Windows 7 Resource Kit, still the best reference

Since the times of the Windows 3.1 Resource Kit (1993?) I always get my copy of this essential guide to everything Windows. This Windows 7 Resource Kit is the best education you can get on this great operating system, Windows Vista's genetically improved heir, in a language you can understand, but also with a great technical level. In addition, you'll have good and documented information not only when it comes to fixing a rogue computer but also when you want to have an intelligent and meaningful chat with IT people or other PC enthusiasts. Divided in six parts and 32 two chapters it offers great insights on Windows 7 security, deployment, desktop management, desktop maintenance, networking and troubleshooting. This mammoth reference book is worth having in your library.

When your MS Access application won't run in all PCs

If you are an Access developer in a multi-user environment you know that even after testing and debugging, time and again, something could go wrong. How about one of your client PCs not loading the Main Menu (Switchboard)? This is the situation: you get inside your VBA code (from within the problem machine) to see what's going and then hit "Debug, compile" only to get to this line: Set con = Application.CurrentProject.Connection (which appears twice) and some error message about a "missing DLL". The core of the matter is simply that this is Activex Data Object (ADO) code that the application does not recognize even though is clearly referenced (see screenshot above). The answer to this puzzle which is provided in the Microsoft support knowledge base, solution 2 (kb/262847) consists basically in changing this and other lines to be compatible with Data Access Objects (DAO) also listed in this particular example. Do not be misled by the title of that support article. What went wrong? I was developing and debugging in a machine with Access 2003 SP3 installed and moved to another machine with Access 2003 SP2 and even if I updated to SP3 I kept getting that compilation error. As usual, going to all those forums where some people want to honestly help, but also others just are trying to impress with their "expertise" it is hard to find the right answer. There is a lot of misleading and incomplete information out there.

Here's the Windows Phone 7 Worldwide Launch

It's on Monday 11 October 2010 at 9:30 a.m. right here in New York City where Microsoft and AT&T, the "premier carrier",  will unveil new phone models for this new mobile operating system, including an exclusive lineup of T-mobile powered Windows Phone 7 devices, even though the actual launch of the devices will be on November 8. Windows Phone 7, a "different kind of phone" will however have to face an uphill battle with Apple iPhone and Google Android.  You can watch a live webcast of the launch event and also a very informative video gallery where you can judge for yourself how Microsoft has this time gone in a different direction, essentially a paradigm shift in the Windows Mobile business initiated some 10 years ago.

Today: Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools ready

All the tools, in its final version, that developers may need are available for free today: Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone, Windows Phone Emulator, Microsoft Express Blend for Windows Phone and XNA Game Studio 4.0. In other words the best proven tools for PC development, available also for phone development. Find more information here directly from Microsoft. And to match, get the Windows Phone 7 Training Kit for Developers, and don't forget to get the 69-page UI Design and Interaction Guide. Now, let's enjoy once more the creative process...

And now, to top it off all, a great browser

Today Microsoft made available to IT specialists and enthusiasts the new IE 9 (Beta version), which promises to be a great contender to other great browsers as Firefox and even Google Chrome. This latest version of this resurgent browser promises to "unleash a more beautiful web" by starting to use the newest Web standards like HTML5 and hardware acceleration that takes advantage of the graphics processor power in Windows 7 and Windows Vista (sorry, I does not run in Windows XP, and why should it?). The fish tank demo will run in all browsers, as it is supposed to be, but can you, for example, get 60 frames per second? Only in IE 9.

Windows Phone 7 in the horizon... sooner than later

I had a first-hand experience with a prototype of the (it seems to be) fabulous new Windows Phone 7, slated to be released this coming holiday season. The prototypes, which are circulating in developers users groups here in New York and anywhere else in the country, are mostly intended to showcase the sort of new UI (named Metro and loosely based on the Zune interface).  And, no, this is not exactly an update to the Windows Mobile 6.5, this is a new product designed from the ground up, with a totally new OS and it will also bring, among a number of cool features, console-like gaming experience with XBox Live. Developers will receive the final Windows Phone Developer Tools on September 16th. If you want to know more go here...

Google Chrome running in Windows 7

It's nimble. It's neat. Will I "switch" from Firefox or IE? Why? This is just another tool in my Web design arsenal. And speaking of tools, I like the Google Chrome right-click "Inspect element" developer tool, very similar to my favorite Firebug, in Firefox, which, in turn, resembles the Developer Tools in IE 8 (press F12 when installed) and the great Dragonfly in Opera. All of them wonderful, well thought out, and above all, USEFUL assistants in creating and analyzing web pages and Web sites. In Google Chrome, I also like the Task Manager and even more the Stats for nerds. Interestingly enough, in the options set up dialog box, for the default search engine you get to choose between Google, Yahoo! and Bing (!) I like choices. Vive la difference!

