//Microsoft-Tech.com

Windows Vista backup error 0x8007045d

Jason Cox — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 02:13:00 GMT

In some instances while attempting to run Windows Complete PC Backup the backup may fail with error code 0x8007045d (if you have automated your PC’s backup using Task Scheduler, you can find the error code using Windows Event Viewer). This particular problem, at least in my experiences, happens when Windows Complete PC Backup attempts to backup some portion(s) of System Recovery, whether it be a Restore Point or files backed up for Previous Versions.

To resolve this error you have to clear all System Recovery data from your computer. To do this, first right-click on Computer and click on ‘Properties’. Once System has opened click on ‘System protection’ located in the purple-ish bar on the left side of the window. This will open up the System Properties dialog. From there, uncheck the checkbox next to ‘Local Disk (C:)’ and click ‘Apply’. Doing this will cause a message box to appear confirming that you want to turn off System Restore, click on ‘Turn System Restore Off’ and then click ‘Apply’ once again.

After waiting a few moments, look to the right of ‘Local Disk (C:)’ under the column called ‘Most recent restore point’, it should say ‘None’. If you don’t see ‘None’, try waiting a few more minutes, depending on the number of Restore Points on your computer, it may take a few minutes to remove all the data. If you do see ‘None’, recheck ‘Local Disk (C:)’ and press ‘Apply’ to turn System Restore back on and for safeties sake, create a new Restore Point.

Try running your backup again, it should now complete without an error. If however it encounters another error, just delete the ‘WindowsImageBackup’ folder on the hard disk you selected to use as your backup device and try again.

Site Update (v070220.1442)

Jason Cox — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 17:23:00 GMT

Two updates in one week? I’m on a roll! Well today’s update fixed two bugs and implemented one new feature.

• Bug: Google Cached Commenting™ [beta]
This is another case of me debugging code in my sleep again. Anyway, how this bug works is that lets say comment spammers start hitting one of the content articles on MST. After dealing with it for a few days I disable comments on that article which prevents anyone from coming onto MST and posting a comment. However during this time period Google came by for a visit and decided to index the site and cache the current pages. This bug occurs when I disable comments on MST but the user or bot heads over to Google’s cache of MST where the cached page still has comments enabled, thus allowing them to submit a comment.

The resolution for this bug was to add a check to the commenting system that checks to see if comments are enabled or disabled on the article before submitting any data back to the database. Now attempting to post a comment from Google’s cache will result in you being redirected back to the original article with no data posted to the server.

• Bug: The 25 paradox
25? Star Trek told me it was the 47 Conspiracy… Well this one is a paradox, not a conspiracy so keep your pants on. Ok, this bug was an oversight on my part during development. When you pull up the MST homepage you’re presented with the last 25 most recent articles. While I was fixing the above comment system bug I noticed that a lot of the test articles I was posting just weren’t showing up on the homepage, however they were showing up on the archive page. This bug was actually caused by the way I was pulling data from SQL. I was pulling the top 25 articles and sorting them by date/time. This worked great except that it was pulling only the top 25 articles, so once anything 26 or above was posted it just wouldn’t show up.

Example:
If I had seven articles in a database and I wanted the top five, it would pull 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 instead of 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Reversing the ORDER BY, the common solution, wouldn’t work as the articles would then pull as 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 which when rendered on the homepage would put the newest article on the bottom of the page.

The resolution for this bug was to modify my SQL syntax so that I queried a query. That may not be the correct way to describe it, so he’s an example.

Example:
SELECT * FROM (SELECT TOP 25 [blah] FROM database WHERE [something] = ’1’ AND [somethingelse] = ’0’ ORDER BY [number] desc) AS presort ORDER BY presort.[id] asc

• Feature: RSS
I don’t think I need a long write-up here, but RSS is back!

Site Update (v070219.1445)

Jason Cox — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 17:27:00 GMT

Well today I rolled out an update for Microsoft-Tech that I’ve been working on and off with for the past month. Most of the changes were made in the backend code so you probably won’t see most of them, but there is one major frontend change that you will see. When I implemented and deployed the comment system last month I figured I’d leave it open with no security or authentication for the time being just to see what happened. Well, about two weeks after I brought the new site online last month I started seeing comment-spam appearing in the ‘Win a Windows Vista USB drive’ article. It turns out if you Google the article, I’m the number two link, right below Long Zheng’s website, istartedsomething.com. What this means is that any bots trolling Google would eventually find their way onto MST and eventually into the unprotected comments system and sure enough they did find their way here and eventually racked up over one hundred spam comments to their randomly generated names. Needless to say I was annoyed. What annoyed me even more was that even after I disabled the comments function on that article and even hid the article itself (note to self: which doesn’t remove it from Google’s index) that the comment-spam kept coming in. Blame part of that on some code I overlooked.

Anyway, now when you attempt to leave a comment you must now enter a six digit security code that is randomly generated by the backend code. At first I was going to implement this system using the standard GD Library you see used on just about every website and forum on the ‘net until I realized .NET already had this functionality built in and it didn’t require me to sift through mounds of sample code written in PHP.

This is the extent of the changes that you’ll be able to see. The rest of the changes are all backend code changes and the implementation of the admin interface (which isn’t admin.aspx, I’m not that dumb). So yeah, with the admin interface partially online, there goes my excuse for not posting anything. And before anyone thinks of “hacking" it, the password literally changes at least 25 times daily. Seriously. So if you can somehow find a way in, please send me a screenshot and show me and you might get a prize.

Edit:
Updated to 070219.1532, I found an issue in the content posting system and the comment system where they accepted two different types of quotation marks as input, thus making some formatting tags appear to not work.

