Entries for raptor3676

Zune HD [Zune HD]

raptor3676 — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 16:43:09 GMT

Hi,

Is there any niners, using the Zune? I'm travelling to the US next week and I'm feeling tempted to get one of those so any feedback is most appreciated

in reply to Zune HD

Single Session per User - Remote Desktop [Single Session per User - Remote Desktop]

raptor3676 — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:19:33 GMT

Hi,

On one of the servers I manage there are several application running. They have to run in a session (they are not services) and since they are the worst legacy apps I have ever seen, they need administrator rigths, because they have several .ini files scattered in both program files and windows folders (ouch).

I want to prevent the several operators checking the health of those apps, from login to the console (with the /console or /admin) switches. Is ther a way to prevent that to an account that is a member of the administrator group?

Its a Windows 2003 Standar server.

Thanx in advance

PS: I want to restrict the use of the console for that account because otherwise I cannot ensure that it has a single session per user.

in reply to Single Session per User - Remote Desktop

Rant against autostart/ISV - request to Microsoft [Rant against autostart/ISV - request to Microsoft]

raptor3676 — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 07:12:30 GMT

Hello everybody

In the last week a couple of friends has came to me asking to check ther laptops/notebooks for a number of reasons. Some them thought they had viruses in ther systems. The common history for all the cases were the ridiculously large number of process started by default at power. With the absolute worst case the one I saw today (and of course the trigger of this post) with 36 entries in the RUN registry key!!!! Holy Sh*t!!!!!!!!! The laptop lasted 8 full minutes before being usable. It was a brand new Dell laptop running Vista! Please spare the rant against Vista: my laptop is a Dell too, it's a year and a half older and starts and becomes usable well under the minute. Last time it was a netbook running XP. that poor thing needed like 4 minutes to become usable, after that it also could be used as a oven!

Someone needs to start a page where we users can black list the worst useless applications that take our valuable resources without permission! For instance:

-Adobe Acrobat Startup?? oh come on Adobe! if you want you acrobat user to startup fast make LIGHT not fake it is faster by loading uselessly pages at start up, that then just sit there like if I read PDFs 24x7. Thanks FoxIt reader for being there.
-Dell so called administratsion tools. They have 3 different application to control the laptop!!! Give me a break!!! why the applications can't be shortcuts in the start menu? why the updater needs to be running there in the UI?
-Apple/Google Updaters: Don't these guys in its infinite knowledge know about something called: Scheduled Tasks??? Dumb4sses!!!
-Java Update: the same as above.
-Mouse providers... can't recall the exact name of the maker. But is the one that places an icon in the system tray showing where I put the finger in the mouse pad!!!!! For crying out loud? do I really need see where I'm placing my finger if I where blind I don't be even using a mouse!!! That why only I install the defualt windows drivers.
-Antiviruses: McAffee, Norton. Oh those really grinds my gear! do they really need 2 or 3 services running. Also don't they ever heard of scheduled tasks? I just found an installation of Panda that triggered a full system scan at log in!!! no wonder why that laptop needed 8 minutes!
-Nvidia/ATI/Intel: Do you neeed up to 3 programs and a service besides the video card driver to control your hardware? windows have enough shortcuts in its UI and I don't need that many places to control it, let alone a program just to hear for keystrokes!!!
-Microsoft: sorry guys you too... Office Groove, do I need to "collaborate" always if I want to collaborate I surely start the program. The same goes to Messenger. I know where to find it.. there's no need to lunch it at log in. If you want to start fast... well make it lighter!

Jesus! this post already too long but sure you get the idea.

So please MS. Do something to warn users about such software. Some how force ISV to use new stuff (remember triggered services?)
I think is too late for the request but please MS remeber one of the Win7 mantras: "Return the power to the user", you already don't allow to place shortcuts in the super bar. Please offer a way to easily spot problematic programs during startup to easily remove it.

