 (64-bit), and I have to say that it is a great upgrade from Windows Vista that nobody should be disappointed with. Even as a release candidate it is rock stable and has been able to cope and recover from many of the failing drivers I tried this weekend, with out the need for a single reboot. This is impressive, because I remember when I first tried Windows Vista as a beta almost 3 years ago, that I received blue screens left and right from faulty drivers that didn’t yet support Windows Vista. Blue screens have always really bothered me, because as a avid Windows supporter, I have heard all too often the mantra of the uneducated.

It’s Microsofts fault that Windows blue screens every time I try to play a game on my graphics card.

What this uneducated user doesn’t understand is that Microsoft isn’t really at fault, it is the fault of the hardware manufacurer that poorly developed the drivers.  But up until Windows 7 a poorly programmed driver would result in a blue screen and Windows would have no way of letting the user know what was going on until the operating system had been restarted.  Now in Windows 7 bad programming by hardware manufactures are caught in real time with out rebooting.  Windows 7 gracefully handles the error, and displays a “blame message” line the one listed below.

Windows 7 shows a small dialog explaining that something has happened and that it was able to recover from the error without effecting the user.  It even displays the name of the device that caused the error, so that users can better understand what has happened to their system.  I love this feature because it provides transparency to the user, so that they can blame the correct party for the failure of their computer.

Tags: Blue Screen, Microsoft, Windows 7

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I was reading over on DevTopic today about how 100 Million Lines of Code is pretty common in cars today.  We have come a really long way since 1977 when the first micro-chip was introduced in to the Oldsmobile Toronado, but what I really want to share with you guys is what I found at the end of the post.  I laughed out loud, when I read this because believe it or not this is starting to happen in cars and it has nothing to do with Microsoft.  Just the ever growing source code base that runs modern cars, and the ever growing chance for one of those lines to have a bug it in.

If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.
2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.
3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.
4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive — but would run on only five percent of the roads.
6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single “This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation” warning light.
7. The airbag system would ask “Are you sure?” before deploying.
8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.
9. Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
10. You’d have to press the “Start” button to turn the engine off.

Believe it or not #1 from above is happening to a friend of mine on his 5 Series BMW.  And well we are all accepting #10 as a great feature on new cars.  In fact my new 2009 Acura TL, that I just bought, has a button like the one pictured below.

Isn’t it ironic how we laughed at these 10 statments a number of years ago?

Tags: Acura TL, General Motors, Microsoft

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I will be presenting September 17, 2008 at Philly .NET User Group Meeting.  My talk will be on:

Creating a modern, web 2.0, application with MVC and jQuery with a focus on doing this in a RESTful manor.  My goal is for the developers in attendance to learn how to create a RESTful website design using MVC and implement that RESTful design on the front end with some simple jQuery. These principals will be demonstrated by creating a simple Twitter like application for sharing messages. All the source code will be available via my website at http://www.coderjournal.com after the presentation.

The group will be meeting at the Microsoft Malvern Campus, located at 45 Liberty Blvd, Malvern, PA 19355.

If you think you might attended the meeting please make sure to register, so that Bill has an accurate count for the food order.