The nerd and the chair

Jason Cox — Wed, 3 Jan 2007 15:43:00 GMT

So last night I had just finished up dinner and was sitting down at the PC to finish writing the ‘Windows Vista Reduced Functionality Mode’ article. As I started typing I leaned back in my chair and heard a loud-metallic cracking. I didn’t think much of it and continued on with my work. A few minutes later I began to realize the chair was leaning a bit to the right. Assuming this was just a few loose screws, I tightened the screws and got back to work. A few minutes later I noticed the chair was beginning to list to the right again, this time on about a 25 degree angle. Being the mechanically inclined person that I am, I decided to unlock the tilt function of the chair and lean back, assuming something had just popped out of place. In doing so I heard the cracking again and now I was leaning back in the chair at about a 35 degree angle while again listing like a ship to the right on about a 25 degree angle. How the chair didn’t tip over I will never know. It was about this time that my brain finally kicked in and I realized something was wrong.

Getting out of the chair, I got underneath it again to inspect the screws, assuming one had popped out. After looking around for a few moments I noticed something odd. There was a stress fracture in the steel support structure. For anyone who has ever assembled a pneumatic chair, it was right where steel support structure is welded onto the housing that sits on top of the pneumatic tube. Now as this assembly was made up of 1/8 inch steel, I assumed (wrongly of course) that this was a minor problem and that I’d just have to replace the chair in the next two or three months. Steel is strong, right?

Sitting back down in the chair again, I inadvertently leaned to the left side and heard the nice metallic cracking again. Now the chair would not sit centered, no matter what way I moved (except backwards) the chair would tilt in that direction. Inspecting the support structure again, I noticed that the small stress fracture had turned into a gaping crack in the 1/8 inch thick steel and the chair was only still attached by a ¼ inch long area in the back. At this point I made the decision that it was time to go to Best Buy to get a new chair. Either that or flash forward a few hours with me lying on my back with a bad headache wondering what happened.

The chair I ended up purchasing is this one (link), I brought it home, assembled it and then had to decide what to do with my old chair. I know you’re thinking ‘What do you mean what to do with it? It’s broke, throw it out!’. Well, my old chair is a very comfortable chair, it has a high back and even a headrest and needless to say no other furniture I own has that feature.

Now please cue the geeky/nerdy music.

The first thing I did was to rip the chair off the pneumatic tube and place it on the floor. With the support structure still attached I placed it on the floor the chair was reclined back on about the same angle as a recliner. I sat down in it and it was very comfortable, stretching my legs out it did feel like I was sitting in an expensive recliner, however with how I have my furniture arranged I was too close to the TV for my liking so that idea was shelved.

Being as it was around 3:30 in the morning, another idea popped into my head, what if I put the chair on the couch- hey, stop laughing! So being as how I had to try this idea, I flipped the chair over and removed the steel support structure (since as we all know, sharp metal + fabric != a good thing). Next, removing the center cushion on the couch I set my chair in its place and sat down. Before I go any further, let me tell you about the couch. It’s a typical old couch. It’s probably about eight to ten years old and my parents let me have it when I moved out as they were selling the house and getting a new one anyway. Like all old couches, the springs are for the most part shot and the cushions and somewhat flattened by years of use. Needless to say the couch is quite comfortable to lie on but leaves much to be desired if you’re sitting on it. The chair on the other hand is quite firm, you don’t sink in when you sit on it and if you lean back you don’t sink in to pillowy couch padding. Also of note, if you lean you head back in the chair your head meets the headrest. If you lean you head back on the couch your head meets the top of my computer desk which is right behind the couch.

But back to the story. I sat down in the chair and low and behold it was pretty darned comfortable, much more so than the couch and, well, I don’t think I’m getting rid of the chair now, I think it’s just fine right where it is. Right here. Am I a nerd or what?

Windows Vista Reduced Functionality Mode

Jason Cox — Wed, 3 Jan 2007 14:47:00 GMT

While waiting for Windows Vista to be officially released so I can purchase a second license, I’ve been running Windows Vista Ultimate Edition on my laptop without a product key as my only licensed copy is currently installed on my desktop. A few days ago Vista began to remind me that I needed to activate the product soon or Windows would stop working. This intrigued me, I had never tested Reduced Functionality Mode during the beta program and having just had to fix a Windows XP machine that decided to spontaneously de-activate itself the other day I was wanted to see firsthand the changes Microsoft had made in Windows Vista.

I knew a little bit about Reduced Functionality Mode, mainly that you are pretty much locked in something similar to Secure Desktop with only the activation dialog which is intended to be used to launch IE so you can purchase a license. I also had heard that you would be able to gain access to your file system in Vista’s new Reduced Functionality Mode. Seeing as my copy of Windows Vista would itself be going into Reduced Functionality Mode in a few days, I said what the heck and let it expire.

Starting up Windows Vista after it expired was no different than any other startup. After the splash animation plays you’re presented with the Welcome screen just as you would be on any normal day. Now for those who don’t know, on Windows XP if your trial expires or if you run out of time in your activation grace period, after you select your username from the Welcome screen and attempt to login, Windows XP tells you that you must activate before you are allowed to login. You have two choices, either activate or don’t activate, the latter of which signs you off while the other choice brings up the activation wizard. If you don’t have a network driver installed, be prepared to give Microsoft a call as you don’t have access to the OS to correct this problem.

