Virus Scanning: Microsoft-Recommended Exceptions

Microsoft has published on their support site interesting article Virus scanning recommendations for Enterprise computers that are running currently supported versions of Windows. It applies to the systems that experience slow-downs or instability when using virus scanning software (whatever the vendor), and proposes a solution (temporary solution?) for the issue.

Computer Security Identifier (a.k.a. SID) Myth

Would never believe this, if it would not come from Mark Russinovich:

NewSID has been retired and is no longer available for download. Please see Mark Russinovich’s blog post: NewSID Retirement and the Machine SID Duplication Myth

Sounds fantastic, isn’t it? :) I wonder, if one should use reseal on Windows Embedded images in light of this information: reseal is renaming machine (can be done other way), resets some settings, e.g. mount points (can be done other way), and changes SIDs (which seems obsolete if you are not in domain)…

Debugging MSBuild Scripts (VS2010)

I did not actively search for the subject, but once I bumped into a three-part article about the MSBuild script debugging (Part I, Part II, Part III) on The Visual Studio Blog I immediately though that it is worth remembering about it when (I am not saying if, but rather when here) I need it in the future. The blog itself is also worth checking, as there is much information about VS IDE, MSBuild, and extensibility from the Visual Studio development team.

How to Delete Locked Files…

Most likely everyone experienced this on his own skin: you try to delete a file or folder, but cannot, because Windows says that it is in use, despite you cannot figure out which application is doing that, so reboot is the only way to “fix” it. OpenedFilesView and Unlocker are two simple utilities that can help in such situation.

BlueScreenView

BlueScreenView scans minidump files created during BSOD crashes, and displays the information about all crashes in one table. For each crash, BlueScreenView displays the minidump filename, the date/time of the crash, the basic crash information displayed in the blue screen, and the details of the driver or module that possibly caused the crash. Seems to be nice utility for troubleshooting.

System Information for Windows (SIW)

SIW is a free Windows tool (there is commercial version as well) that gathers detailed information about your system and displays it in a comprehensible manner. Information includes software inventory (OS, installed software and hotfixes, processes, services, users, open files, etc.), hardware inventory (motherboard, CPU, all kinds of sensors, BIOS, chipset, devices, S.M.A.R.T., etc.), network onformation(NICs, shares, etc.), and some nice tools. On top of this, it is a standalone utility that does not require installation.

Catalyst 10.6 + Flash 10.1 = Kaboom! :x

Children, never ever put these two beasts together in their default configurations, or you will get spectacular crash (a.k.a. BSOD, a.k.a. blue screen; the problem is that usually it crashes so thoroughly that there is no way to even see BSOD) whenever you open a web page with Flash video in it, e.g. YouTube. The workaround is simple – disable hardware acceleration in Flash player. To do it, right click on the Flash player in browser (preferably on the page without Flash video, or BSOD will come and eat ya! just kidding), select Settings…, and then clear the Enable hardware acceleration box on the Display tab (first tab in settings). That’s it! After this fix Catalyst 10.6 + Flash 10.1 – Hardware Acceleration = Nirvana :)

Help in the Visual Studio 2010

Mmmmm… I don’t know what kind of daemon possessed Microsoft usability engineers when they were designing Visual Studio 2010 help system, but something definitely went very-very-very wrong. :( What’s wrong, you might ask?

• It opens in a web browser, which kind of sucks as it breaks my normal work-flow (I have to track help tabs in browser, and then close them, and if I open some new tabs, then help is not in place I expect it, etc. etc. etc.)
• It’s content tree (the thing on the left side) is not really a tree anymore – it just shows top-level hierarchy and then also “path” to current topic. No more, no less. And if you need to go to some other topic, you will immediately lose track of previous topic. So, if you want to “browse around” the documentation – tough luck. What’s even more ugly is that the online help can be at least configured to show full content tree, but offline help won’t allow you any customizations.
• There is no index. Full stop. Yes, yes – N-O—I-N-D-E-X. They say that there is search, but try to find some API related to paths and that you vaguely remember exists and has name PathBlaBlaBla (where BlaBlaBla is some meaningful name) and you will see that the search is as useless as it can only get.

Conclusion: new help system is VS2010 is light years behind that of VS2008 or VS2005.

Can something be done about it? There are at least two partial solutions:

1. Microsoft Help Viewer Power Tool – simply adds keyword index capability to the Help Viewer, with an option to display help in a standalone window.
2. Help 3 Viewer goes much further: it shows VS 2010 help in a traditional help viewer (similar to “old” DExplore) with full TOC and Index, and features multiple document tabs. There are other features too, and it can be set as default VS2010 help viewer.

I hope that these tools will help you with your help experience :) .