User Group News * Please distribute this notice throughout your development community! We have some great meetings lined up for the next few months. Please take a look at the upcoming schedule on the web site. September 17 ASP.NET Dynamic Data, MVC & Web 2.0 Wednesday Malvern, PA Our monthly meeting will be held at the Microsoft Greater PA Office in Malvern, PA on Wednesday, September 17 from 5:30-8:30. Refreshments are provided courtesy of Vovéo Marketing Group. Please register on our web site. Detailed directions are on the Microsoft Greater PA web site. 5:30 Rachel Appel, Appel Consulting An Introduction to ASP.NET Dynamic Data If you are tired of the same old ASP.NET webforms, GridViews, and ADO.NET data access code that make up your current applications, then you’ll want to take a closer look at ASP.NET Dynamic Data.  ASP.NET Dynamic Data is Microsoft’s new technology that provides a template infrastructure for your application, page and fields based on your application’s data model. In this session you will learn concepts and use of application templates to create ASP.NET dynamic data web application. We’ll then create customizations at the application and page levels showing how easy website maintenance is when using ASP.NET Dynamic Data. We’ll also cover field level customizations by supplying data display formats, custom field types, and data validation based on the application’s data model. Rachel Appel lives in Northeastern Pennsylvania and is the senior technology consultant at Appel Consulting. Rachel is an MVP and a member of ASPInsiders, and holds the MCT MCAD & MCSD certifications.  She has been working as an instructor, software developer, architect and DBA for a wide variety of organizations. She is the Vice President and a regular speaker of the dotNetValley user’s group, as well as an active member in other local user groups of Northeastern Pennsylvania and the tri-state area.  Rachel’s expertise lies within developing solutions that align business and technology using the Microsoft .NET family of products. 6:45 Q&A Rob Keiser & Dani Diaz, philly.net co-leaders, ask questions, get answers from your peers! 7:00 Break Meet your peers. Refreshments and drinks courtesy of Vovéo Marketing Group. 7:15 Nicholas Berardi, Vovéo Marketing Group MVC & Web 2.0 Creating a modern, web 2.0, application with MVC and jQuery with a focus on doing this in a RESTful manor.  My goal is for the developers in attendance to learn how to create a RESTful website design using MVC and implement that RESTful design on the front end with some simple jQuery. These principals will be demonstrated by creating a simple Twitter like application for sharing messages. All the source code will be available via my website at http://www.coderjournal.com after the presentation. Nicholas Berardi works for Vovéo Marketing Group in Malvern, PA as a Software Architect.  He is the co-author of ASP.NET MVC Website Programming, Problem, Design, Solution published by Wrox and will be released early 2009.  He received his BS in Information Science and Technology from The Pennsylvania State University in 2003.  Nick has been using C# and the .NET framework since its beta and has over 10 years of experience in web development and related technologies. He helped to develope one the first websites on the internet to use the ASP.NET MVC framework, in a production environment, at http://www.ideapipe.com.  He blogs at http://www.coderjournal.com. 8:30 Closing & Raffle! Books, software, and other goodies!

Tags: Microsoft, MVC, philly.net, Web 2.0

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I have been a huge fan of MySQL for a long time.  It is the perfect database for when the budget is tight or you are not working in a Microsoft Environment.  It performs well, and has a huge following of dedicated professional programmers that use it day in and day out on some of the largest websites on the planet.  Most noteable Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and Digg.  Even with all these proven capabilities to scale and perform, Microsoft has choosen to ignore it and focus on some of the monolytic providers of databases such as IBM and Oracle when comparing SQL Server.

However that has all changed with the release of Microsoft SQL Server 2008.  Microsoft has set its focus on MySQL.  This is a huge turning point for both companies, because it means Microsoft is starting to take the needs of the Web 2.0 crowd, which MySQL has dominated, just as seriously as the big iron installs they have always catered to.

I am not sure if this comparison has been spured by the purchase of MySQL by Sun Microsystems, or if Microsoft has started to feel the preasure from Web 2.0 MySQL installs, or a little of both.  But none-the-less this is very encouraging, because it means that Microsoft is finally taking the needs of the “cloud developers” seriously.

Tags: Cloud Developers, Microsoft, MySQL, SQL Server, Sun Microsystems

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My last article on ASP.NET MVC CAPTCHA was very well received by many of my readers and it even caught the eye of the DotNetKicks crowd. Now that MVC Preview 2 was released last week, many new features make encapsulating my CAPTCHA control even easier. Most notably is the ActionFilterAttribute which allows you to override the Pre and Post action events for any action the attribute is applied to.

Basically everything works the same as it did in the previous article. I just modified things for MVC Preview 2. To validate the CAPTCHA you add the attribute CaptchaValidation to the action.

[CaptchaValidation("captcha")]
public void Register(string userName, string password, string email, string question, string answer, bool captchaValid){
    // do stuff
}

You still need to register the CAPTCHA image handler.

