So much for IE 7
I installed the offical IE 7 release a few minutes ago, ran it, and it immediately started consuming 50% CPU time. The part of the UI where the Tabs get rendered (and the address bar / stop / refresh /...
View ArticleIE 7 is back on my machine
With some help from Peter Gurevich, one of the IE 7 Performance PMs, I tracked down what caused IE 7 to basically lock up on my machine. Turns out it were the IE Developer Toolbar and IE DOM Explorer...
View ArticleOffice 2007 now available on MSDN
For all of you who have access to MSDN online downloads, Office 2007 is now available.
View ArticleVista RTM bits on MSDN now (and keys, too)
If you’re a lucky MSDN subscriber and have been waiting for the final Windows Vista bits, they’re available for download now. What I’ve been waiting for is also ready: the ability to request a key for...
View ArticleFixing my missing ntldr problem for the second time
This happened to me once before, and I didn’t write down how to fix it then. This time I will, just so I can look it up easily next time. If your ntldr goes missing, here’s one way to fix it: Boot from...
View ArticleProcessExplorer process tree view gone? Here’s a fix
My Process Explorer view got messed up a while ago. The process tree view wouldn’t display any more no matter what I did in the View menu. At the time I searched for solutions on Google, but found...
View ArticleI hate Windows Update right now. Or Windows Live writer. Take your pick.
I spent 45 minutes or so writing up a post in Windows Live Writer this evening. All the while I repeatedly dismissed a Windows Update countdown dialog that was asking for a restart. “Not now, dammit....
View ArticleMicrosoft deprecates support for XBAP WPF apps in version 5.3 of the Media...
I downloaded and installed the latest version of the Media Center SDK just now, and was a bit surprised to see that WPF apps are now officially deprecated as a supported way of extending Windows Media...
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Quick impressions from PDC 2008, Day 1
Windows Azure (hmm, hard to pronounce for non-U.S. people, wonder if they ever consider things like that). Ozzie was great, knew his material, delivered well! Wonder what they’ll charge once it’s...
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PDC 2008, Day 2 – HP TouchSmart front and center
The PDC keynote this morning was amazing to me. It felt like the HP TouchSmart PC was utilized for about half of the entire keynote by Steven Sinofski and Julie Larson Green. Four machines on stage,...
View ArticleWord 2007 and Vista Speech Recognition – don’t say "delete document"!
I had a very unpleasant experience today. My wife is trying to deal with pain in her arms and hands from too much typing by using Vista’s speech recognition feature along with Word 2007. She was...
View ArticleHP TouchSmart software in CES 2009 keynote
I just caught the replay of the CES keynote by Steve Ballmer. I think this is the first time ever that I’ve seen Microsoft allow non-Microsoft software to be shown in a keynote product video. I was...
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My first Windows 7 Theme Pack
Just so I can say that I jumped on a bandwagon once: Mike Swanson inspired me to create my very own Windows 7 Theme Pack. It contains 12 pictures I’ve taken over the past year or so with my trusty old...
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Windows Vista Ultimate customers get the shaft – again
A lot has been written about how Windows Vista Ultimate was a major disappointment. First it was billed as the version that would “keep on giving” in the form of Ultimate Extras – cool new features...
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Recover from BAD_POOL_HEADER blue screen errors after upgrading hard drive
I noticed recently that I’d get logged off from my computer over night. I’d leave the system running at night without logging off, and in the morning I’d have to log in again, with all the previously...
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Microsoft also had an OS code-named “Tiger”: OS/2 1.3
As evidenced by this scan of one of the setup disks: (Someone was cleaning up a bunch of old floppy disks at work. I happened to come across them because I needed a floppy for updating the BIOS of a...
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HP TouchSmart SDK 3.0 – Giveaways at PDC 09
To mark the release of the TouchSmart 3.0 SDK, HP has a goodie to give away at the Microsoft PDC 09: A super-slim 2 GB USB memory stick (embedded in a hard-plastic business card with a nice imprint)....
View ArticleWindows Phone 7 Series – home-roll an offline installer
[Update 2010-08-01: The beta version of the phone tools comes with an offline installer ISO image (WPDTBeta_en.iso), so you no longer need these steps.] [Update 2010-05-05: I originally wrote this for...
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Windows Phone 7 – XAML designer fails to resolve font resources
This evening I was attempting to go through the first lab of the Windows Phone 7 Developer Training Kit and discovered that I couldn’t even finish the first exercise because Visual Studio wouldn’t...
View ArticleWindows Phone 7 – Bing Map Phone/Desktop diffs: MapLayer.SetPosition()...
If you’re working on a Windows Phone 7 app that uses the Bing Map control, you might be interested in these little differences between the Desktop version and the Phone version of the map control. 1....
View ArticleWindows Phone 7 – No “editable” TextBlock
As I’m diving into Windows Phone 7 development and making notes for myself on how WP7 compares to WebOS, I’ve come across one little wrinkle that works really nicely in WebOS (out-of-the-box) and...
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Uninstalling a stubborn QuickTime/iTunes combination
This is what I wanted to see: Instead I got error messages, followed by a rollback of the uninstall I was in the middle of. Why did I need to uninstall QuickTime and iTunes? Because after finally...
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WebOS and Windows Phone 7 development – Part 2: Windows Phone 7
This is part two of a “miniseries” on my forays into mobile development. Part one is here. My interest in Windows Phone 7 development grew partly out of my experience with writing a simple app for...
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A brief history of five TouchSmart generations–pioneering ideas for Windows 8
A few weeks ago I attended Microsoft’s BUILD conference to get ready for what’s coming in Windows 8. As I was sitting in the first day’s keynotes and big picture sessions, I couldn’t help but think...
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An easy sound device reset tool for Conexant “Waikiki” HD Audio device on HP...
As I’ve previously written (in February of 2008), there are some computer systems out there that have trouble retaining the functionality of the sound device when Windows comes back from...
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My third Windows Phone 7 app, FotoMovr, featured in Marketplace
Thanks to some awesome work from my partner in crime at Cricketsoft, Tom Allen, our co-developed app, FotoMovr is featured in the Windows Phone Marketplace today. Both on the phone, the Marketplace...
View ArticleBatch download BUILD 2012 videos
I didn’t get to go to //build this year (sniff), so I’m going to download a bunch of session recordings for offline viewing. One way to do this is to use a PowerShell script (I found one here, based on...
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A swan song for 2012 and WPF
I intended this to be my fifth and last post of 2012. Life intervened, and it turns out this will be my first post of 2013 instead. Blogging obviously took a back seat to other things last year. Sadly...
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The impending XP-ocalypse – Take Action!
The November 2013 issue of CVu (link available to accu.org members only, sorry) has an article from Silas Brown (The Windows XP Threat: A Call to Action), calling people to do something about the...
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Migrate Visual SourceSafe to Git – A short how-to
My hobby/learning projects have been residing in a single-person SourceSafe database for a long time (yes, I know you’re laughing; I don’t care – for single-person projects it’s just fine and dandy.)...
View ArticleCan’t start IIS with a binding on port 443?
In case it helps someone: Getting Event 15005 when trying to start IIS (Internet Information Server) on your machine? In other words, you see this in Event Viewer (eventwvr.msc) under “System”: Unable...
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