In Windows Vista, this is quite different. After logging in you are presented with the activation wizard which gives you the option to enter Reduced Functionality Mode. Selecting this option starts up Internet Explorer and nothing else. You have no Taskbar and no desktop wallpaper. Even Ctrl + Alt + Delete and Ctrl + Shift + Escape don’t work. With Internet Explorer open, you are free to browse away from the Microsoft licensing site to any site on the internet. This is pretty much the extent of Reduced Functionality Mode as it was intended. Now here’s what else you can do.

From Internet Explorer, we need to do something to invoke the startup of Windows Explorer, so for example type in ‘C:\’. Internet Explorer will then display a dialog asking if you’d like to allow Windows Explorer to run, click on ‘Allow’. Now Windows Explorer is running however you still don’t have access to your desktop, Start Menu or Taskbar. What you need to do now is launch Task Manager manually as the keyboard shortcuts don’t work, so navigate to ‘C:\Windows\System32\Taskmgr.exe’. Once Task Manager has opened, kill the Explorer.exe process and then restart it by clicking on ‘File’ -> ‘New Task (Run…)’. Windows Explorer will now start back up and this time will load your desktop, Start Menu, Taskbar and all. The only noticeable difference is that if you were running Aero Glass before, this is now disabled and your theme is now Windows Vista Basic.

I tested a few programs while in Reduced Functionality Mode. For example, all my instant messaging clients and Windows Mail worked but Windows Media Center did not. This makes perfect sense as Windows Media Center is a premium feature.

One thing of note is that if you attempt to access the Control Panel it will show up as a blank page most likely due to a restriction of Reduced Functionality Mode, but don’t worry, there is a way around this. Simply open up ‘Computer’ and then click on ‘Uninstall or change a program’. Once ‘Programs and Features’ loads, click on ‘Control Panel’ in the address bar’s breadcrumb and you’ll have full access to your Control Panel.

I didn’t dig too much deeper into Reduced Functionality Mode but there is one other thing of note. Your Windows session will only remain active for a certain amount of time (I don’t know the actual time), after that allotted time has expired you will be automatically logged out without warning, however nothing is stopping you from logging back in again and regaining (almost) full access to your PC.

Windows Vista backup error 0x81000029

Jason Cox — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 19:47:00 GMT

Please do not attempt to follow the instructions of this article unless you understand hard disk partitioning and the Windows Vista boot and recovery processes. The steps below will attempt to solve the problem, however if you make a mistake or if my instructions are not correct for your specific problem, you PC may longer boot into Microsoft Windows and you will have to fix the issue yourself, contact Microsoft or pay a third-party technician to repair the issue. The steps below will not result in data-loss, only the inability to boot the Windows Vista until the boot sequence is corrected.

While trying to backup your system using Windows Vista’s built in backup utility, you main receive the following error:

Quoted text

Your backup configuration is not valid.

Review your backup settings. (0x81000029).

If you receive this error, the first thing we have to do is check your hard disk’s partition configuration. Open the Disk Management snap-in with MMC or by right-clicking on Computer and clicking ‘Manage’ and then selecting ‘Disk Management’. Once Disk Management has loaded, look at your C drive in the bottom pane (this is Disk 0 in most computers, if you’re not sure what disk your C drive is on, just look for your C drive’s name or ‘(C:)’, this will tell you what disk your C drive is on.

Once you’ve located your C drive, check and see if on the same disk there is a partition there with the type EISA (labeled in Disk Management as ‘Healthy (EISA Configuration)’).

If you do not see an EISA partition, do not attempt the steps below as this fix is not for you, if you do see an EISA partition, check and see if the partition is active, if it is, it should look like this:
Healthy (EISA Configuration, Active)

Again, if you don’t see what exactly what is stated above, do not continue. Please note that following these instructions may cause diagnostic tools installed by your OEM (such as Dell’s diagnostic tools) to no longer function.

Make sure you have your Windows Vista installation DVD available, you WILL need this DVD to make the OS boot again

What you will need to do now is right-click on your C drive’s partition and click on ‘Mark Partition as Active’. After you do this, please restart your computer.

As your computer starts back up, it will display an error that ‘bootmgr’ cannot be found, this is to be expected as Windows Vista is still looking on the wrong partition for its boot information. Insert your Windows Vista DVD and restart your computer, this time booting to your Windows Vista DVD. After the GUI loads, select your language, region and keyboard like normally and press ‘Next’. On the next dialog, click on ‘Repair your computer’. After a few moments the recovery tool will say that it was detected a fixed a problem and that it requires a reboot. Restart your computer as the dialog indicates and then follow the above steps and return to the recovery tool.

Upon entering the recovery tool you will be presented with the System Recovery Options dialog, select ‘Microsoft Windows Vista’ located on ‘(C:) Local Disk’ and click ‘Next’. On the next dialog, click on ‘Startup Repair’. Windows Vista’s recovery tool will now attempt to detect and fix any errors that are preventing the computer from starting, mainly our changing of the active partition on your hard disk. After a few moments the dialog will change and present a Finish button. Before you click Finish, click on View diagnostic and repair details and scroll down to the bottom of the report. Look for any mention of ‘bootmgr’ being reinstalled. If you see this reference, close the report dialog and click on Finish, upon restarting your computer it should boot into Windows. If you don’t see this reference and you computer does not boot, please contact Microsoft or a third-party who can reset your active partition to the EISA partition.

Edit: Sorry about the smilies, I have no way of disabling them in this version of Cronus UX2, it should be parentheses-C-colon-parentheses.

Hopefully this article will get indexed by Google and Live Search because as of right now there are no resolutions available on either search engine.

