jamesfinnigan.com

Hyper-V review

James Finnigan — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 21:22:26 GMT

The hypervisor support in Server 2008 is now out in beta and it's great to see the product hitting the street. Virtualization is a huge change for the industry that can do a lot for everyone from data-centers to software houses, to people who just Read More......(read more)

Beginning again - and hiring

James Finnigan — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 03:34:34 GMT

Well, fun times. I've taken a position on the Virtual Machine Manager team. I'll be one of the lead developers working on the next version. It's an exciting space, with a lot of players and a lot of new technologies. I'm also hiring Read More......(read more)

The Shell Extensions Approved list is not a complete list of shell extensions on the system

James Finnigan — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 04:42:02 GMT

I've noticed that a number of different programs just look at the Approved list of shell extensions [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Shell Extensions\Approved] and figure that all shell extensions will be in that list. It's Read More......(read more)

Supplemental Registrations (aka. Context Menu Handers (etc) - where are they loaded from...)

James Finnigan — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 16:00:00 GMT

I've been thinking about the registration problem where you want to add a context menu (much of this applies to static verbs as well) to a file type (we'll say .ogg). You don't want the default verb, you just want to add some verbs. Because you don't Read More......(read more)

Installing shell extensions - please complain here

James Finnigan — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 01:02:00 GMT

So... I've been looking more closely at Wix and I think I'm going to build some custom actions to do a really good job installing shell extensions. Which ones do you find most problematic? I realize this is a bit of a change of pace for the blog, so I'll Read More......(read more)

Summer Fun, Full House

James Finnigan — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 06:50:00 GMT

(Normally this kind of post is reserved for my other blog where I mostly blog about non-tech - so don't worry, I won't be boring you with stories of how incrediby smart and cute my little boys are (obviously my wife's DNA is doing overtime).) We've been Read More......(read more)

The best way to make UAC shut up for a while

James Finnigan — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 03:25:00 GMT

Let's say you want to install a few things and want UAC to stop bugging you while you install them. Should you turn off UAC and install the apps? Since that disables UAC's virtualization, it can destabilize things that depend on data written to those Read More......(read more)

How to stop WinDbg from going crazy and loading all the symbols

James Finnigan — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 14:00:00 GMT

One of my favorite features of WinDbg is that it doesn't load all the symbols up-front. That's a huge part of what makes it so much faster than Visual Studio. However, every once in a while you can do things that cause WinDbg to go crazy and load all Read More......(read more)

Breaking when the instruction pointer leaves the module

James Finnigan — Thu, 31 May 2007 16:00:59 GMT

The problem is to skip out of a kernel driver that we don't have symbols for - what's the best way to break on calls out of that driver. If you used pc (step until the next call instruction), you would hit calls that are inside that driver. Here's another Read More......(read more)

Finding where a bad HRESULT is returned

James Finnigan — Thu, 31 May 2007 05:38:38 GMT

I've looked at this a couple times , but here's another way to break when the error code you're looking at is being returned. .while(@eax != 0xc0000005) { t ; reax } If you want to avoid the output noise, you can do something like this: .while(@eax != Read More......(read more)

How to only break on a jump when it will be taken

James Finnigan — Thu, 31 May 2007 05:22:37 GMT

Here's a question that came up a work a little bit back - thought I would share the result around. There is a coding pattern (that I don't ever really use so I may be messing it up) that works like this: T1 res1; T2 res2; T3 res3; res1 = GetRes1(); if Read More......(read more)

Making an MSI that doesn't need a UAC/LUA prompt

James Finnigan — Thu, 03 May 2007 05:03:00 GMT

The goal I think that most things don't need to require a UAC prompt to install - just install it for that user. Why not make the MSI so it doesn't prompt and your users get a smoother experience? (Also, I feel much better installing a program that doesn't Read More......(read more)

How to launch an un-elevated process from an elevated process

James Finnigan — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 04:11:03 GMT