<httpHandlers>
    <add verb="GET" path="captcha.ashx" validate="false" type="ManagedFusion.Web.Handlers.CaptchaImageHandler, ManagedFusion" />
</httpHandlers>

I added an extension to HtmlHelper that generates a text box with autocomplete=”off”.

<label for="captcha">Enter <%= Html.CaptchaImage(50, 180) %> Below</label><br />
<%= Html.CaptchaTextBox("captcha") %>

Which generates the following.

You can view the source code for this on my Google Code Project, everything is available through SVN.

1. CaptchaValidationAttribute.cs
2. CaptchaHelper.cs
3. CaptchaImage.cs
4. CaptchaImageHandler.cs

Or you can download the project for you own personal use.

•  ASP.NET MVC CAPTCHA Project

Tags: ASP.NET, C#, CAPTCHA, Microsoft, MVC

Posted in ASP.NET, C#, Programming | | | View blog reactions | 28 Comments »

I decided to be one of those early installers that brave the RTM and hope everything has been programed correctly, so my current system doesn’t get blown away in the upgrade process. I have a small in home Team Foundation Server that I use for my home based business and personal coding. So an upgrade is pretty risky, in that I risk loosing everything. Knowing all the risks I decided to move forward and everything was going smoothly with installing Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server, until I ran in to the follow problem.

—————————
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server Setup
—————————
TF220064: An error occurred while the Setup program was querying the settings from the server that is running SQL Server Reporting Services. This error is most likely caused by your account not having the required administrative permissions on the server that is running Reporting Services. Click Next to try again. For more information about this error, see the installation logs. For more information about the installation logs, see “Troubleshooting Installation for Team Foundation” in the Team Foundation Installation Guide.
—————————
OK
—————————

The document above told me to reference this file Drive:\Documents and Settings\SetupAccount\Local Settings\Temp \dd_install_vstf_tfc_90.txt. I found the following reference at the bottom of the log file.

[11/19/07,21:01:32] TFSUI: getcurrenttfsproperties.exe: — STATUS: TfsIntegration..tbl_service_interface has at least one row in it
[11/19/07,21:01:32] TFSUI: getcurrenttfsproperties.exe: — STATUS: Found Reports.ReportsService=http://team.coderjournal.com/ReportServer/ReportService.asmx
[11/19/07,21:01:32] TFSUI: getcurrenttfsproperties.exe: — STATUS: Writing VSTF_RS_SERVER=team.coderjournal.com into C:\Documents and Settings\nick\Local Settings\Temp\SIT41264.tmp\TfsCurrConfig.ini section Config
[11/19/07,21:01:32] Setup.exe: AddGlobalCustomProperty
[11/19/07,21:01:32] TFSUI: ***ERRORLOG EVENT*** : getcurrenttfsproperties.exe: *** ERROR: Failed to call WMI on the RS server. The most likely cause is that the setup user does not have the required permissions: System.UnauthorizedAccessException: Access is denied. (Exception from HRESULT: 0×80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED))
[11/19/07,21:01:32] Setup.exe: AddGlobalCustomProperty
[11/19/07,21:01:32] TFSUI: ***ERRORLOG EVENT*** : getcurrenttfsproperties.exe: at System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.ThrowExceptionForHRInternal(Int32 errorCode, IntPtr errorInfo)
[11/19/07,21:01:32] Setup.exe: AddGlobalCustomProperty
[11/19/07,21:01:32] TFSUI: ***ERRORLOG EVENT*** : getcurrenttfsproperties.exe: at System.Management.ManagementScope.InitializeGuts(Object o)
[11/19/07,21:01:32] Setup.exe: AddGlobalCustomProperty
[11/19/07,21:01:32] TFSUI: ***ERRORLOG EVENT*** : getcurrenttfsproperties.exe: at System.Management.ManagementScope.Initialize()
[11/19/07,21:01:32] Setup.exe: AddGlobalCustomProperty
[11/19/07,21:01:32] TFSUI: ***ERRORLOG EVENT*** : getcurrenttfsproperties.exe: at System.Management.ManagementScope.Connect()
[11/19/07,21:01:32] Setup.exe: AddGlobalCustomProperty
[11/19/07,21:01:32] TFSUI: ***ERRORLOG EVENT*** : getcurrenttfsproperties.exe: at GetCurrentTfsProperties.WmiHelper.FindAllInstancesOfClass(String wmiNamespace, String wmiClass)
[11/19/07,21:01:32] Setup.exe: AddGlobalCustomProperty
[11/19/07,21:01:32] TFSUI: ***ERRORLOG EVENT*** : getcurrenttfsproperties.exe: at GetCurrentTfsProperties.WmiHelper.FindSqlRsInstance(String reportServerHostname, String databaseInstanceName, String dataSourceString)
[11/19/07,21:01:32] TFSUI: getcurrenttfsproperties.exe: Process exited with exit code: 15[11/19/07,21:01:32] TFSUI: Done calling CheckExistingTfsInstallation in GetTfsPropertiesFromDt
[11/19/07,21:01:32] vs70uimgr: Entering DisplayMessage() method.
[11/19/07,21:01:32] vs70uimgr: DisplayMessage_START:TF220064: An error occurred while the Setup program was querying the settings from the server that is running SQL Server Reporting Services. This error is most likely caused by your account not having the required administrative permissions on the server that is running Reporting Services. Click Next to try again. For more information about this error, see the installation logs. For more information about the installation logs, see “Troubleshooting Installation for Team Foundation” in the Team Foundation Installation Guide.
[11/19/07,21:01:33] vs70uimgr: DisplayMessage_END:TF220064: An error occurred while the Setup program was querying the settings from the server that is running SQL Server Reporting Services. This error is most likely caused by your account not having the required administrative permissions on the server that is running Reporting Services. Click Next to try again. For more information about this error, see the installation logs. For more information about the installation logs, see “Troubleshooting Installation for Team Foundation” in the Team Foundation Installation Guide.

