Common Sense 4 Common People

The Internet says...

Today I was walking the streets of downtown Stuttgart in Germany and of all things possible, I was looking for a post office. I was given some directions by some friendly local, but I still couldn't find it. So I asked another passerby for assistance.

He didn't know, but he immediately popped out his cell phone and told me "Let me check on the Internet". I don't know why, but I felt that this event transitioned me into a whole new era. Most likely because it was the first time in my life that a completely random passerby would access the Internet in order to offer me the assistance I was looking for.

What amazed me even more was the way he formulated his reply soon after:

"The Internet says it's on Marienstrasse 19".

Have Fun!
Dimitris Staikos

PS: Beware of what the Internet says... The post office wasn't there ;-)

Microsoft update KB967723 installation error

For days now Vista has been bugging me about an update that just would not install (KB967723).
Even if I would shutdown the machine, it would just try and fail.
And not simply fail... but give me an amazing error code (80070490) which to cut a long story short meant that some internal database of updates was corrupt and I had to repair installation from the Vista CD. What???? Over my dead body!

Can you see the big picture here? I was minding my own business and one more Digital Misfortune came my way uninvited. But don't get me wrong here. If there is ONE technological feat that I admire in this world that is Microsoft Update. I just can believe such a thing is working. One major screw up (or security breach) and millions of computers can become unusable; just the security requirements of this blew my mind away... So I forgive them some glitches.

Anyway, since I had to debug this issue, I thought I might as well write a couple of lines about it, so that other poor souls like me might get a better chance when searching for an answer.

By searching the net and reading other posts I found some people mentioning that in similar situations they downloaded the standalone installer for the update and surprisingly enough it installed without problems.
Now that should ring some bells...
It is a seemingly non-rational action but it often has results.
So I downloaded the standalone installer for KB967723 and bingo! It installed and problem solved :-)
Isn't digital life so sweet?

Have Fun!
Dimitris Staikos

DELAY command implemented as batch file

Hi

I always had a strange fascination about batch files in Windows. I like automation, but for some reason I don't like using an elephant gun (Perl, Powershell) to shoot a mosquito. Plus I like the automation stuff to work on any PC, without having to install anything new. The Windows shell commands look totally crippled, but there is more to it than meets the eye.

Too much power management can kill you

QUIZ
You can tell that something is wrong when:

1. Something that usually takes half an hour is not finished after 5 hours OR
2. Yet another piece of technology is functioning in unintended ways.

A couple of days ago I read a tip about 4 mistakes that can kill VM performance.
#4 was: The default power option of Windows Server 2008 upon installation is set to "Balanced".
Sure as hell it was set to Balanced, so I corrected that one.
But tonight something else happened that was related to power management.
A backup to network folder was taking far too long.
How nice... One more problem to solve...
I check the network utilization and see that it was 100%.
Now that's a bit unusual... Just a bit...
I take a better look and what do I see?
Link Speed 10Mbps!!!!!
Excuse me??? Where did that come from?
To cut a long story short, the Intel network adapters came with a default setting that made them reduce the link speed if the machine is idle. The machine was certainly not idle, but still the link speed was reduced... go figure.
I deactivated the setting and got back my 1Gbps with a healthy 30% utilization and my backup was finished in the next 10 minutes.

That's why I say too much power management will kill you...

Have Fun!
Dimitris Staikos

Updating WDF on Vista checked build

I had some trouble today with the Windows 7 WDK when I tried to install a driver on the checked build of Windows Vista x86. Actually I found the answer after searching around a little bit, but since all the information was scattered around, I thought it might be nice to put it all together under one roof.

Here are the basic facts:

• Vista SP2 comes with WDF version 1.7 while the Win7 WDK has version 1.9.
• When installing the driver on the checked build of an OS you must supply the checked build of the WDF coinstallers.
• The checked build of the coinstaller is named WdfCoInstaller01009_chk.dll but you have to rename it to WdfCoInstaller01009.dll in your installation package.
• The checked WDF coinstallers are not capable of updating Windows Vista.
• This means that they cannot upgrade the installed WDF version.
• This translates to this error message, if you attempt to install the driver:
  Error 776: The client of a component requested an operation which is not valid given the state of the component instance.
• And this means that you have to upgrade Vista WDF manually, reboot and then install your driver (still the installation package must include the checked coinstaller).

