Some Sharepoint and Front Page folks will no doubt be rejoicing over a beta that was quietly released last Tuesday afternoon. Front Page Server Extensions are now available for Vista and Longorn Server. I thought that perhaps this could open the door to developing ASP.NET 1.1 apps on Vista using Visual Studio 2003, so I decided to do a quick test. You see, VS2005 is very versatile as to how it can open webs, but when Visual Studio 2003 opens a web site, it can only use FPSE. And the lack of FPSE...

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I can see why Jim wanted out. First you make an operating system (XP) that is flashy, but get ridiculed for having security problems. Then you make an operating system that's extremely secure (Vista), and people start complaining that they are missing out on all the flashy stuff. Geez people, make up your minds! Or at least buy some more RAM and be happy

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A plea out to all those who are using ASP.NET AJAX with sites on IIS7, either under Vista or Longhorn Server: I've been battling a strange issue with ASP.NET AJAX on IIS 7 running under Vista. It's a site that was upgraded from RC1 to RTM, and works great under IIS 6. Have troubleshot it enough under IIS 7 to determine that if the AppPool has the Managed Pipeline Mode set to "Integrated", it fails, and if it's set to "Classic", it works perfectly. The error I'm getting is one that was common during...

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Szymon Kobalczyk was having fun with the 64-bit version of Vista. That is until he tried to install a game called Price of Persia: the two thrones. The machine won't even boot now! But most likely all is not lost. If you find yourself in this kind of pickle then getting back to a restore point using System Restore is a great thing to try. Here's two ways to do that: First plan of attack is to try to boot to Safe Mode, which is done from the boot menu that comes up by pressing F8 right after the POST...

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Yesterday I found an undocumented feature tucked away in Vista's activation reminder. I don't expect that it exposes anything that directly contributes to circumventing activation, plus this can offer useful info for those who administer Vista systems, so I decided to post about it. If you haven't activated after 30 days, this pleasant reminder appears: If you restart the system then that's all you can get to. OK, time to activate. At this point you can change the product key, phone in to activate,...

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This is shaping up to be a pretty good week. Maybe Thursday Bush will announce that the U.S. is finally joining the Kyoto accord, and Friday everyone's favorite Iranian -- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- will discover that those 3000 new centrifuges he bought are much better used for making delicious milkshakes than enriching uranium hexafluoride. (Hey, I can dream, can't I?) At least one more good thing is coming this week -- on Saturday we're having our community Vista launch event. If you're anywhere near...

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This week I'm back on Dell's campus, delivering a class about software development for Vista. In another couple hours I'll be heading out to the Round Rock 1 building to pick up all the freshly-printed courseware. The front of the building is all dressed up in honor of the big Vista launch: It's a great time to be in IT

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The blessed creators of PowerShell have smiled upon us and now provided the release version of their rich shell interface for Vista. In honor of this momentus occasion I have decided to also bring a gift to the table. I took a couple of hours and updated the great introductory walkthrough document for PowerShell done by Ryan Paul so it's consistent with the release version. Ryan comes from a strong background in Linux, with lots of experience using great shells. His write-up is the perfect thing...

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Some have wondered why Vista took so long to get to us. What's the big deal about it anyway? Well, it's much more than a pretty face and the fancy new communication features of WCF. Okay, so that was all it was going to be originally. A marginal upgrade. A hop between Whistler and Blackcomb, and its code-name told it all: Longhorn is just a small bar nestled between those two giant mountains. But when Blaster and other embarassing attacks surfaced in the 2003 timeframe, the original plans to make...

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I was asked to be one of the folks answering questions at the big Phoenix "Ready for a New Day" launch event. Definitely a fun experience, and pretty well attended. A common question that came up is what level of hardware runs well with Vista? The answer I had given to everyone is to have 1.5 gigs of RAM, and a nice DirectX 9 video card if you want the cool Aero effects. Over the past couple days I got to experience what it's like when you don't have enough RAM. I originally had two sticks of DDR...

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