Charles: I know you looking at this. Do some one at MS though of a way to stop/prevent this? MS is loosing people for this situation they don't even know the bunch of crap they I running in ther machines they just say Windows is slow.

enough rant,
Raptor

in reply to Rant against autostart/ISV - request to Microsoft

Help w/ design patterns [Help w/ design patterns]

raptor3676 — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 22:31:11 GMT

Hi,

I've developed a series of middleware tools to assist in the communication of two management system. The steps are always the same but depending on the kind of communication there is a little preprocessing of the message. So I set up a event driven class, so whoever uses the class just has to add an event handler and is good to go. The events has a signature like this.

Message PreprocessMessage(Message incoming);

But when I pass the libraries thru FxCop, it complained that .Net events should go like this:

void EventHandler(object sender, EventArgs args);

so if I'm not suppossed to use events in such way what is the proper design pattern for it?

Also FxCop complains that I'm catching generic exceptions (yes my bad, I catch the Exception class). But this is not the regular user friendly programs this ones work as Windows services and the message passing task is critical, so the rationale behind this is: in case of any error, catch it, log it and move on 'cause we can't afford to stop everything just out of one error. I don't think I have to catch every single kind of exception just to please FxCop, or what is the rigth pattern for this, given that it is supposed to work 24x7.

in reply to Help w/ design patterns

Updating Windows2003 [Updating Windows2003]

raptor3676 — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 04:29:51 GMT

Hi again everyone,

I got about 12 Win2K3 servers isolated from the Internet (which I think is a good thing) they have been that way for like 3 years now and there should be a lot of updates that they have missed. And given the important updates going these days and the fact that they accessed by very virus prone clients PCs, I think is better to get'em updated.

Securing Internet access for them is something that, well... it's gonna happend the very same day hell freezes over. (client policy and they are very stubborn)

So, do you guys know if is there a tool that I can download, run it on the servers, tell me what patches are needed so I can download'em from somewhere else.

Sure, It's cumbersome but I can't think of another way.

Raptor

in reply to Updating Windows2003

Help with long running program [Help with long running program]

raptor3676 — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 23:42:16 GMT

Hi, everyone

Currently I'm working on a long running program whose task is to log information 24x7 from several servers, and it is supposed to do some aditional logging duties at 7AM everyday.

What's the best way to do that? I've been thinking of setting a thread to sleep for 24 hours wake up do the task and then back to sleep. But that doesn't seems a very elegant solution.

Any idea anyone?

Thanx in advance.

BTW, I'm using C#

in reply to Help with long running program

Wierd (providers) behavior with SQL Server [Wierd (providers) behavior with SQL Server]

raptor3676 — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 21:27:56 GMT

Hi,

Recently in my office we have to change an old application (made in Delphi) that have a bad case of memory leak, so it has to be periodically restarted before it take down the server. The Application task is to update the customer list from one system to another one.

I choose to do it C# 2.0 and since the source DB is SQL Server, using the .net SQL native provider (System.Data.SqlClient) was a no brainer. Everything was going good (fast, no memory leak and so on, smaller footprint by the way) until the next day one of the receiving applications started to crash. So I tracked down the error to a several rows in the source table that had \0 chars in the column for the customer name, like this:

"david\0\0\0P\0\0\0"

Without having much more to do I change my program to use OleDb (System.Data.OleDb, Provider SQLServer) to access the database. And presto the issue was gone: the name from the same row is again read like this:

"david"

I named this thread "Wierd behavior with SQL Server" but actually I don't even think this is SQL Server's fault. My two cents are:

1. The offending app really is the one inserting the rows, not the one reading them.
2. OleDB works because, MAYBE, that library depends on C/C++ code that considers \0 to be the end of a string. I found that the Win32 environment makes the same assumption.
3. The .net SqlClient, relies only on .net libraries so it doesn't considers \0 to be the end of a string therefore it reads the whole thing.

The question is how to deal with this bug... is this OleDB "behaviour" really a bug or it is supposed to work that way? if it is a bug, isn't it wrong to propose a workaround based on a bug??