New life for MST in Codename: "Imperator"

Jason Cox — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 19:01:00 GMT

Some of you might have noticed that MST has been seemed somewhat dead for the last few months, well, I have good news, that will soon change. Currently I’m developing Codename: “Imperator” (Latin for ‘Empire’), my next generation blogging platform built in C# on the .NET 2.0 Framework. “Imperator” however is just the first step in a larger project. After “Imperator” is completed I will begin work on Codename: “Senatus” (Latin for ‘Senate’), a new forum system for MST and successor to the Cronus UX1 Forums (Alpha) and built on parts of the early Codename: “Universus Vox [FFS]” code base.

What’s new in “Imperator” you ask, well, I don’t know just yet as I’m still working on. Obviously like every new release of Windows it’ll be faster and more secure than the previous version (read: stored procedures), however I haven’t finalized what features will be implemented as “Imperator” will likely remain in beta for at least a year while I gather feedback from users. Oh, wait, there is one thing I know of. “Imperator” will have a new theme. I’ll give more details and screenshots as progress moves along, however right now I’m just concentrating on getting the project ready for deployment to MST sometime in Q1 2007.

Edit:
I forgot, there is one feature that I know is coming, I’m getting rid of the buggy day/time system and implemented a system that lets you choose your time zone on a +/- GMT scale with Daylight Savings Time options.

(“Imperator” was originally slated to be deployed on another domain that I own, however thanks to conditions beyond my control, I am unable to allocate enough money from the budget to purchase a hosting package for that domain.)

Google buys YouTube

Jason Cox — Mon, 9 Oct 2006 18:58:00 GMT

That’s right folks, internet search goliath Google has bought out YouTube for a cool 1.6 billion dollars. And that’s also right folks, it looks like within a month YouTube will be pure garbage thanks to Google probably redoing the website to include 1.6 billion advertisements and the removal of all the good videos by Google (if anyone else remembers, Google Video used to be good before the DMCA police and MPAA mafia arrived). I used to like Google, seriously, back when all they did was make a great search engine and have great advertising, but now-a-days Google is just buying up companies left and right instead of innovating and they’re releasing crappy products left and right just to beat Microsoft and Yahoo! to market.

So does anyone have any recommendations of a YouTube alternative?

Windows Vista 5728 released to TechBeta

Jason Cox — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 17:25:00 GMT

Well seeing as how every other Microsoft news and tech news website is reporting this I figured I might as well post it here since it’s now public knowledge. Around 1:15pm EST Microsoft officially released Windows Vista build 5728 to the TechBeta BTs (Beta Testers). While I myself haven’t had a chance to install it yet (one of the perks of being at work is that you have to actually work) I’ve heard of a few feature changes, such as the ability to shut off the Windows Startup Sound (the sound that plays after the boot screen when the Windows Vista logo appears) that alot of testers were asking for. One can only hope that we get a checkbox to shutoff the black titlebars and Taskbar when a window is maximized before RTM.

I don’t know yet if the new boot screen is in yet or if the final set of sounds are in yet however I’ll be able to tell you for sure what’s there and what isn’t after I reinstall when I get home this evening! Feel free to contact me on Windows Live Messenger or by using the ’Contact’ button in the sidebar of the site (you can ask for my WLM address through that form).

Win a Windows Vista USB drive

Jason Cox — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 13:39:00 GMT

James Senior who runs the Views on Vista blog over on TechNet has a fun contest that he posted today. In thirty words or less tell him about your favorite feature in Windows Vista and why it’s so great. If you’re the lucky winner, you’ll win a Windows Vista USB drive! The contest is open until September 25th and he will post the winner’s name on his blog by 12:00pm GMT. Good luck, folks!

shell: revealed

Jason Cox — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 13:40:00 GMT

Every so often you’re browsing the internet and you find a website that you just have to share with your friends. Most people would open up Windows Mail and mass-mail their entire contact list, get blacklisted by AOHell and so on. Myself on the other hand, I just post it on my website and spam the link to everyone I know. So what did I find that’s so exciting that I need to share it with everyone? Nothing more then the blog of the Windows Client Team!

The Windows Client Team, the team that we probaly know the least about but who’s work affects more people then most other teams has finally setup a blog, forums and photo gallery over at shell: revealed. I’m pretty excited about this site, the Windows Client Team is a team I have always wanted to learn about. On top of that, it’ll just be fun to interact with these guys outside of bug reports that always closed as ’By design’ or ’No repro’.

Oh, and David Vronay has already created a topic about the reasoning behind the titlebars and Taskbar turning to black when a window is maximized. Personally I’m hoping they add in an option for advanced users to disable the black and keep glass active, but it’s nice to finally read the reasoning about why this feature was implemented in the first place.

Nerds and cars

Jason Cox — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 23:10:00 GMT

You know you’re a nerd when you’re driving down the highway doing 70 mph and instead of watching the road ahead you just happen to glance at the license plate of the guy merging onto the highway next to you (no safety lectures please). What so nerdy about this you ask? Dont non nerds look at license plates too? Well of course they do, but non-nerds wouldnt have found a license plate that said ’EULA’ as funny as I did. On a side note, in the same area about two months back I saw a plate that read ’SQL2XML’. What about my car you ask? Does it have a good license plate? No, it just has a Windows XP Service Pack 2 sticker on the window. No, I’m not kidding.

I should note that the Internet Explorer team was suposed to send me some Internet Explorer 7 stickers a few months back but I never received them... If anyone from the IE team ever reads my site, can I have my IE7 stickers, please?

The EU has finally lost it...

Jason Cox — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 13:30:00 GMT

Well folks, it seems that the EU has finally lost its last sense of sanity. As reported earlier today by Paul Thurrott on WindowsITPro the EU has apparently asked Microsoft to remove some of the new security features in Windows Vista to ’protect’ third party security ISVs. Ok, let me get this straight, the only reason companies like Symantec and McAfee even exist today is because of security holes and vulnerabilities in Windows and now those companies are complaining that they may lose money because Microsoft is actually devoting so much development time to actually shipping a more secure product? Hell-ooo? You’re business only exists because Microsoft didn’t ship a more secure product in the first place!