Watch free Internet TV with Windows 7

Windows Media Center, a powerful home entertainment hub, gives you also the ability to watch free Internet TV and that's full episodes of the major TV broadcasters in the US (just when I thought I could do that only with the great hulu website). To start this great feature open the Media Center and go to the TV menu, past Pictures + Videos, Music and Movies, and explore how to get started...

Does a bugcheck 0x7F merit sending your PC for repair?

Well, that's what the Dell agent, via chat, told me: "I will be requesting for your system to be sent to depot for repair", 22 minutes after the chat started and after explaining to him to no avail all what I've done (testing, driver updates, etc.) after getting these blue screens. Apparently, not having straight answers to concrete questions prompt these agents to make this (ludicrous?) offer. After 35 minutes of not getting anywhere the "technical" chat came to an end. I made up my mind: I won't send my new laptop for "repair", not if I can help it. Mind you, I have used this system, as explained before, for running simultaneously several virtual machines, for watching movies, Internet TV, programming, etc. I believe there's is a driver (wish I knew which one) misbehaving and producing a kernel stack overflow specifically, in my computer, a stop error 0x7F: UNEXPECTED_KERNEL_MODE_TRAP with Parameter 1 set to EXCEPTION_DOUBLE_FAULT ((0x0000000000000008)... This incident reminds me when I took my first computer (some 20 years ago) back to the dealer because it was "not working properly", when in fact it was in perfect shape, not knowing, by that time, all the tricks and traps of the start up files (autoexec.bat and config.sys). You don't send a computer for repair, just because is not well configured. I've heard, in addition, that they may send you back a refurbished computer... Please note: after my previous post, when I declared no more blue screens, I got three of them in the same day, ten days later. Venue: a public library, as usual. Never in cafés, bookshops. Interesting...

Finally, the "blue screens" spill has been stopped!

...to coincide with the (temporary?) stop of leaking oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Seriously, after experiencing 20 stop errors (aka the "Blue Screen of Death" —affectionately?) in a period of roughly two months (the age of this brand new laptop I'm using to blog right now), I was able to make it work (I cross my fingers). How did I do it? Apparently, by simply updating the corresponding drivers found in support.dell.com. Among the frustrations, during the process, was my inability to completely take advantage of the 64-bit debugging tools, found in the Windows Hardware Developer Central (WHDC), which I mentioned before in this blog. However, I was consistently getting these blue screen while logging into public wireless networks, but not at home. Did the solution come through the many driver updates I made? Definitely. Was it perhaps the Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport Adapter, or
the Intel 82577LM Gigabit Network Connection, or the Dell Touchpad, or the Intel(R) Network Connections (Product Version: 15.2.0.0), or the HID-compliant consumer control device? I don't know. I've been connected for more than 2 hours to this new Starbucks free WiFi service, blogging, somewhere in Park Avenue, and my PC is running smoothly. As lame as the BP efforts to stop the oil gusher (for 3 months) in the Gulf were the "efforts" (for 2 months!) of the Dell Tech Support. Now I'm finally beginning to enjoy this beautiful machine running this beautiful operating system! I also came across an interesting page about Demystifying the 'Blue Screen of Death' (a little old, though) with interesting subjects like Anatomy of a Blue Screen, The Error Message, Modules That Have Loaded, Modules That Were About to Load, Kernel Debugger, among others. Time to go back to the manuals!

Are blue screens Windows 7 black magic?

Nobody seems to provide straight answers to the regrettable and common stop errors in some Windows 7 configurations. Let's make a quick review. 1) DELL. One of the "Resolution Expert Center" experts, after different exchanges both by e-mail and via chat, and after having received a copy of one of my dump files and other useful information, he concluded: "In order to correct the issue with a corrupt ntoskrnl file, the operating system will need to either be repaired or reinstalled." Corrupt kernel file? How about being able to watch videos, movies, etc.? Totally clueless? If that was the case my computer would not start in the first place (!) Just following a script, not providing actual customer service. 2) Microsoft. I'm sure the information is there in their huge knowledge bases, but is not easy to come by; besides you have to know what to look for. Their debugging tools seem to be, from my view point of a IT generalist, very good, but it's not for regular folks. Finally, 3) Web forums. Most of the times, the contributors seem to be as clueless as the people longing for answers. Apparently there is no exact science when it comes to figuring out these "stop errors" or "BSODs." But the process is illuminating; at least it has been for me.

Still aggravated by blue screens....

I don't understand, I have watched complete games of the World Cup, ran 3 different virtual machines, studied and compiled .NET applications and, for some unknown reason, my PC crashes not a moment too soon when I connect to a wireless network (not in my home)...

Mistery solved? BSOD caused by ntoskrnl?