What would you do? (BTW the inserting application is from a third party, so I cannot touch it)

Thanx in advance,
Raptor

in reply to Wierd (providers) behavior with SQL Server

SecPol (my new antivirus) [SecPol (my new antivirus)]

raptor3676 — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 18:37:27 GMT

Hi, Everybody.

In the current year I've had so many virus infections in my PCs and given the fact that antiviruses cannot detect'em, I no longer rely on antivirus for security. I opted to use SecPol to disallow execution from suspicious paths (say USB drive) with good results so far. But since my PC have an standard installation and all programs ever needed on them are installed before deployment I'd like to know if it is possible to use SecPol to set Windows up to refuse to execute anything not under the %programfiles% and %windir% paths? and is it possible to script those change so they can be replicated easily in other PCs? (those are XP boxes)

thanx in advance,
Raptor

PS: I've alse though of removing write permision for all users to the autorun registry entries (can those be scripted too?)

in reply to SecPol (my new antivirus)

COM Problem [COM Problem]

raptor3676 — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 01:12:44 GMT

Hello everyone,

Currently I'm working on a new Applet that's suppossed to show information coming from another application. The info is retrieved through an COM object. Must of the methods exposed are pretty straightforward... The signature is like "String Method1(int index)".

The things is that if the component is referenced from VB6 there's no problem. There's is another whole story if I do it from VS2005...
All I get after I add the reference is a couple of warnings:

Warning 1 Failed to create the wrapper assembly for type library "AxQDLink". Error loading type library/DLL. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80029C4A (TYPE_E_CANTLOADLIBRARY)) Agfa.QPatient

Warning 2 The referenced component 'AxQDLink' could not be found.

Please does anyone, knows what's wrong?

Thanx in advance

in reply to COM Problem

Virtual Machine Question [Virtual Machine Question]

raptor3676 — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 23:06:31 GMT

Hi everybody.

I got my laptop set to dual boot. Most of the time I use Vista. The other OS, XP I use it rarely, only to check my corporate mail.

So I was wondering if it is possible to boot the another OS (XP) in a Virtual Machine running on Vista...

Thanks,
Raptor

PS: Pls do not start a XP vs Vista war over here. I use Vista mainly because is the one preinstalled with the laptop, and having no issues nor performance imparements I'm OK with it. I don't use the XP because it is set up with very restrictive corporate policies, a ridiculous and poorly managed domain and a
This is not a network related error, since I'm able to connect to the server shared folders.

Can anyone please point out about what is preventing the server from receiving incomming connectio. By the way the service that this software is meant to run, is not receiving connections from clients either. I already run out of ideas.

Thanx in advace

Raptor

in reply to Win2k3 wierd network behaviour

SQL 2000 WTF???? [SQL 2000 WTF????]

raptor3676 — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 23:57:14 GMT

Can someone please explain this behavior?

I´ve executed the following sentence in Query Analyzer...

SELECT DISTINCT PID_ID + '|',LEN(PID_ID)

FROM AGFA_ADT_HIS

WHERE (PID_ID LIKE '% ') --> there is an space after the % char

ORDER BY 1

And I get results like this? (Using fixed-width font)

CC0              |, 3
CC03050635007948 |, 16
CC10017751       |, 10
CC100260         |, 8
CC10059647       |, 10

It doen't makes any sense since where part ask for those entries ending in space and according to the LEN function the fields doesn't have trailing spaces whatsover.

I think that the ANSI_PADDING has something to do with it but I'm not sure.

Thanx in advance!
Raptor

BTW: the column is VARCHAR(20)

in reply to SQL 2000 WTF????

Dual booting Vista (again) [Dual booting Vista (again)]

raptor3676 — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 02:17:32 GMT

Hi everyone,

I've intalled Vista RC2 in my laptop which happens to have 2 hard disks, as you might guess, one with XP the another one with Vista.

However my laptop is going to be "updated" to some stupid corporate standard which means the reinstallation of the XP partition, including full hard disk format, allegedly to guarantee no viruses are going to gain acces to the corporate domain.

