Disable Windows Automatic Updates Now

If you are a developer using Windows, do the folowing right now

1. Open Control Panel
2. Select Automatic Updates (I know you already switched it to Classic View)
3. Select "Turn off Automatic Updates"
4. Hit Ok
5. Never reconsider this action.

Its not worth it. I've written about the troubles that Automatic Updates causes, how they used it to hijack Firfefox and the joke of Ray Ozzie's calling it a success.

Now, my overnight subversion download was interrupted because Windows Updated decided it would be a good time to update my OS (a server I'm remoting into - its gone off my laptop).

I've lost a day because of this stupid feature. Never again.

At home, my wife's Vista laptop is suddenly locking up since her last update. She believes this to be a plant to get people to buy Win7. Not beyond the realm of possibility, considering the source.

5 Tips for Hosting Your Windows 7 Launch Party

From the video:



A few tips they point out (and my take)

Install Windows7 2 days ahead of time
This is going to take a long time and be frustrating. Upgrading from XP won't work. If you try to install at the party, the guests will leave before you are done.

Play with Windows7 before the party
Once again, everything will have moved. If you haven't figured out where everything is, you'll embarrass yourself in front of your guests.

Print out the activity host notes ahead of time
Interesting they didn't say you could browse them during the party. Microsoft has a history of a corruptible IP stack, and still doesn't know why.

Bonus activities won't work for everybody
Like Vista, there will be many device incompatibilities. Making hardware work with the OS is not their job, its yours.

Hosts should check out help for activities
Microsoft has not yet read Getting Real, and simply can't bear to make anything simple. You won't know what to do just by using it.

Seven things which will be missing from Windows 7

Windows 7 is just around the corner and it sounds really great.

When I am eventually forced to use Windows 7, which will be my tenth version of the OS, I am pretty sure these features will still not be there, as they haven't made it yet.

1) A real command shell. The batch command prompt just isn't cutting it, and there is no guarantee the powershell is installed (or configured properly). Its time to get a shell language, like BASH available in the base windows install.

2) Built-in telnet server. So many tasks could get done without a remote desktop - just with a useful command shell (above).

3) Default settings which don't offend intelligent people. It gets old having to change a setting to be able to see file extensions. "Don't show that to users, they might get confused." Or to be able to see file sizes. "What if they ask why one file is larger than another?" Or see the contents of C:\Program Files. "They might want to delete Internet Destroyer!"

4) Symbolic links. One of the most useful features in Unix, allowing us to make a file or directory appear to exist in more than one location. Shortcuts, which work only through Windows Explorer, are part of the user interface, not the file system.

5) Less locking of files. We all get tired of files which are locked, because an application has read the file. They often do not need to have exclusive access, but lock the file anyway.

6) 64-bit memory addressing. We should get 16 billion GB of addressable RAM from our OS and let software and memory chips catch up to that. Instead we get 128GB, which isn't much more than we have today.

7) DLL help. I asked Steve Balmer to add this personally. No kidding. I don't think he understood. But anyway we develop and test on a PC and then deploy to a server which has had who knows what installed on it, running as a different user, with a different set of environment variables. Would be very helpful if the OS could diff its runtime environment between my dev machine and deployment one, and provide a list of changes for me. That way we could see and sign off on what DLLs are missing, what significant registry keys are modified, and what needs upgrading. Steve's answer was "What?"

Instead, what will we get? A new calculator, menus moved around, fancy themes an improved screen saver, and a user interface which you will never be able to run.

Microsoft's Boldest Move Yet

This week on a regrettably Vista machine, I checked my firefox addons and saw something I didn't install: Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant. Whatever, I thought, I'll get rid of it.

Not so easy, the uninstall button is not available. A quick search found how to do it at annoyances.org which claims it came with Windows update.

So what is this component which is so important, Microsoft felt the need to install it on Firefox? According to Microsoft support:

...the .NET Framework Assistant enables Firefox to use the ClickOnce technology that is included in the .NET Framework. The .NET Framework Assistant is added at the computer level so that its functionality can be used by all users at the computer level instead of at the user level.

That sounds secure to me. What could go wrong? I'm curious why it doesn't do the same for Safari, which was installed on that computer, or for Chrome (which isn't). Oh, wait a minute... Its because the corporations behind them will take you to court over it!

Seriously, this is unacceptable. Firefox is not your product, Microsoft! I've spent my last cent on Microsoft products. No more. I'm switching off Windows. Now go away!