Seriously here folks, raise your hand if you would like Microsoft to *intentionally* ship a version of Windows that is less secure and more vulnerable to exploits and attacks. Ok, you guys in the back holding up the ’2007 is the year of Linux’ signs, put your hands down, we don’t care about what you have to say. If you thought the ’N Editions’ bombed in Europe, imagine ’Windows Vista: Less Secure Edition’, who in their right mind would buy that?

Let me put this simply. It is Microsoft’s responsibility to ship the most stable and secure product that they can and with Windows Vista, they’re actually doing a good job. Will the EU one day order Microsoft to unpatch Blaster and Zotob so Symantec can increase sales? I honestly don’t know, but if the EU really orders Microsoft to withdraw certain security features from Windows Vista in order to help 3rd party security companies keep their sales up, they’re sending the wrong message to the world.

I lost the source code...

Jason Cox — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 23:20:00 GMT

Thats right, I lost the source code to Cronus UX2. How did I do that you ask? Simple. For the past few months I’ve been running Windows XP and Windows Vista in a dual-boot enviorment on my laptop. However with the release of Windows Vista RC1 I migrated from a dual boot enviorment to a single OS enviorment. In the excitment of installing Windows Vista RC1, I blew away my Windows XP partition assuming that since I hadnt used it in two months that I didnt have anything on there I didnt need. Wrong.

In total, I lost the source code for Cronus UX1, Cronus UX2, DSLOrders .NET, the Primeware customer billing system and a few more projects. I should note that the last two listed were axed before they were finished so they were mainly code reference. I also lost about 5 SQL databases that I hadnt migrated over to Windows Vista.

To be honest it seems like I lost alot more then I did. All the projects listed above were coded in Visual Studio .NET in VB, so in my grand initiative to transfer everything over to C#, they werent of much use to me anymore. The moral of the story? Backup your send partition even if you havent used it in two months. It seems I always learn things the hard way...

(spelling/grammar check wasnt run on this post)

Not much progress on a work week...

Jason Cox — Sat, 9 Sep 2006 11:30:00 GMT

If anyone is looking for an update your best bet is to wait for the weekends. The biggest downside to working a 8-5 job is just that, working from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, normally most of my programming is down in early to mid day when I’m feeling the most ’creative’, something which I cant do at work for obvious reasons. The other problem is that when I get home at 5:24 PM I’m totally drained and just dont have the energy to pump out quality code that doesnt need to be fixed or completely re-written later.

This weekend I wont be as home as much as normal, family obligations, but I’ll try to get the Forums view done and maybe finish the HTML template for the Topics view. If anyone has any comments, feel free to leave them here or on the official Universus Vox forums located on SGCSim.com.

We have progress!

Jason Cox — Sat, 9 Sep 2006 11:29:00 GMT

Three day weekends, don’t you love ’em? I sure do, it gives me more time to unwind and to get some work done on Universus Vox without having to worry about getting up in ’x’ number of hours for work. Well, moving on from this glorious three day weekend, I bet some of you are wondering why I setup a blog on Windows Live Spaces for Codename: "Universus Vox [FFS]" instead of just writing some webapp to run on one of my websites. Well, truth be told I didn’t want to have to spend the time modifying the Cronus UX3 source to have it run two blogs, the code is in VB, something I’m trying to migrate away from and also because knowing me I would have started fixing bugs and adding features which would ultimately delay Universus Vox. Knowing that I was faced with setting up a blog elsewhere, either on Windows Live Spaces, WordPress or Blogger. Of the three, I liked Windows Live Spaces UI the best, plus, if I’m going to use anyone’s blogging service, the pro-Microsoft guy might as well use Microsoft’s blogging service. So who’s ready to hear about what I did this weekend?

I made some good progress on Universus Vox this weekend. Nothing Earth-shattering, but it’s more work then I’ve gotten done for awhile. After installing Windows Vista RC1 on Friday evening (by the way folks, Universus Vox is 100% built on Windows Vista, from concept to final product) I found out that I had forgotten to backup my development database before nuking the old partition, so Saturday morning was spent recreating the database in SQL Server Management Studio Express Edition (or just SQL Manager as I call it) while I sat at the car dealership waiting for them to fix some thing-a-ma-jig on my car that makes the blinker work, fun fun. If you can’t already tell, I’m not a car guy. After I had the database set back up and got back home, I toiled with getting the index page of the forums up and running. Now when I say ’up and running’, I should note that it isn’t fully functional yet as 90% of the database isn’t even there yet. Saturday night I got the index page up and running before stopping work for the evening to watch a DVD sponsored marathon of Battlestar Galactica.

Come Sunday morning I was ready to get back to work, however upon reviewing the code I had written for the index page the day before I realized that the code was just plain horrible and pretty damn sloppy. So I did what any good developer would do, I highlighted the code and pressed ’Delete’. After a few hours of work I had it up and running again and I can actually say I was proud of the replacement code. It was however a few hours later when I encountered a nasty little bug (which in the end was my fault) that was causing SuperCats (Super Categories, the container objects that hold the forums on the index page) to not render at all on the index page when I changed their display order from 1,2,3 to something like 2,3,1. In the end it turned out to be related to how I was querying SQL and in what order I was pulling records. Long story short, it great worked in my head but just not in reality, it’s not like this is the first time this has happened though...