From what I could tell the problem was in the database TfsIntegration..tbl_service_interface and had something to do with the follow record.

3 ReportsService http://team.coderjournal.com/ReportServer/ReportService.asmx

So on a hunch I just changed the above to. (TEAM-SERVER is the name of my server)

3 ReportsService http://TEAM-SERVER/ReportServer/ReportService.asmx

Then I continued with the installation and everything proceeded as Microsoft envisioned.

Tags: Microsoft, reporting service, Team Foundation Server, TF220064, Visual Studio

Posted in Programming | | | View blog reactions | 6 Comments »

Scott Guthrie has announced that Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 are now available for download and provides a tour of some of the new features.

• If you are a MSDN subscriber, you can download your copy from the MSDN subscription site (note: some of the builds are just finishing being uploaded now - so check back later during the day if you don’t see it yet).
• If you are a non-MSDN subscriber, you can download a 90-day free trial edition of Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite here. A 90-day trial edition of Visual Studio 2008 Professional (which will be a slightly smaller download) will be available next week. A 90-day free trial edition of Team Foundation Server can also be downloaded here.
• If you want to use the free Visual Studio 2008 Express editions (which are much smaller and totally free), you can download them here.
• If you want to just install the .NET Framework 3.5 runtime, you can download it here.

Tags: .Net, .NET 3.5, C#, Framework 3.5, Microsoft, MSDN, Visual Studio

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Hi loyal readers,

I have to apologize, I have been a really bad blogger lately. I have neglected my blog because of a new job and a brand new Web 2.0 site that I am about to release. At the end of the month I will make an announcement about this project and all the new technologies that many of you have probably heard of but few have implemented. But until then please keep visiting and I really enjoy your comments on the following popular postings:

• Setting Up iTunes on Windows Vista 64-bit
• Apple wants Vista to Run Un-Secured to install iTunes

Thanks,
Nick

Tags: Apple, iTunes, Microsoft, Windows Vista

Posted in Programming, Rant | | | View blog reactions | 1 Comment »

Please note: These fixes break all current methods of bypassing driver singing requirements except the good old F8 during boot (that you have to do every single time you start vista)

If you are using Rivatuner, atitool and or Peerguardian on 64bit vista, you will have to use F8 every single time to disable driver signing requirements to use those two programs. x86 version is unaffected.

