Entries for mstefan

ActiveX Test Container [ActiveX Test Container]

mstefan — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 05:46:50 GMT

I just noticed that the ActiveX Test Container (tstcon32.exe) was missing from Visual Studio 2008, and it's not in the latest Windows SDK. Is this an oversight, or does Microsoft just think that no one is building ActiveX controls anymore? :P

It's not a big deal, since I have a copy of it with Visual Studio 2005, but it is handy for testing them in the debugger, particularly when using scripts.

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Specifying the runtime version [Specifying the runtime version]

mstefan — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 17:42:48 GMT

Is there a command line option (or some other way) to explicitly specify the runtime version for an assembly other than the default (e.g.: "v2.0.50727")? In other words, specify your own value that's returned by Assembly.ImageRuntimeVersion?

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Stop the Ding! [Stop the Ding!]

mstefan — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 20:28:03 GMT

One of the most annoying things in Vista is that once you change your system sounds, applications will play the default sound (typically "Windows Ding.wav") every time you select an item in a listview control. Frankly, this was driving me to distraction and so I spent some time digging around and thought I would share here, in case anyone else was annoyed. My apoligies if this has already been posted elsewhere.

It turns out, it looks there's a bug in the Control Panel applet where you set your sound preferences. Even if you have the "Select" sound set to nothing, it's creating an entry (what is probably a null string) in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\AppEvents\Schemes\Apps\.Default\CCSelect\.Current.

Because it's not actually a sound file, it reverts to the default sound. And, because the folks at Microsoft apparently want to make this as annoying as possible, if you disable the default sound, then it decides to do you the "favor" of beeping using your system speaker. Everyone on the Vista team should be forced to wear headphones and listen to an endless loop of "Windows Ding.wav" until a fix is published for this. I'm just saying.

In the meantime, here's a temporary fix in the form of a registry file. Note that you'll need to run this after every time you change your system sounds through the control panel, or the Ding from Hell™ will return:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\AppEvents\Schemes\Apps\.Default\CCSelect]
@=""

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\AppEvents\Schemes\Apps\.Default\CCSelect\.current]
@=""

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\AppEvents\Schemes\Apps\.Default\CCSelect\.Default]
@=""

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\AppEvents\Schemes\Apps\.Default\CCSelect\.Modified]
@=""

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.NET Framework 3.5 [.NET Framework 3.5]

mstefan — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 22:41:25 GMT

For anyone in the know, is the 3.5 framework simply an extension of the 2.0 framework (similar to how 3.0 is)? I notice that in Orcas, even when you tell it to target 3.5, it's pulling in a lot of system classes that are part of the 2.0 framework, so it doesn't seem like it's a complete replacement (as 2.0 was for 1.1).

What I'm getting at here is, if you build an application that targets 3.5, it seems like it will require both version 2.0 and 3.5 of the framework to be installed on the target system.

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Question about PowerShell and .NET assemblies [Question about PowerShell and .NET assemblies]

mstefan — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 12:16:41 GMT

PowerShell has the ability to load an assembly and create an instance of a class; is there a way for the assembly to know that it has been loaded in PS rather than, for example, as a reference in a Windows Forms based application?

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Vista and Speech Recognition [Vista and Speech Recognition]

mstefan — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 04:42:42 GMT

Well, I decided to finally replace my aged webcam and microphone for a new setup from Logitech. Remembering the post here a while ago asking about why Microsoft didn't heavily promote speech recognition in Vista, I decided to give it a shot.

I used the boom microphone that was part of the Logitech headset, not the webcam, since I figured that would give me the best results. I ran through the initial tutorial (which was done very nicely, by the way) and then through three training sessions. At that point, I figured that Vista would be all set and began my adventure.

Ouch. Well, I found the answer to my question. It simply doesn't work reliably. It would get seriously confused when I would say "Close That" or "Cancel", it didn't know how scroll down or select items in a number of applications I tested, and dictation... not a chance. Even something as simple as starting a program was dicey. Alas, that wonderful tutorial has no connection whatsoever to reality. When using dictation, simple phrases like "this is a test" came out as garbled nonsense in Word.

And to top it all off, I have the CPU gadget on my desktop. Normally, it's sitting around 1-3%, 10-15% if I'm doing a few things (that aren't compute-bound, obviously). With speech recognition, my poor system was constantly red-lined, pegging both cores at near 100%.

I can appreciate Microsoft wanting to push the envelope, but I'm sorry, this is just broken behavior. The "wow" is definitely nowhere to be found in their speech recognition code. Fortunately for their poor PSS folks, I doubt most users will even be aware that it's part of the operating system.

I love Vista, but this is a feature that I think would have been better left on the shop floor until it's retooled and working.

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PowerShell 1.0 Released for Vista [PowerShell 1.0 Released for Vista]

mstefan — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 20:04:57 GMT

At long last, Microsoft has released PowerShell 1.0 for Vista. I've been waiting a while for this, and really wasn't interested in going through the gymnastics of hacking the XP build. It was probably the only thing that I really missed when I dumped my old XP development system and moved completely over to Vista when the RTM build was published.

Today is a good day.

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