Waking up Monday morning I dove into Universus Vox right away and I managed to get the ShowCategory event (when instead of seeing all the categories on the index page, you just see one category listed) implemented before I just lost concentration and stopped coding before I had another ’stupid coding moment’.

And that folks is where Universus Vox stands after my three day weekend. I’ll post some pictures once there’s some real progress to show.

Yet another reason I dont like Google

Jason Cox — Sat, 8 Jul 2006 00:29:00 GMT

So today at work I was at an employee’s desk to fix an issue they were having with Adobe Reader 7.0.8 running in IE6 and I noticed that the employee had a few toolbars installed into their browser, one of which was Google’s ~~spyware~~ toolbar. Company policy, being what it is at most companies, states employees are not permitted to install software on corporate owned machines without IT’s approval so I had to remove it. Obviously to remove a program, any computer literate person would know to go to ’Add/Remove Programs’ in the Control Panel and uninstall the toolbar. Except there was one problem, the Google Toolbar wasn’t listed in ’Add/Remove Programs’. I didn’t believe what I was seeing at first, Google of all companies, the media darling beloved by millions for doing nothing of value in the last five years aside from having a bloated stock price, would they install software on your PC and not give the average user a way to remove it? Would Google do what adware and spyware makers have been doing for years? Well, the answer is yes.

So how do you remove a toolbar from IE6 when it doesn’t have an uninstall option and when it’s classified as ’safe’ by major anti-spyware applications? Well, thankfully Microsoft thought of that when they introduced Windows XP Service Pack 2. Windows XP Service Pack 2 introduced a handy new option in IE6 called ’Manage Add-Ons’ which allows the user to manually enable or disable toolbars, BHOs and other objects from loading themselves into IE. All I had to do was disable the Google toolbar from loading and the problem has been solved, at least for now.

The issue still at hand is why the Google Toolbar got loaded onto this PC and Google wasn’t kind enough to add an entry to ’Add/Remove Programs’ to uninstall it. I’m a bit concerned for those people who will be buying new machines from Dell because Google software (Google Toolbar and Google Desktop) now comes pre-loaded on those machines, will their only options for permanently removing it be nuking the drive and reinstalling Windows?

UX3 design has begun

Jason Cox — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 15:39:00 GMT

It was inevitable that I’d eventually phase Cronus UX2 out, granted I thought that itvd at least a year before I did. That was however until I got my copy of Visual Studio 2005 from Microsoft so I can finally design a site in .NET 2.0. With Cronus UX3 I’m taking the plunge, I’m finally switching over from Visual Basic to C# and moving from Visual Studio .NET (.NET 1.0.3705) to Visual Studio 2005 (.NET 2.0 of course). I’ll try to post project updates as they occur, currently however I’m just starting the UI mockup in Photoshop so the first line of code is still a few weeks off.

With the new UI I’m trying to move from a standard UI that contains a header, a link bar and a content area into a more advanced UI the likes of which I havent tried to design before. Right now there isnt much to tell, I only started to rough out the new UI last night so it’ll be a few weeks (if not longer depending on his this move goes) until I can get an early image that I like online. Stay tuned

It’s been awhile

Jason Cox — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 19:24:00 GMT

Wow, it’s been awhile since I last posted. So much has happened in the tech world and to myself in general in the past month, why I didn’t post any of it I don’t really know. When I brought UX2 online I vowed to not go more than a week in between posts, well, looks like I did. I’ll try to post more often, it’s just a matter of pausing whatever game I’m playing or not trying to squeeze half a season of Star Trek in one night.

New Job
On May 12th I started my new job as a PC/Network Technician for a company hence forth referred to as North East Ohio Insurance Company. After a year and a half working for Northeast Ohio ISP I was ready for a change. There wasn’t much of a challenge or room for advancement at North East Ohio ISP, combined with the fact that management wasn’t at all in sync with the employees, I was just ready to get out of that job and into an actual career. As for my new job, I just love it. Currently I’m still bringing myself up to speed on the new rules and procedures at Northeast Ohio Insurance Company; it’s a big change going from a Helpdesk/Sales environment to a real support and implementation role. I can see myself at Northeast Ohio Insurance Company for a long time.

Graduated College
Two years and around thirty-four thousand dollars down the drain I’ve finally graduated college with an Associate’s Degree in Computer Network Systems. Looking back on my two years at college I realize that I didn’t really learn that much. College was really what I expected it to be, just a waste of two years to get a piece of paper that said I knew things I already knew or things I could have learned in half an hour after consulting Microsoft’s TechNet or the MSDN Knowledgebase. In alot of my classes we were basically handed a checklist which told us to complete steps one through ten in a specific order and we were done. We didn’t go that much more in depth, save for one instructor who always was willing to toss the book aside so we actually learned something.

Some people may have learned quite a bit, but for myself, going into college with a great deal of knowledge already, I either knew what I was doing already or was able to solve problems on my own without consulting the book or the instructor. But qualms aside, I graduated college with some good friends and a sheet of paper that says I know how to work on a network and turn on server. Would I do it again? I honestly don’t know. A degree will obviously help me get jobs in the future but looking back I would have liked to have learned more. We seriously spent a total of two or three weeks on how to setup printers in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Like I said, we really didn’t learn much.

Moving Out
In honor of myself graduating college, getting a full time job and my parents selling their house, I will soon be moving out on my own into a one bedroom apartment. I have about a month until the big day and I’m really looking forward to it. What really stinks though is now I have to be budget concise, so no more blowing money on new PC hardware whenever NewEgg or Best Buy have a sale on something. On a side note, I still haven’t replaced the motherboard and CPU in my server.

