Gabriel Lozano-Morán

How to: check if SP1 for Visual Studio .NET 2003 is installed

Gabriel Lozano-Morán — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 02:37:00 GMT

Someone asked on one of the Microsoft .NET newsgroups how he could check whether or not SP1 for Visual Studio .NET 2003 was installed. Service Pack 1 is published in the Microsoft Knowledge Base as article number 918700 so in order to check whether SP1 is installed you could check for the existance of the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Updates\Visual Studio\7.1\S918007

Even better would be to check if the value for the DWORD value "Installed" under this key, is set to 1 which means off course that SP1 for Visual Studio .NET 2003 is installed.

Cross-posted from The .NET Aficionado

How to: retrieve the SQL Server remotely

Gabriel Lozano-Morán — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 01:16:00 GMT

In case you need to find out the version of the SQL Server installed on a server you could execute the following statement:

SELECT @@VERSION;

Which returns on my development sandbox the following string:

Cross-posted from The .NET Aficionado

Unable to open shim database version registry key - v2.0.50727.00000

Gabriel Lozano-Morán — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 13:55:00 GMT

One of our .NET developers had problems with a ASP.NET application on his machine. Looking at the event viewer there was the following entry:

Description: The description for Event ID ( 0 ) in Source ( .NET Runtime ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support for details. The following information is part of the event: unable to open shim database version registry key - v2.0.50727.00000

There is a hotfix for this problem and this behaviour is caused because the ASP.NET application needs read/write access to a specific registry key but has only read access. You could also Registry Monitor to check which registry key(s) is causing this behaviour.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/918642

Cross-posted from The .NET Aficionado

I have won the lottery this weekend! I am a multi-millionaire!!

Gabriel Lozano-Morán — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 12:22:00 GMT

Or at least that's what the emails say (Doh!). If I have to believe those e-mails I won about 37 times $1,000,000 that makes me propably one of the richest persons in Belgium!

Government Accredited Licensed lottery promoters.
International Promotions/Prize Award Department

This Lottery is approved by the Netherlands Gaming Board and also
Licensedby the The International Association of Gaming Regulators (IAG
international emails. held on the 29th November, 2006.all winnings must be
claim
not later than Decembre 11th, 2006, after this date,unclaimed funds will
bereturned to the Lotto. NL

Your email won the lottery.For a total pay out of €1,000,000
no tickets were sold but all email addresses were assigned to different
ticket numbers for representation and privacy.

Please remember to quote your reference number and batch numbers:
1, Batch 9484-9006-0076
2, Ref: 637409467-Nll
3, lucky numbers 1-0960-31-444
To file for your claim, please contact
**************************
Advocate Faber Dutchs
Tel: +31 -619 255 090
Fax: +31-84-728-9686
email- bejesbejes200@aim.com

law & Associates
**************************
In other to claim your €1,000,000.00 prize winning, you will have to
fill the form below and send it to Advocate Steven Cox for verification and

then you will be directed how to get a ticket in your name.
NAME:.....................................
AGE:........................................
SEX:........................................
ADDRESS:...............................
EMAIL:....................................
PHONE:...................................
OCCUPATION:.........................
COMPANY:..............................
COUNTRY:...............................
|
CONGRATULATIONS!
CALL NOW TO CLAIM YOUR WINNING PRIZE
Advocate Faber Dutchs
Tel: +31 -619 255 090
Fax: +31-84-728-9686
bejesbejes200@aim.com

Yours faithfully,
Mrs Eava Van Boer
Online coordinator
Sweepstakes International Program.

Cross-posted from The .NET Aficionado

Remote Desktop Connection (Terminal Services Client 6.0) available

Gabriel Lozano-Morán — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 19:02:00 GMT

Microsoft released a new version of the Remote Desktop Connection application aka as v6.0 of the Terminal Services Client. It contains several new features:

Network Level Authentication
Server Authentication
Resource Redirection
Terminal Servers Gateway
TS Remote Programs
Monitor spanning
Visual Improvements (32-bit color depth, ClearType)

Read all about these new features and the download links in the Microsoft Knowledge Base article 925876. Please note that you will only be able to use all these features when connecting to a Windows Vista or a Windows Server Codename "Longhorn" machine.