Here is how to do it in a nutshell:

1. Open the checked coinstaller DLL in Visual Studio or any other tool capable of exporting resources.
2. Export the WDFCAB_RESOURCE from RCDATA resources and save the file as a .cab file.
3. Open the cab and extract the .EXE with the long name (Microsoft Kernel-Mode Driver Framework Install-v1.9-Win2k-WinXP-Win2k3.exe).
4. Open an elevated command prompt and navigate in that directory. Step 5 will NOT work on a non elevated command prompt, although it requests UAC elevation.
5. Execute: "Microsoft Kernel-Mode Driver Framework Install-v1.9-Win2k-WinXP-Win2k3.exe" /X
6. A bunch of files are exported, among which are wdf01000.sys and wdfldr.sys.
7. Now you must manually override these .sys files on the target system running on the checked build. This means you have to bypass SFP (System File Protection).
8. Copy the existing files as a backup measure.
9. Change the security of these two files so that (a) your account appears as the owner and (b) give your account Full Control (you have to do that explicitly - ownership is not enough).
10. Override the two files with the checked versions of WDF 1.9.
11. Pray and reboot :-)
12. After rebooting install your driver.

Have fun :-)
Dimitris Staikos

Visual Studio Debugging Tip

More than words can say...


ntStatus is declared as DWORD or anything equivalent to unsigned long.
Works both for Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2005.
Fare well Error Lookup ;-)

Have Fun!
Dimitris Staikos

Irrational By Design

Compared to the average person I would probably rank as a pretty experienced computer user. This unfortunately means (and that’s not Windows specific) that I am often expected to take irrational actions in order to produce the desired outcome. Lately, more often than not, the desired outcome falls under the label "Troubleshoot a Digital Misfortune".

There is a small problem with semantics here, as the concept of Expected Irrational Behavior that Leads to a Desired Outcome is a self-destructing concept. Have many people repeat any behavior often enough for long enough and in the end it will be considered rational... Or maybe not? I don’t know. I am confused here...

To make matters even worse, obviously any of these irrational behaviors is really only seemingly irrational. Somewhere under the hood there is a good reason why it works, but as far as I am concerned as long as we don’t know that reason the behavior remains irrational. And even when we know the reasons, all too often we get the "this behavior is by design" disclaimer. It should really say that "this behavior is by irrational design".

Keyboard Fetish

I am in nirvana...

I am in an ecstasy...

I have walked the path of no return...

Finally, after all my computing years, my never ending quest for Promised Land has come to an end. I have solved my most important and longest standing hardware problem ever.

I found THE keyboard: Topre RealForce 103.

I know, I know, why am I bugging you over such an ugly piece of crap? If you are one of those fancy developer types that like curvy aerodynamic keyboards, with dedicated buttons for Media Player, Outlook and oh yeah CALC.EXE, that's OK with me. But I like my keyboard the old fashioned style, it is so much faster to use, everything is just where it's supposed to be.

And what about Topre RealForce? Well, try it out and you will understand, that is if you can find it in a store near you :-) I can't describe this experience in words... It just feels soooo right...

Is it worth $228 (I got it around $200)???

I used to ask myself the same question for all other keyboards that came my way all those years and the answer was always NO NO NO, no matter what their price tag was. But now, for the first time I can answer with a YES.

Oh by the way, I got the white one, I don't like black keyboards :-P

Click click click click...

Have Fun!

Dimitris Staikos

Search is sick, Bing is the cure

Oh dear...

This article at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31084838/ is titled "Microsoft ads say search is sick, Bing is the cure". Cute...

But, didn't anyone tell them that the Chinese word "bìng" (病), which is pronounced with the 4th tone, very similar to the English pronounciation of bing, means "sick" or "to get sick"???

More than 1 billion people, people that seem to believe in things like lucky numbers and "bad" sounds, people that feel that the number 4 is unlucky because it sounds like "death", these people say "wǒ bìng le" (我病了) and they mean "I am SICK". And MS hopes to make bing a new verb for searching and have them type in www.bing.com every now and then to do their searches?

Oh dear... I think I need another drink...

Firewire Expert Blog

Hi everyone,

Some weeks ago I posted a link to some Firewire informational videos. Now there is an insiders' blog about the history and business decisions that affected Firewire's development, written by the man himself, James Snider the Executive Director of the 1394 Trade Association. Jeff Cat is just a nickname that James is using. In an act of shameless promotion I would say that I think it is worth your time to check it out.

Oh, and here's the link: Firewire Expert Blog

Have fun!

Dimitris