Addicted to Oblivion
About two weeks ago I bought a new PC game, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and I have to say I’m addicted to it. As I’m out of space on my Windows XP partition, I’ve installed it onto my Windows Vista partition and I have to say the game runs great. Windows Vista does a great job at memory management and toning down some operating system features such as the Aero UI when something such as a game needs the system’s horsepower. As for the game, it’s awesome. Oblivion is a Role Playing Game (or RPG) like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, except that it’s ALOT bigger and it isn’t as linear. Oblivion is set in the land of Cyrodiil which resembles medieval Europe with all of the mythical creatures of beings of Lord of the Rings. The game environment itself is huge and resembles the islands in Operation Flashpoint in terms and size and Half-Life 2 in terms of detail. Like Knights of the Old Republic, Oblivion has many side quests in addition to the game’s main quest. Unlike Knights of the Old Republic though,

Oblivion is truly open ended and allows the player to just roam around Cyrodiil doing nothing, allows them to pick-up side quests or complete the game’s main quest and be done. Oblivion truly sets the standard for RPGs of the future. If you want more details on this game, feel free to contact me, I highly recommend this game to anyone who likes RPGs and owns a PC or Xbox 360.

Windows Vista Beta 2
A few weeks ago at WinHEC 2006, Microsoft shipped Windows Vista Beta 2 to beta testers, MSDN, TechNet and TAP members. Last week Microsoft finally publicly released Beta 2 via the Customer Preview Program (CPP) for everyone to download. Speaking as a beta tester who has seen builds that preformed good and others that were a nightmare, Beta 2 is by far the most stable and best performing build I’ve seen to date. On my laptop, a Dell Inspiron 9200 (1.6GHz, 1.25GB ram, 128mb video), it outperforms Windows XP in just about every area and I’ve noticed that some applications such as games or Valve’s Hammer Editor (used to make maps for the Source engine), actually run better and crash less on Vista then on XP. To be honest I don’t know where Paul Thurrot gets all his gripes about Vista and driver/performance problems, I haven’t seen any of these problems since the early 52xx builds.

2007 Office System Beta 2
And speaking of WinHEC 2006, Microsoft also recently released the 2007 Office System beta to the public. This is one beta that I wasn’t privy to prior to it being released to the public and I have to say I just love it. The 2007 Office System, or as everyone outside of Microsoft says, Office 2007, is just awesome. From the new Ribbon that replaces Office’s endless menu lists to the live previews of font changes and live image editing features, companies that considered their old versions of Office as ‘good enough’ might have to seriously consider upgrading to the 2007 Office System when it’s released on 2007. I’m not one for writing product reviews, I’ll leave that to the many journalists that populate the internet.

Microsoft’s stock slide is good news

Jason Cox — Thu, 4 May 2006 15:55:00 GMT

Microsoft’s stock slide is good news- for people like me who want to buy more Microsoft stock that is. In the past few days I’ve read a number of articles and postings on other websites, much of which are the typical gloom and doom and year of Linux articles that you’ve come to expect from the backwaters of the internet while others are a bit more mild but are still predicting that Microsoft’s days are numbered. Reading those articles I wonder if any of their authors even own a single share of stock. While its very true that Microsoft’s stock has been stagnant for the past few years, that doesn’t mean that a drop down to $23.47 (according to the Stock Ticker gadget on my Sidebar) is necessarily a bad thing for shareholders.

Why do I say this? How can I possibly say that the stock slipping down this low isn’t a bad thing? Because Microsoft has been hovering between $24 and $29 dollars for the past few years, the stock goes up, it comes down, it goes up again, lather rinse repeat. If you buy into the stock (which is now at $23.52, up five cents, if anyone cares) now, you know you’re going to make a few bucks when it goes back up to around $28 dollars in a few months. Granted I don’t own hardly any stock in the grand scheme of things (put about ten or fifteen zeros after the decimal point, I’m probably in that range), but when Microsoft’s stock was in the high $28 range I had already made around two hundred dollars since I had bought in when it was around $24.50. Not bad at all in my opinion.

With the release of Windows Vista coming in Q4 2006 for businesses and Q1 2007 for consumers, Office 2007 also coming in Q1 2007 and Xbox 360 sales going strong, not to mention the fact Microsoft’s server market share is steadily climbing and all the innovations coming out of Redmond, how can you not want to buy into Microsoft when the stock is this low? I’m sure someone with a Bachelors or Masters in Business could easily turn what I’ve said into a five page article about how I’m right or how I’m wrong, but this is how I see things. Yes, the stock is stagnant. No, it probably won’t be as high as when Windows 9x was on the market ever again, but then again look at Google’s over-inflated stock price, Microsoft’s stagnant stock will be long forgotten the day Google’s stock comes crashing back to Earth.

Registration bug fixed

Jason Cox — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 08:16:00 GMT

Well, after being online for a month I finally found and fixed 2 bugs that were preventing users from registering. Oddly enough I was lying in bed last night when I started reviewing the site code in my head and realized that there was a problem, some lines of my development code had gone into the production site. The first problem was that when a new user registers they are sent a validation email to obviously validate their account, the bug was that when that email was sent out, the included url had an IP address instead of a domain name. The problem was that that specific IP address went to one of my testing locations and anyone who received that email would be directed to a non-production database.

What makes this even better is after fixing that bug, I found another bug in the registration system, this one was causing people to not even receive the validation email. This second bug was caused by me adding a field to the database that was set to not be null and then forgetting to update the code for the registration process. Because of this, if you tried to register for a new account, the registration process wouldn’t write any data to the above mentioned field, causing SQL to not save the data and causing an Internal Application Error to appear on the site.