How to redirect stdout and stderr in windows

Basic redirection of stdout:

somecmd.exe > outfile

To redirect stderr to the same file, just redirect stderr to stdout:

somecmd.exe > outfile 2>&1

Ten Names Microsoft Should Consider for Windows 7

Windows DO - Windows Do Over
Windows EM - Windows Everything's Moved
Windows FU - Windows Forced Upgrade
Windows LM - Windows Like Mac
Windows SA - Windows Shiny Animations
Windows AL - Windows Apple Litigation
Windows MB - Windows Marketed Better
Windows SM - Windows Sell More
Windows SP - Windows Stimulus Package
Windows TT - Windows Tired of Testing

Batch file variables modified and referenced in a for loop

More batch fun...

When a batch file executes and a loop is entered, the entire loop is parsed one time, and all variable references are expanded at that time. Supposedly this is for performance reasons, which is good because there are a lot of high-throughput batch files out there :)

So for example (from my stack overflow question):

for %%f in (%MYTARGETDIR%\*config.xml) do (
  SET TMPFILE=%%F.tmp
  echo In loop %TMPFILE%
)

does not show a value for the TMPFILE variable.

This can be overridden using enabedelayedexpansion:

setlocal ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION
for %%f in (%MYTARGETDIR%*config.xml) do (
  SET TMPFILE=%%F.tmp
  echo In loop !TMPFILE! 
)

How to Expand Windows Filename Globs in a Batch File

This one I needed dearly today:

In windows, filename globs like *.xml do not get expanded by the shell. Its up to each script and program to do it. Thanks for nothin' MSFT!

Here is how to do it in a batch file - a simple example, which does the equivalent of a dir command:

@echo OFF
for %%f in (%1) do (
  echo %%f
)

Happy coding.

Tips for Developing Through the Remote Desktop

With an out of town client, I've been using Windows Remote Desktop extensively for some time now for remote development. I've picked up these tips to help the remote developer:

1. Don't Save your Credentials in Remote Desktop Client

This is a no-brainer. If you were on site, a password would be required. Why not have the same minimum requirement of a remote session as well? We owe it to the site administrator to keep the remote session as secure as possible.

2. Can't Connect? Do this First

Its frustrating when you can't connect to your remote desktop, but network admins are a busy folk. Help them help you by diagnosing the problem. Ping first the VPN server by IP address and then name. If both are successful, ping the remote desktop host by name and then IP address. If all these work, try reestablishing your VPN connection. If you are able to ping by IP and not name, you should be able to substitute IP address for name and keep working, while DNS is fixed.

3. Keep your Remote Workstation up to Date with Windows Updates

As I've reported, Windows features in the remote workstation stop working when there are Windows updates waiting to be installed (in spite of what Ray Ozzie thinks). Keep that up to date, to keep your features working. See the next tip related to this.

4. Learn Three Ways to Establish a Remote Desktop Session

There are 3 ways:

• Start Menu Item
• Double-Click a .RDP file (Or select a .RDP recent document)
• Start a Console Session

Each has their own features. The Start Menu item is for ordinary usage. An RDP file can be used to customize the session, and is critical when you can't get a remote desktop window to maximize (my laptop has this issue). Save the .RDP file, then right click to properties to change it to full screen. The Console Session is required for some installations, including some Windows Updates. It is started through the command:

mstsc /console

5. Learn How to Restart Your Remote Host

For many reasons, you may need to restart your remote host, but the start menu does not have a Shut Down option. How do you do this? Open a Command Prompt and type the command:

shutdown /r

The /r is important, it is the restart option.

6. Don't Chain Together Remote Desktop Sessions

Do not open a Remote Desktop session from within your Remote Desktop client. It causes two problems: A) Performance degrades severely and B) Users get confused as to which machine they are working on. Instead, open both desktops from your real desktop, switching back and forth as needed, security permitting.

7. Keep a Task Manager Open

Hey, it is Windows, things go haywire. When they do in a remote desktop session, things become unusable. Keep a Task manager open to make it easier to kill apps which are not responding.

8. Learn how to Force the UI to get some Cycles

Perhaps the greatest tip of all - what to do when the screen won't refresh due to a process in an infinite loop. When this happens, don't panic. It happens, but your in luck. You can force the UI to get some CPU cycles by switching your Remote Desktop cilent from maximized to normal and back again to maximized. This can be done by double clicking on the top bar, and then double clicking on the title bar. The Window I need eventually gets its CPU and I can close it or whatever. This has never failed me, but I do use a dual core system, and the solution may not work in a single core.

Happy Coding.

Dear Ray

Mr Ozzie,

I read in a recent Wired article:

According to Microsoft, one example of a successful service is Windows Update, which automatically installs patches and bug fixes on users' operating systems

How do you define successful? Is it that

• the patches successfully get downloaded to my machine?
• the little shield icon in the tray tells me there are updates to install?
• or the cute bubble telling me there are new updates to install?
  