The format of the XP disk is going to mess up the booting menu for sure, and since Vista RC2 have been performing very well I'd like to keep it with out having to reinstall.

Well, does anyone nows how to bring the dual boot menu menu after the main partition is gone?

Thanks in advance,
Raptor

in reply to Dual booting Vista (again)

Simple .NET question [Simple .NET question]

raptor3676 — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 03:14:56 GMT

Hi everybody

Is it posible for an Windows Forms application to generate output throught out the console? I've tried using Console.Write without success.

I'm developing a WinForm application, and it has command line parameters one of them triggers a task and there is only need to show how many registers it process. So no complex UI required. I've seen Win32 doing this, How can I do that with .NET 2.0?

Atte,
Raptor

in reply to Simple .NET question

VS.NET 2005 and SQL/e [VS.NET 2005 and SQL/e]

raptor3676 — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 05:42:04 GMT

Hi,

I've intalled the SQL/e CTP on my machine, but when I try to setup a new data source to SQL/e with Visual Studio .NET 2005 (not an express edition), the native provider doesn't appears on the list. The OleDB provider is listed but it doesn't allows to create a new DB.

Does anyone got the same problem?

Atte:
Raptor,

PS: Just in case, SQL/e stands for SQL Server Everywhere.

in reply to VS.NET 2005 and SQL/e

Headphones not working with Vista [Headphones not working with Vista]

raptor3676 — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 01:23:30 GMT

I've installed WinVista in my Dell 810 Laptop, and one of the problems I've got is the fact that when I plug my headphones to it no sounds comes out of it, the speakers go off, however.

I think this is related to the new audio stack in vista, where end-points are defined so your sound plays throught one of them. The speaker are end points, the headphones jack being another. (well at least that's what I read) However in the audio properties I couldn't find where to set the headphones up.

Any ideas anyone?

Raptor

PS: Just in case... Yes the hardware is OK, headphones works just fine under XP.

in reply to Headphones not working with Vista

Profiler for SQL Server 2005 [Profiler for SQL Server 2005]

raptor3676 — Mon, 29 May 2006 16:11:30 GMT

Hi,

The project I involved in, uses Oracle as is DB. But our client uses SQL 2005 and my task is to oversee that our product read and write properly from SQL, via some side tools our company also provides.

I set up a test enviroment, using SQL Express 2005. To test those tools, the thing is that there is an error going on and I'm sure it is related to the SQL sentences that our tools executes.

All I need is a tool to see what sentences and in what order are being issued against the SQL Server 2005 DB.

Any ideas?

Thanx in advance

in reply to Profiler for SQL Server 2005

WinVi WPF/DirectX [WinVi WPF/DirectX]

raptor3676 — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 18:54:11 GMT

In a recent article on ExtremeTech they stated the following:

"DirectX 10 will ship as part of Windows Vista. Most users won't see the impact initially, since the native desktop API for Vista is actually DirectX 9.0c (pixel shader 2.0)"

Which inmediately brought something up to my mind. That means that WPF is also based on the DX9 API? Because I don't think DX9 and DX10 can share the desktop surface. Or is it going to be a way to "select" the which DX version to use?

The infamy here is that Vista is being selled as the OS that can finally, squeeze all the juice from your graphic hardware. I think if I buy a DX10 capable graphic card I'll want WinVi to squeeze it.

So far, the only apps that are going to benefit from DX10 are games released after vista.

Raptor

in reply to WinVi WPF/DirectX

Profiler tool for SQL Server 2005 [Profiler tool for SQL Server 2005]

raptor3676 — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 16:48:33 GMT

HI,

I've been using SQL Server 2005 Express and the SQL Server Management Studio Express CTP for quite a while now. Which a I use for my test enviroment. The only thing I need is a Tool for profiling the SQL statements my programs issues.

Does anyone knows about such tool? I've google for it without any luck so far.

