Entries for Zian Choy

.NET: Setting A Form's Cursor [.NET: Setting A Form's Cursor]

Zian Choy — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 06:42:09 GMT

I wish to set the cursor of a form to Wait and then launch a dialog, and then, when the dialog is done and sends a Finished event to the parent form, to change the cursor back to the Default.

Currently, I use Cursor = Cursors.WaitCursor but that doesn't seem to work because when I move the mouse over the parent form while the dialog is visible, the cursor shows up as the Default cursor instead of the Wait cursor. Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas for getting the Wait cursor to show up?

I'm using VB .NET but I can take a decent stab at understanding C# code if necessary.

in reply to .NET: Setting A Form's Cursor

Videos RSS Feed Hyperlinks [Videos RSS Feed Hyperlinks]

Zian Choy — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:19:54 GMT

I've noticed that since the transition to C9v4, the hyperlink associated with each item in the Videos RSS feed points directly to the WMV instead of the web page containing the WMV and other relevant information.

I often drag the hyperlink into a folder on my desktop for future downloading and viewing. With the former system, clicking on the link would send me to a page full of context and an easy way to right-click on the WMV and press "Save". With the current system, I get popped into Windows Media Player with no way to download the entire video first and no way to see if there has been any discussion in the months between the original posting of the video and my later download date.

I would really appreciate it if the RSS feed was reverted back to its original behavior.

in reply to Videos RSS Feed Hyperlinks

Buggy Channel 8 Contact Form [Buggy Channel 8 Contact Form]

Zian Choy — Wed, 14 May 2008 05:13:00 GMT

My message to Channel 8 got bounced by their spam filter and since the message ("When will Expression Studio 2.0 be posted on DreamSpark?") does not contain obscene language, graphics, and trimming the message further is almost impossible, I'm posting my question here since I know that many of us are students:

When will Expression Studio 2.0 be posted on DreamSpark?

Does anyone know?

in reply to Buggy Channel 8 Contact Form

Cleanroom Software Engineering [Cleanroom Software Engineering]

Zian Choy — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 02:59:18 GMT

I've been reading about Cleanroom Software Engineering and it looks pretty promising. I'm thinking about trying it out on a small project.

What is your experience with using the Cleanroom process? Anything I should watch out for?

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Hard Drive Screws [Hard Drive Screws]

Zian Choy — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 22:43:10 GMT

Does anyone have suggestions for where I can go to buy 2 screws to mount my laptop's hard drive? I tried looking at NewEgg and Fry's and I couldn't find them.

Actually, I have to replace my hard drive because it's making funny noises but I doubt that a replacement hard drive from NewEgg will include a laptop caddy never mind a pair of tiny screws.

I tried calling up Dell and the salesman made a vague claim that "It will include everything you need" when I asked if the hard drive would include a pair of screws.

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Thoughts on File Backups [Thoughts on File Backups]

Zian Choy — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 02:18:12 GMT

Let's say that I give you a USB drive with 10 Word documents. How will you convince me that the files are not corrupted?

Answer: You can't.

What if I told you that the files should not have been modified since January 1, gave you the MD5 hash for each file, and told you that the hash was generated at the end of the day on January 1?

Answer: It would be trivial to check.

Is there anything in between?

in reply to Thoughts on File Backups

Expression and MSDN AA [Expression and MSDN AA]

Zian Choy — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 18:44:33 GMT

According to Michael Leworthy, the entire Expression Studio should be available on MSDN AA. Can anyone who's at school confirm this?

I don't see it in the e-Academy list but I want to make sure Expression should be there before I ask the IT department about it.

in reply to Expression and MSDN AA

Searching for Better Dell Support [Searching for Better Dell Support]

Zian Choy — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 22:11:06 GMT

I've been through the normal Dell tech support (chat/e-mail/phone) and an advanced resolution expert (aka the people behind the "Unresolved Issues" web page) with no resolution to many of my issues.

I'm thinking about contacting the FTC and BBB at this point. Does anyone else have suggestions for other people or organizations to contact?

Background Info:
Dell E1505
Located in the United States
Purchased via the Dell Premier page for the University of California at Irvine
Standard 1 year warranty (no on-site service included)

in reply to Searching for Better Dell Support

Coffeehouse RSS Feed Broken [Coffeehouse RSS Feed Broken]

Zian Choy — Mon, 28 May 2007 23:41:41 GMT

If you go to newsgroups or PSS but I'm beginning to get a little desperate after nearly 1 month with no responses.

I've found that when I middle-click on a link, Internet Explorer will sometimes launch an infinite number of new tabs, which forces me to end Internet Explorer via the Task Manager.

I've encountered this problem with two different mice on my Windows XP MCE laptop.

I know the default answer is going to be "try /noaddons" but that would be rather drastic because I only get it to reproduce once in a while and I'd have no way of knowing if the problem was solved.

Has anyone else had this problem before or have any suggestions?

in reply to IE7 Problem: Middle-Clicking Opens an Infinite Number of Tabs

Vista Upgrade vs. Clean Install Performance Comparsion [Vista Upgrade vs. Clean Install Performance Comparsion]

Zian Choy — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 02:01:28 GMT

According to ExtremeTech (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,2089952,00.asp?kc=ETRSS02129TX1K0000532), there's very little performance difference between upgrading to Vista and doing a clean install.

Personal implications? Well, I don't have to worry about spending 3+ days installing/configuring software when I upgrade to Vista. :)

Just thought it would be interesting for the community-at-large to know how the image-based installer is faring so far.

in reply to Vista Upgrade vs. Clean Install Performance Comparsion

Problem with watching a thread [Problem with watching a thread]

Zian Choy — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 01:31:58 GMT

1. Go to a thread (e.g. http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=264227#264227 and I got the following error message:

Critical Error: DataProvider
The dataprovider class "SqlForumsProvider" could not be loaded.
Please contact your forums administrator. A technical explanation of why this error is casused is below.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The forums expects to load a data abstraction layer (DAL) class; in this case: SqlForumsProvider. This DAL is used to communicate to whatever datastore you are using for the ASP.NET Forums (the default data store class is SqlDataProvider).
This class requires that certain methods and properties are implemented as it inherits these from the class below:
AspNetForums.Components.ForumsDataProvider.cs

In this case, the ForumsDataProvider class defines methods and/or properties that are missing in SqlForumsProvider. Please open your data provider class and attempt to recompile. You should get detailed compilation errors noting the missing methods/properties.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For more information you can also visit http://forums.asp.net the home of the ASP.NET Forums development team.

in reply to Another Forum Bug

File Restoration for the Paranoid [File Restoration for the Paranoid]

Zian Choy — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 20:42:50 GMT

Background: I do an incremental backup every week and a full C: + system state backup every month. The backup disk is NTFS and so it preserves the file encryption (I use WinXP's EFS to encrypt all my documents).

My computer is now dead. It gets all the way past the animated progress bar right up to before the login screen and then it hangs. I'm at the point of reformating and reinstalling WinXP.

After I do that, if I restore my hard drive using my backup that I made with WinXP's Backup Utility, will I be able to get to all the backed up encrypted files? In other words, will my entire user profile be restored?

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