My brand new computer crashed 6 times already. You know, the infamous "blue screen of death" (BSOD) and after some detective work I found the culprit (?): C:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe, the operating system kernel, OS version 6.1.7600.16539 (win7_gdr.100226-1909). Now, go figure why in the world the OS kernel of a Windows 7 64-bit OS is in the system32 folder (?!) First, I downloaded and installed the Microsoft 64-bit debugging tools (see 3 posts below) but the debugger "was not using the correct symbols", installed, reinstalled, did not work, and I kind of gave up. Then I found a utility called WhoCrashed, which did not work in my Win 7 machine, but it did work fine in my Vista machine (using a copy of the c:\windows\minidump files) and I got my first hint of the ntoskrnl.exe module as the culprit for my 6 episodes of STOP errors: 3 as UNEXPECTED_KERNEL_MODE_TRAP and 3 as APC_INDEX_MISMATCH. This utility also informed me that my system configuration might be incorrect, being possible that another driver is involved but it was not identified at the time of the analysis. For the UNEXPECTED_KERNEL_MODE_TRAP error I found in "Upgrading and Repairing Microsoft Windows 2nd. ed, by Scott Mueller" that the most common cause for this type of STOP error is defective memory (uncheck), L2 processor cache (uncheck) or video card memory (not sure, since I had 'updated' my NVidia driver, or perhaps precisely because of that) and "it could also be caused by an overheating system", which makes sense in my case, since I had to call DELL and get a new AC adapter, given the fact that it was getting extremely hot as an iron (!). Another great utility to read dump files, which I found along the way, is Bluescreenview by nirsoft.net (I don't make a link here because ZoneAlarm Extreme Security advised me that this site carries spyware). However I trusted the site and donwloaded the application, which being easier to use than the two I mentioned above, just confirmed what I already knew. In the meantime I was able to download and install the fabulous VMWare Workstation for virtual machines and ran Windows XP and OpenSuse, concurrently with the host OS Windows 7, without a hiccup.

End of the free ride, which was really worth it!

I guess the days of Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) are coming to an end. If you see something like this, or if your computer shuts down every two hours...

Say what?! ##Id_ String2.6844F930_ 1628_4223_ B5CC_5BB94B879762##

This is simply a service of Apple Computer's Bonjour technology, which is installed together with Adobe CS3 with an incorrect (known) name or label (the title of this post). Please note that the characters are strung together from ## to ##. This fact helps me confirm my suspicion that the culprit of my blue screen (times 3, see previous post) was caused by the unfinished and long installation process of Adobe CS3 in lethal conjunction (?) with a local connection to a Netgear "Fast Ethernet Switch" which was, by the way, invisible to Windows 7, but still with solid LED green 100-megabit lights on (!). Currently, while I write this, my DELL laptop is running flawlessly, as it is supposed to be. The Adobe page which addresses this issue of an incorrect service name states that Bonjour connects to no other servers than your machine's pre-configured DNS server. Bonjour also sends network packets to and receives them from a multicast IP address on the local network (244.0.0.251) once every thirty minutes. Voilà!? I will post my findings...

New PC and running into some disappointments

Finally, I got my new laptop, a DELL Latitude E6510, a sleek, elegant machine, with great graphics, very smooth and silent operation, with Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, etc. However, I got already my first blue screen episode in the form of a APC-INDEX-MISMATCH, something that never occurred to me with Windows Vista, but I figure, and I don't want to point fingers to Microsoft, this is definitely a third party problem, including perhaps, but only perhaps, Dell misconfiguration (?). Blue screens, as far as I know are always related to hardware problems (in the form of bad device drivers) or to software that causes hardware malfunctioning. The screen reads on top: "A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer" and that's what it is, on the surface. To dig in a little bit more into the cause of the problem a small memory dump file is created in C:\Windows\Minidump, which can be reviewed using 64-bit debugging tools, found in the Windows Hardware Developer Central (WHDC). I ran into this information while trying to know more about the "dumpchk" utility to see the content of the minidump file (with an extension .dmp). I will continue exploring, while I fix, this issue. For the time being the culprits are Adobe CS3 Web Premium installation utility which triggered the blue screen 3 times (!) and maybe together with System Mechanic, which I already uninstalled. I am speculating right now.

Time to shell out some well earned cash...

The free ride on Windows 7 for a lot of folks, including myself, in the form of Windows 7 RC, will come to an end this month. It has started already little by little by shutting your system every two hours since March 1 and it will cease to work on June 1. How do you like that? You have 3 choices: One: Shell out some money and buy an upgrade to Windows 7 (it's worthy, absolutely). Two: keep using your greasy, moldy old Windows XP (or 2000, or XP). Three: do what other cluelessly smart or smartly clueless people do and go for Linux. This last choice will guarantee that you will have to re-learn what you already know about how to use personal computers, while dealing with cryptic, geeky names for everything from command line instructions to names of simple desktop applications... Thanks, but no thanks. I'd rather go for choice number one. That is it. The number one choice: Windows 7. And I don't mind paying for it. I make a living with computers, which are my tools. Shouldn't you pay for the tools of your trade? You, Mr. Electrician, do you expect not to pay for your tools? Unless you don't mean business, you can use tools that cost you nothing. Period. I will get a copy of Windows 7 for my current PC, running Vista for 2 years now, and I would get Windows 7 64-bit in my new laptop computer, arriving soon to my doorstep...!