Thanx in advance,
Raptor

in reply to Profiler tool for SQL Server 2005

Threads and Queues [Threads and Queues]

raptor3676 — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 22:32:04 GMT

HI,

I've been assigned to develop an application to comunicate a legacy system with our current infrainstructure.

I imagine the application as 2 main threads:

-The first one will listen a Socket, receive the messages and store it in a Queue as it arrives (200 messages/minute estimated).

-A second one, will take the messages from the Queue and process them (BTW, a lenghty process)

Since this application is going to be a critical process for our business I wanted it to be as dependable as posible.

Do you think that it's necesary that I use a Lock on the Queue to insert or remove the messages from the Queue since this two operations are going to happend on different threads?

Thanx in advance,
Raptor

PS: I'm using the .NET Framework 2.0

in reply to Threads and Queues

Decimal vs Double [Decimal vs Double]

raptor3676 — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 17:13:37 GMT

Hi, everyone

Recentely I've been tasked to add basic inventory and cost functionality to an exisinting system. The system should store information like, "John Doe took 4.5Lt of 02 at $15 per Lt."

So when choosing the data types to be used in the Data Base, for the cost the clear choice was money (.NET decimal), and common sense, told me to use float for the quantity field (.NET double). But then, I realize something. Supponse someone ask you how much costs the used by someoen, the math is easy, Sum Quantity x Cost for every item used. But the two values are of diferent data type you are actually multiplying a double times a decimal. Which are not supported by .NET without a cast.

So what is the most adviceble thing to do, put the quantity field as money (to use the .net decimal data type) or setting all the fields as doubles?

AFAIK, you should always use the decimal data type whenever you handle money.

Atte:
Raptor

in reply to Decimal vs Double

.NET Performance [.NET Performance]

raptor3676 — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 20:41:42 GMT

Recently while browsing the internet I found a .NET port of the Linpack (v2.1 I think) test used benchmark computers.

I decided to benchmark .net 1.1 vs 2.0 so I compiled the same code using VS.NET2003 and VS.NET2005, then I runned them in a machine with both frameworks installed.

For a problem size of 500 (google for linpack) 2.0 was like 10% faster than 1.1 for a problem size of 1000 I got mixed results (somehow disappoiting :()

However the amazing happend when I runned both versions of the program (1.1 and 2.0) on my laptop that only has 2.0 installed on. So both version ended up running with the SAME framework.

This are the scores:

Compiled for 1.1: 157.94 Mflops/s
Compiled for 2.0: 149.48 Mflops/s

Can someone explain me how this non-sense happend? (Remember both version runned on .NET 2.0)

this where I got the source from http://www.shudo.net/jit/perf/#linpack
I made a console application out of it, I some one wish to try my version out I gladly send him a e-mail with the C# source code.

Raptor

in reply to .NET Performance

HELP .NET 1.1 fails to install [HELP .NET 1.1 fails to install]

raptor3676 — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 17:13:39 GMT

Hi, Every time I try to install the .NET framework 1.1 I get an error saying internal error here are the entries I get from the event viewer:

Producto: Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 - Error interno 2908. {7D4B5591-4C80-42BB-B0E5-F2C0CEE02C1A}

Product: Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 -- Error 1935.An error occurred during the installation of assembly 'Regcode,Version="1.0.5000.0",PublicKeyToken="b03f5f7f11d50a3a",Culture="neutral",FileVersion="1.1.4322.573"'. Please refer to Help and Support for more information. HRESULT: 0x8002802F. assembly interface: , function: CreateAssemblyNameObject, component: {29A3C191-6EA4-450C-B089-A37C6D441FF0}

Any Ideas??

Thanx in advance

in reply to HELP .NET 1.1 fails to install

System device [System device]

raptor3676 — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 19:55:58 GMT

Hi, everybody.

Let's say that I have a device identifier like "Device\CDRom0", How do I do to know to what drive letters it corresponds?

I'm sure some Win32 API should be handy I just haven't figure out which one

Thanx in advance.

Raptor

in reply to System device