Source

Cross-posted from The .NET Aficionado

Call of Duty 3 - XBox 360 vs PS3 vs Wii

Gabriel Lozano-Morán — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 05:00:00 GMT

GameTrailers.com has posted two videos that show in-game footage of CoD 3 played on an Xbox 360, PS3 and the Nintendo Wii and the differences are astonishing, I guess that me saying that I need to ask my girlfriend a Xbox 360 for X-mas says it al? The video quality on the Wii is a bummer.

http://www.gametrailers.com/gamepage.php?id=2650

Cross-posted from The .NET Aficionado

Cannot hit breakpoints when debugging ASP.NET 2.0

Gabriel Lozano-Morán — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 18:38:00 GMT

A couple of days ago one of our .NET developers asked me to help solve an issue on his machine. He said that his breakpoints were not being hit due to missing symbol files. I asked him to close Visual Studio and show me step by step how he debugs.

He started Visual Studio 2005
He opened his solution
He publishes his site to c:\inetpub\wwwroot\<project>
He navigates to the website using IE
He sets a breakpoint
He attaches to the worker process

The breakpoints will not be hit and I explained him why. Publishing your web site cause your web site to be pre-compiled using the executable apsnet_compiler.exe. The problem here, if you can even call this a problem, is that by default the debug info will be omitted.

There are several ways to solve this:

Use Visual Studio 2005 Web Application Projects which shares the compilation semantics known from ASP.NET 1.1
Do not publish your site instead xcopy deploy the site
On your dev machine you can point the virtual directory to your ASP.NET project directory
Pre-compile manually with aspnet_compiler.exe -d to emit the debug info

Cross-posted from The .NET Aficionado

Enterprise Library for .NET Framework 3.0 - Validation Application Block

Gabriel Lozano-Morán — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 05:46:00 GMT

Tom Hollander, a Product Manager working for the Microsoft patterns & practices group, discusses the new Validation Application Block that will be released in Enterprise Library for .NET Framework 3.0. It looks promising with the possibility to take a declarative or imperative approach. It would be nice if the validators could inherit some of the pre- and post conditions semantics from Spec#, I am not talking about heap checks but just a simple implementation using reflection but I will already be happy if these validators can be used to validate method arguments.

Read all about it here.

Cross-posted from The .NET Aficionado

ReSharper 2.5 EAP Build 312 (RC1)

Gabriel Lozano-Morán — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 20:30:00 GMT

The team behind ReSharper released after several nightly builds EAP Build 312 which is the first Release Candidate for ReSharper 2.5. There is a known issue that you need to remove all your caches when you revert back to ReSharper 2.0.

ReSharper 2.5 Build 312 (Visual Studio 2005)
List of fixes

Cross-posted from The .NET Aficionado

Windows Vista + online banking = nightmare

Gabriel Lozano-Morán — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 02:03:00 GMT

I guess that we could somehow expect that are going to be a lot of issues trying to run existing products on Microsoft's latest Windows platform. So far I have tested 3 online banking solutions offered in Belgium and so far there was only 1 of them that works flawlessly in Windows Vista.

So like I mentioned I tested 3 online banking solutions:

KBC Online
Dexia Direct Net
Fortis PC Banking

1. KBC Online

With KBC Online I tried to import an existing key and that's where the problem start. Under normal conditions importing a key will result in the creating of a BCM file in the \Program Files\ directory. This does not work in Windows Vista thanks to the new security features. Running Windows Internet Explorer as an administrator is a possible workaround but not recommended. A better solution would be if the people from the KBC created the BCM file in the user profile's directory where it belongs in the first place. Anyway I have reported this issue.

2. Dexia Direct Net

When you click on the link to start Dexia Direct Net it will open a new windows but the page cannot be retrieved. I have tried running Windows Internet Explorer as an administrator and I have even tried disabling UAC. I had to install Firefox to be able to use Dexia Direct Net so maybe this is not directly a Windows Vista issue. I will try this on a seperate machine running Windows XP + IE 7 to see if the problem lays with IE7. Reporting this problem cannot be done using an online form but I will contact the helpdesk tomorrow during the office hours.