This question has come up a fair amount lately. The short answer is that you don't * - instead you should: first launch an unelevated process have that unelevated process launch an elevated process and wait for it to finish (or use some form of IPC) have Read More......(read more)

UAC UI on oldnewthing - what the colors mean

James Finnigan — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 22:08:00 GMT

I mentioned recently that I was the new owner of the UAC UI (from the dev side). Well, today I found that Raymond Chen's blog has brought up the topic of what the colors mean. I hadn't even really noticed that the dialogs changed much before taking ownership Read More......(read more)

Flat Solution Explorer

james — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 23:56:00 GMT

Here's a great tool for folks that use Visual Studio with large projects - it gives you a flat view of all the files in your solution. Quick word-wheeling allows you to filter down to a set of files and get at exactly what you're interested in. It's now available for download up on its codeplex site.

[crossposted from my msdn blog]

New Beginnings...

james — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 17:10:43 GMT

I've moved onto the Windows Experience team. It should a lot of fun to continue to follow Guided Help, and some of my other projects but my emphasis now is on the Windows Experience - things like explorer and the like. I'm also the new owner of the LUA/UAC shell UI, which should be interesting.

This will probably change the kinds of things that I blog about - you can expect more shell-related topics, as well as various user experience discussions.

We have a lot of changes that we're excited about, and I look forward to building on Windows Vista.

[from my msdn blog]

RegNamespace sample up on codeplex

james — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 22:54:35 GMT

Scott, Jerry, Thayn and I have whipped up a sample of indexing the registry, as well as a shell folder (namespace extension) for viewing it. It's great to be able to search the registry via the index and it's great sample of how to create a shellfolder, protocol handler, and even an IFilter. So head on over to the codeplex site and check out the source code, or if you're more interested in having it than seeing how it's build, just download the binaries and enjoy!

This is something that we're looking to improve over time, adding features and generally fleshing it out to be a rich, complete experience. We're not yet to feature parity with Regedit, but it won't be too long.

If you're interested in samples related to shell programming also check out shellrevealed.

[from my msdn blog]

Windows Live ID Client SDK alpha release

James Finnigan — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 07:20:54 GMT

On a recent post about BITSAdmin , someone commented on how you needed to be logged into passport to download certain things. Well I noticed in Brian's blog that there is now an alpha release of the live client SDK . I haven't tried it out (still busy Read More......(read more)

Recruiting at BYU

James Finnigan — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 05:35:37 GMT

Hi all - I'm at BYU for the career fair tomorrow (Wednesday). Come on down and talk to us and bring a resume - I met a lot of you at the dinner tonight (thanks for coming) which was great fun. We're also going to be doing some mock technical interviews Read More......(read more)

RE: How to get rid of that pesky Windows Welcome Center at FIRST boot

james — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 07:16:21 GMT

While reading blog comments about Welcome Center, I came across this entry on how to remove welcome center at first boot.

...

With a simple .reg file though, you can kill Windows Welcome Center dead on first boot — simply put the following into your .reg file and save it, run it, or add it to your scripts:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run] "WindowsWelcomeCenter"=-

...

That will do it. But if you run this command instead, you can avoid creating a file and the elevation prompt.

reg delete HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run /v WindowsWelcomeCenter /f

Oh, and sorry about waiting until the second time you see it before displaying the checkbox - that wasn't my idea. (Welcome Center was a feature with a lot of input.)

[original link]

Jeep Waterfall

james — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 03:20:00 GMT

Just discovered this jeep waterfall that's been going around the internet. It's a cool idea - and making the video was a great way to generate buzz (I would never have seen it otherwise).

Yahoo! Messenger for Windows Vista

james — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 03:01:00 GMT

I was just looking at the Yahoo! Messenger for Windows Vista video. Wow. It's gorgeous. It's nice to see people doing amazing things with Avalon/WPF. I was particularly impressed with the great flow and visual as you select the background color (pictured, but watch the video about 2/3rds in for the full effect).

I look forward to more luscious apps like this - looks like I may need to dust off my WPF skills and try making a few things myself (too many projects, too little time).