These updates should go official on the next patch Tuesday (in one weeks time). Please read more for the download links and information on these updates.

938979 Vista Performance and Reliability Pack

This update resolves a number of individual issues which may be affecting some computers running Windows Vista. These issues have been reported by customers using the Error Reporting service, product support, or other means. Installing this update will improve the performance and responsiveness for some scenarios and improves reliability of Windows Vista in a variety of scenarios. Some examples of the improvements contained in this update are:

• Improves performance in resuming back to the desktop from the Photo and Windows Energy screensaver.
• Resolves an issue where some secured web pages using advanced security technologies may not get displayed in Internet Explorer on Windows Vista.
• Resolves an issue where a shared printer may not get installed if the printer is connected to a Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 system and User Access Control is disabled on the Vista client.
• Resolves an issue where creating AVI files on Vista may get corrupted.
• Improves the performance in calculating the ‘estimated time remaining’ when copying/moving large files.
• Improves performance in bringing up Login Screen after resuming from Hibernate.
• Resolves an issue where synchronization of offline files to a server can get corrupted.
• Resolves a compatibility issue with RAW images created by Canon EOS 1D/1DS Digital SLR Camera which can lead to data loss. This only affects RAW images created by these two specific camera models.
• Resolves an issue where a computer can lose its default Gateway address when resuming from sleep mode.
• Improves the performance when copying or moving entire directories containing large amounts of data or files.
• Improves the performance of Vista’s Memory Manager in specific customer scenarios and prevents some issues which may lead to memory corruption.

938194 Vista Compatibility and Reliability Pack

This update resolves a number of individual issues which may be affecting some computers running Windows Vista. These issues have been reported by customers using the Error Reporting service, product support, or other means. Installing this update will improve the reliability and hardware compatibility of Windows Vista in a variety of scenarios. Some examples of the improvements contained in this update are:

• Improved reliability and compatibility of Vista when used with newer graphics cards in several specific scenarios and configurations.
• Improved reliability when working with external displays on a laptop.
• Increased compatibility with many video drivers.
• Improved visual appearance of games with high intensity graphics.
• Improved quality of playback for HD-DVD and Blue-Ray disks on large monitors.
• Improved reliability for Internet Explorer when some third party toolbars are installed on Vista.
• Improved Vista reliability in networking configuration scenarios.
• Improved the reliability of Windows Calendar in Vista.
• Improved reliability of systems that were upgraded from XP to Vista.
• Increased compatibility with many printer drivers.
• Increased reliability and performance of Vista when entering sleep and resuming from sleep.

Download: Vista Compatibility and Reliability Pack for x64 or x86 version
Source: Neowin.net

Tags: Microsoft, Performance, Windows Vista

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One of the new features of Windows Vista was the Driver integrity Checks. In the x64 version of the product it is turned on by default, and is a great idea to prevent kernel level access to only drivers that have passed the Microsoft Testing for security and performance. However this feature can be rather annoying since Microsoft hasn’t even released signed drivers for all their products. (i.e. Streets & Trips GPS Device) So I have included the following steps in order to disable the driver signing integrity checks, so that you can install unsigned drivers.

Note: You should only do this if you are experiencing driver installs getting blocked and you use this driver on a daily basis. Because there is an F8 boot option that will temporarily disable driver signing for other needs and also this is a very good feature that helps prevent spyware and other nastys from gaining access to your OS.

1. Log in to Windows with a user name that has administrative access.
2. Right click on Start > Accessories > Command Prompt
3. Select Run as administrator
4. In the command prompt type bcdedit /set nointegritychecks on
5. Reboot.

To turn driver signing back on do the following:

1. Follow steps 1-4 from above.
2. In the command prompt type bcdedit /set nointegritychecks off
3. Reboot.

So it is that easy.

Tags: Microsoft, Windows Vista

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