3. Fortis PC Banking

Last but certainly not least is the PC Banking solution provided by Fortis. This one works without any issues, you don't need to run IE as an admin and you don't need to disable UAC.

Cross-posted from The .NET Aficionado

How to: associate file types to WMP 11 on Windows Vista?

Gabriel Lozano-Morán — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 01:49:00 GMT

When I open certain media files they will no longer be opened in the Windows Media Player because the file associations were changed during the installation of Nero 7. In Windows XP when you start Windows Media Player and open the options screen there will be a tab where you can choose the file type associations. In Windows Vista however you will not find this tab. In Windows Vista file associations can be changed through a control panel applet.

Click on the Windows Logo button (start) and click on "Control Panel" and then click on "Programs":

Then click on "Default Programs":

Then click on "Set your default programs" (you are almost there):

Select "Windows Media Player" from the list and then you have two options:

You can either click on "Set this program as default": this will associate all the file types that can be opened by Windows Media Player to Windows Media Player
Or you can click on "Choose defaults for this program": this allows you to choose the file types

When you choose for the second options just select all the file types that you want to be associated to Windows Media Player and click on "Save". That's it!

Cross-posted from The .NET Aficionado

When to use a switch statement/if statement?

Gabriel Lozano-Morán — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 22:46:00 GMT

Today someone asked me if I had told developer X that having a lot of if statements was better than a having a switch statement. I guess that developer X misunderstood what I told him a couple of weeks ago.

I told him that if you have only 2 conditions that you need to check you can consider using an if statement. If you have more than 2 conditions use a switch statement instead and if you have more than 5 conditions then you should reconsider your design and make use of the command pattern or make better use of inheritance.

When you use a switch statement the C# compiler performs several optimizations. It can rearrange the conditions when needed depending on the frequency and it will also determine whether to implement a jump table (the switch IL instruction) over a if statement instead. Therefore in almost 100% of the cases it is always better to use a switch statement where possible.

Cross-posted from The .NET Aficionado

Convert SWF to XAML

Gabriel Lozano-Morán — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 04:14:00 GMT

Just in case you haven't read about this on all the other blogs: Michael Swanson, a Technical Evangelist on "Avalon" related tools and components, released a version of his SWF2XAML which is a Flash to XAML converter.

You can read more about it here.

Cross-posted from The .NET Aficionado

Intellisense doesn't show System.Windows.Forms.Form.Closed event (.NET 2.0)

Gabriel Lozano-Morán — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 20:48:00 GMT

Why doesn't the IntelliSense show the Closed event of a form in WinForms 2.0 application?

You don't see this member because it is decorated with the EditorBrowsable attribute passing the enum value EditorBrowsableState.Never to its constructor. The IntelliSense engine in Visual Studio doesn't show members that are marked as Never. This doesn't mean that you can't use this event because you can.

Why did the designers decide to mark the Closed event as being never browsable?

The answer to this question is that the events Closed and Closing too by the way are obsolete and that the events FormClosed and FormClosing should be used instead.

Why are the events Closed and Closing obsolete?

I don't know exactly why but using Reflector I could easily determine that they have also added two new delegates and two new classes for event data:

The only addition to the new classes for the event data is a CloseReason property of the enum type System.Windows.Forms.CloseReason. The enum type shows some interesting values like ApplicationExitCall, WindowsShutDown and TaskManagerClosing.

When you use the Closed event you need to know that when you call Application.Exit() the events Closed and Closing will not be raised. The events FormClosing and FormClosed however will be raised and now you have the opportunity to have different execution paths depending on the reason why these events were raised.

Cross-posted from The .NET Aficionado

Which is more secure? Oracle vs SQL Server

Gabriel Lozano-Morán — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 16:43:00 GMT

David Litchfield, a well known security expert, has created a report that compares the security flaws found in Oracle with those found in SQL Server. According to his report SQL Server 2005 is more secure than Oracle 10G Release 2 and he says that this is tanks to the Security Development Lifecycle.

Although there are indeed no known security flaws in SQL Server 2005 you must know that SQL Server 2005 uses several components that are not directly part of the SQL Server core and it in these components there were several security flaws found. Imho these flaws should have been taken account for in the report because a chain is as strong as its weakest link.

You can read the report here

Source

Cross-posted from The .NET Aficionado