[original post]

Bernie Klinder ♡ Guided Help

james — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 19:57:33 GMT

From Bernie's review of Windows Vista's killer features...

Guided Help and Automated Diagnostics -- A large number of help desk calls are for simple technical issues that aren't difficult to resolve but are somewhat time consuming to explain to a remote non-technical user. Network issues, printing issues and device drivers are common scenarios that Windows Vista will automatically attempt to fix. Many other common issues are handled via a Guided Help menu that pops up when an error occurs – prompting users to resolve the issue themselves with help from the OS. For IT professionals, performance monitoring and task management tools are easier to use and provide more information.

Also in the list:

Integrated Search
Power Management
Network Management
Ad Hoc Wireless
Presentation Mode (AWESOME)
Previous Versions
Mobility Center
Document Previews
Guided Help and Automated Diagnostics
Aero

Thanks Bernie - glad you like it!

[via Developing for .NET]

[original post]

Smile spotting - can you tell the difference?

james — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 19:32:00 GMT

I was taking a smile spotting survey that I found from Kathy Sierra's blog (good reading) and I know a little bit about how to tell a fake smile from a real one (in theory) and I thought it would be fun to see how good I was at it. At the beginning, I didn't do so hot because I was thinking about what little I knew about eyes and the like, but once I gave in and let myself intuit I got the rest right (although I wasn't very sure on some of them). At the end of the survey, there are tips on how you can reliably recognize fake and real smiles.

[original post]

Using WMIC to check for predicted disk failure (S.M.A.R.T. analysis)

james — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 00:37:00 GMT

I was looking at the Windows Vista Reliability and Performance Monitor and noticed that the data collector sets for System Diagnostics included a SMART disk check. I've been waiting for Windows to make better use of SMART and hadn't noticed that there was a WMI entry for it. I took a look at it in WMIC to see what data was there. You can also view the data and thresholds used to predict failure, etc.

WMIC /NAMESPACE:\\root\wmi PATH MSStorageDriver_FailurePredictStatus
Active InstanceName PredictFailure Reason
TRUE IDE\DiskWDC_WD1200BB-00CAA0_____________________16.06V16\5&134a4e1&0&1.0.0_0 FALSE 0
TRUE IDE\DiskWDC_WD740GD-00FLA1______________________27.08D27\5&14d2dd2b&0&0.0.0_0 FALSE 0
TRUE IDE\DiskST3250823AS_____________________________3.03____\5&278c8dd0&0&1.0.0_0 FALSE 0

WMIC /NAMESPACE:\\root\wmi PATH MSStorageDriver_FailurePredictData
WMIC /NAMESPACE:\\root\wmi PATH MSStorageDriver_FailurePredictThresholds
[original post]

jamesfinnigan.com

Hyper-V review

Beginning again - and hiring

The Shell Extensions Approved list is *not* a complete list of shell extensions on the system

Supplemental Registrations (aka. Context Menu Handers (etc) - where are they loaded from...)

Installing shell extensions - please complain here

Summer Fun, Full House

The best way to make UAC shut up for a while

How to stop WinDbg from going crazy and loading all the symbols

Breaking when the instruction pointer leaves the module

Finding where a bad HRESULT is returned

How to only break on a jump when it will be taken

Making an MSI that doesn't need a UAC/LUA prompt

How to launch an un-elevated process from an elevated process

UAC UI on oldnewthing - what the colors mean

Flat Solution Explorer

New Beginnings...

RegNamespace sample up on codeplex

Windows Live ID Client SDK alpha release

Recruiting at BYU

RE: How to get rid of that pesky Windows Welcome Center at FIRST boot

Jeep Waterfall

Yahoo! Messenger for Windows Vista

Bernie Klinder ♡ Guided Help

Smile spotting - can you tell the difference?

Using WMIC to check for predicted disk failure (S.M.A.R.T. analysis)

The Shell Extensions Approved list is not a complete list of shell extensions on the system