Here are the ways in which Windows Update is unsuccessful

• Features in remote desktop sessions stop working
• Attempts to install updates hang the machine (Windows is installing new updates...)
  
• Third party vendors can't (or don't) use windows update to update their software (how many of your processes are update daemons?)
  
• The machine shuts down without warning (telling you afterward doesn't count)

In short, the easy part, which any company could do, and saves us a single click on a web site, works really well. The hard part, which is critical to our every day experience as desktop users, has major problems. Have you googled "windows update problems"?

This is a head-in-the-sand success. Keep it up, and we'll all be on Macs.

Love,

The Schmitzer

Visual Studio Command Line Build Troubles

You can build Visual Studio projects by the command line with the following switches

devevnv.exe /rebuild

to rebuild the entire solution. For example

devenv.exe my_solution.sln /rebuild Release

or to build a single project

devenv.exe my_solution.sln /project MyProject /rebuild Release

I've found two ways in which Visual Studio command line builds fail for solutions which otherwise build in the IDE. The first problem is the out of order build, where the project dependencies seem to be ignored, and a project is not built soon enough in the build, causing libraries to not be found. The other problem I find is Visual Studio crashing outright during a command line build.

I found today that Visual Studio allows for multiprocessor builds. These don't work in Visual Studio 2005 or 2008 command line builds, and must be disabled if you do command line builds.

1. Select tools/options
2. In the options dialog, select Projects and Solutions/Build and Run
3. In the Build and Run options, set maximum number of parallel project builds to 1.

Happy coding,

The Schmitzer

When is a Comment not a Comment

Ouch!

I've seen some really odd things in my day, but this one takes the cake. A comment with a side-effect!

Its my *FAVORITE* language DOS command language. Error statuses are stored in ERRORLEVEL variable, and that gets returned to the caller.

Problem is, a REM resets ERRORLEVEL back to zero if it is non zero. I guess its telling me the comment was successful?

Happy coding,

The Schmitzer

Stuck With Sticky Keys

I keep accidentally turning on sticky keys. If you hold down shift for too long, Sticky Keys gets turned on. Having this activated is like holding down your shift key, and I can never remember how to turn them off. I even have them turned off in the control panel, but to no avail.

Anyhow, to The Schmitzer (or anybody else): To Turn off Sticky Keys:

Hold down shift and hit the Windows key twice.

Boy, I'm glad Windows makes things so easy, otherwise, I don't know what I'd do...

Dear Linus

Mr. Torvalds,

Thanks for writing the Git source control system. One problem however, it is not yet supported on Windows from what I see. Just on a Mac and Linux. Not even Cygwin.

Don't git me wrong, I love subversion, but why Linux over Windows :) We want to play too.

Love,

The Schmitzer

Dear XP Service Pack 3 Packager

To Whom It May Concern,

Just curious, why did you think that by installing XP SP3, I no longer wanted to use iTunes to play MP3 files? There was no checkbox for me to uncheck, no questions asked, no wizard to guide me.

While we all know that Windows Media Player is clearly the better application of the two at drawing funny lines on the screen, I think I'll stick with the one that the rest of the world uses.

Love,

The Schmitzer

BSOD At The Olympic Opening Ceremonies

You have probably heard about the Blue Screen of Death, visible during the Opening Ceremonies.

Luckily The Schmitzer's Comment got a screen shot just prior to the BSOD -

Olympic Embarassment

What technical item was more embarrassing to the host nation, China?

The fake fireworks?

or

The Blue Screen of Death?

Note to next host, choose Linux...

Dear Windows Update Team

To Whom It May Concern:

VPN cannot connect...Administrator privileges lost...Network connection status incorrect...Explorer slowed down to a halt...Sharing and Security missing from context menu...Visual Studio *thinks* it is running for the first time...Windows Explorer crashing...Lost write permissions to my directory...

What do all these lovely symptoms have in common? They all happen when Windows update pulss down some fixes and New updates are ready to install.

Here's an idea: The next time you push some fixes down to my machine...FIX WINDOWS UPDATE!

Love,

The Schmitzer

Dear COM Documentation Team

To Whom It May Concern:

I've always said COM documentation stunk. Now I know its true.

I followed your MSDN link to Creating .NET components that use enterprise services.

Which is, of course, in Japanese! So I modified the url to get the English version.

Thanks for nothing.

Love,

The Schmitzer

Dear Windows Search Team

To Whom It May Concern:

"Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find. Knock and it shall be opened to you." says the Bible.

I seek, but it doesn't find. I know the files are there, I can see them. But search doesn't find them. So I ask you, "What is this useful for?" Knock, knock, knock, "Anybody home?"

Love,

The Schmitzer