Windows 7 BSOD

Hey!  I’m so excited!  I thought they got rid of the blue screen of death with Vista (though those reports were vastly over exaggerated).

 

I got my first BSOD in Windows 7 the other day, and I thought I’d post a screen shot for all to see:

 

Of course, I was only able to get the BSOD from windows 7 running in a VM.

CHM files and Vista

I’m working on installing on a new server, TFS 2008, and in the setup directories there is an Install Guide.  Being the diligent (for once) developer, I opened it up, and it said to download the latest install guide giving me a link. 

However, after downloading the new chm file from Microsoft, it wouldn’t open.  On one system, it said to check my dns server.  and on my host Vista system, it just wouldn’t display.  I opened up IE, checked the local intranet settings and didn’t see anything there.

The solution?  I right-clicked the file, and noticed that there was an Unblock button.  After clicking that, it opened just fine.  Apparently, Vista was preventing me from viewing the web pages inside the help file because they came from a different zone.

 

Once unblocked, the button no longer shows up, and I can read it just fine.

Stored Procedure taking forever.

Today, I came across an issue where from Sql Server Management Studio, a stored procedure was taking forever to run.  But from the application it was running just fine, and if I executed the sql from within the proc on it’s own, it ran just fine. 

Luckily, a friend, Chris Brandsma had stumbled across this about a year ago, and posted it and a solution on Elegant Code.

http://elegantcode.com/2008/05/17/sql-parameter-sniffing-and-what-to-do-about-it/

It’s called SQL Parameter sniffing, and MS (as well as Oracle and the others) use it to improve performance of stored procs.  However, if you have a large or sudden variance in the number of rows returned, the proc will seem to “hang up.”

At least I know what the fix is, and what to look for if it happens again on one of those “random” timeout bugs.

.net framework debugging

It's finally out. On ScottGu's blog, he posted information on how to read the .net framework source code!

.NET Framework Library Source Code now available

You do still have to enable it, but at least it's available.

Free Microsoft books.

I just found 3 free microsoft books that you can download as a PDF:

Microsoft Press

Once signed in, you can download Introducing LINQ, Introducing ASP.NET AJAX, and Introducing Silverlight 1.0

You can preview a couple of chapters, or download the whole book in PDF format.

Enjoy!

VMWare, Vista and VPNs part 2 (over wireless)

Note: This is over a wireless connection, over a wired connection, things work just fine.

I did it! I finally got settings worked out to be able to VPN into work from home with my Virtual Machine (running XP) on my Vista system.

First, I had to set the Virtual Machine to use NAT connections, not Bridged.

Second, I had to go into the Network Connections, and make sure that the VMWare Network Adapters to a Private Network, NOT Public.

Third, I had to connect to the VPN via Vista, NOT inside of the VM (as I previously had to do when I was hard wired in)

Fourth, I had to use Microsoft's Firewall Client for ISA server in Vista (the host machine) in order to get Internet access (though, this step will depend on your network).

Fifth, I also had to set the proxy server directly in IE inside the VM so that I can get internet access via the VM.

Enjoy!

Mike

Could not find resource assembly

I'm currently working on PDA app for our inventory program. I'm tweaking the program to point to a different webservice.

After deploying the app to the PDA, it started the connection to the webservice, when the following error popped up:

Could not find resource assembly

Hmmm. . . After some researching I found an msdn blog that mentioned that this error isn't an error that occurs in the apps resource assembly, but because the PDA does't have the resource assembly that contains the error codes that are used for display.

The blog contained a link to msdn to read through the issue, but alas, that pointed to a File Not Found error on the msdn. Oh well.

After searching, you need to copy the System_SR_enu.cab file to your PDA and install it.

Once I did that, the correct error message appeared and I moved on to debugging it. yeah!

Microsoft "Surface"

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/18928656
MSNBC is reporting today the latest and sounds like last major project for Bill Gates. Think of a touch screen that is super-sized combined with a watcom tablet. At least that's what I think of it. It looks pretty cool!

Hmmm, of course, as a coffee table you'd have to be careful when you put your feet up, or put a cup of hot coffee on it... then again, maybe it'll tell you the temperature of the coffee or when it is low (by weight maybe) and trigger the pot to start brewing some more hot coffee... oh the possibilities.

What a headache. . . linked servers and remote connections.

What a headache this has been. I've been trying to setup an SSIS package to run nightly for updating some data on a couple of our servers in development. After researching as to why I wasn't able to run the remote connection from our Sql Server 2k5 to Sql Server 2000. I finally generated this error:

Cannot obtain the schema rowset "DBSCHEMA_TABLES_INFO" for OLE DB provider "SQLNCLI" for linked server "FOO". The provider supports the interface, but returns a failure code when it is used.

and found the solution here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/906954


A little package that should have been run when the service pack was updated, but it didn't. I noticed that this is an issue with SP3 and SP4... too bad they didn't catch it in SP3 for the SP4 update. (though to be fair, they may not have known the package wasn't executing on the SP until people caught it with 64bit Sql Server)

Oh well. Hopefully, this will fix the error.

Next Version of Sql Server: Katmai

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinfo/futureversion/default.mspx
It looks as though Microsoft just announced their next version of Sql Server, code name Katmai.

From their site:

SQL Server code name "Katmai," the next release of Microsoft SQL Server, provides a comprehensive data platform that is secure, reliable, manageable and scalable for your mission critical applications, while enabling developers to create new applications that can store and consume any type of data on any device, and enabling all your users to make informed decisions with relevant insights.