Well, both bugs have been fixed now and I’ve tested and verified that the registration system works now. To be honest I’m kinda embarrassed that I had that big of a bug live for so long and didn’t know about... Please also remember that if you find a bug, please report it by clicking on "Contact" near the bottom-right of your screen. Because this was an emergency bug fix, I didnt incriment the build number, but if you really must know, this is now Build 060429_0704

Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Released

Jason Cox — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 00:09:00 GMT

Late Monday night Microsoft officially shipped Windows Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 for Windows XP, Windows XP x64 and Windows Server 2003. Internet Explorer 7 includes such security enhancements as a built in pop-up blocker, an advanced phishing filter, protected mode and ActiveX Opt-In as well as several usability enhancements such as tabbed browsing and a feature that no other browser to date has, Quick Tabs. Internet Explorer 7 also includes several developer oriented features such as improved CSS support and full PNG support. Those features are just the tip of the iceberg. I reccomend that everyone, whether you like IE or hate it, download Internet Explorer 7 and give it a try. For those using Firefox, you’ll find that Internet Explorer 7 has all the features that you want and then some, and best of all that it isnt prone to 1GB memory leaks that were around in the pre-1.0 betas.

Oddly enough, at the time I originally posted this article, no other major technology news site was carrying this story, heck, I even beat Bruce Morgan’s post in Channel9! Once again, congrats to the IE team on shipping the newest version of the world’s most popular web browser!

Windows Internet Explorer Official Website
Download Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2

Vista delays won’t boost Mac sales

Jason Cox — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 15:11:00 GMT

It seems like over the past few weeks a number of reputable technology news sites have been reporting that the latest delay in Windows Vista may end up driving users to go out and buy a Macintosh instead of waiting for the release of Microsoft’s next OS. To be completely honest with you, I have no idea where these sites get their ideas from, but they can’t be rooted in fact. If you survey the average consumer you’ll find out a few things, the first being that most of them have never heard of Windows Vista or Codename: Longhorn and those who have heard of it probably just heard about it on the nightly news or from reading the newspaper. The average consumer also won’t go into the local electronics retailer to buy a PC and just walk out because Windows Vista hasn’t been released yet. If the average consumer needs a new PC they will buy whatever is on the shelf.

What confuses me the most is the assumption that the consumer, angry over Windows Vista’s delay, will have no choice but to go buy a Mac. I’m wondering if when all these journalists were writing their articles if they forgot that there is already a version of Windows, Windows XP, on the market. To me it seems like all these journalists assumed that because Windows Vista was delayed for two or three months nobody would even sell or buy Windows XP. I’m just not seeing their logic. OEMs and retailers will continue to stock Windows XP even into the release of Windows Vista. Just because Windows Vista has been delayed doesn’t mean that sales will grind to a halt or that consumers will rush off to Apple in droves.

Now what we’ve established that people will keep buying Windows XP up to Windows Vista’s release, we can move on to another reason why Vista’s delay wont help Apple. To put it simply, the average user has a hard enough time operating a Windows PC. Put them in front of a Macintosh and they will be utterly lost. The Start Button is gone, Internet Explorer is gone and none of their old programs will work. If that isn’t bad enough, Apple’s UI concept is completely different then that of Microsoft. Some users have a hard enough time finding the ‘Red X’ to close a window in Windows, now put them on a Mac and not only are the window controls on a different side of the window, but they don’t reveal their functionality until you mouse-over them.

Gripes about Apple aside, a delay in the release of Windows Vista will not lead to higher Macintosh sales. Retailers and OEMs will continue to sell Windows XP until Windows Vista is released and the Mac’s price and complexity will continue to turn off users to the platform.

(Again please note that I’m still tweaking the language filters, the fix should be uploaded within the next few days)

Windows Vista Product Guide released… and un-released

Jason Cox — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 22:36:00 GMT

Earlier today Fred Pullen over at the TS2Community.com posted The Windows Vista Product Edition Guide. Sadly he had to remove it later in the day because it “wasn’t ready for public consumption” but not before many journalists and Windows Vista enthusiasts (including myself) had a chance to download it. I have to say it’s an excellent document with over 300 pages of information about the features of Vista and the different SKUs. Even I learned a few things while reading it, for example I didn’t know that the Instant Search box could be used in the Control Panel to find specific applets.

Currently I’m only on page 68 but this document is already proving to be a wealth of information. Not only am I finding out what the official name of some of the features are (for example, Aero Gl*ss has been renamed ‘Windows Aero’) but we’re finally getting an official feature list for each of the different SKUs which goes above and beyond Paul Thurrott’s original list.

With The Windows Vista Product Guide I’m also getting to toy with Microsoft’s XPS (XML Paper Scheme) for the first time. It’s pretty nice, it doesn’t have all the features of Adobe’s PDF Reader but I can’t complain because it doesn’t take 20 minutes to load. When reading an XPS document, Internet Explorer is used as the reader’s front end and so far my only complaint is that if you switch IE to a full screen view, simply hitting F11 while reading the document doesn’t switch you back to a standard window, I’ll be bugging this for sure.

Also of note to any Vista testers, either the screenshots included in the document are from an incomplete internal build or Microsoft is planning to make some subtle UI changes to Windows Aero. Read subtle, not m*ssive. I’d upload an image, but for all I know those images are why Microsoft doesn’t want the document online just yet.

(Note: I’m still tweaking the profanity filters, Aero Gl*ss appears to be censored because of the last three letters in Gl*ss, hence the star in Gl*ss and M*ssive)

When good hardware goes dead

Jason Cox — Sun, 9 Apr 2006 19:49:00 GMT

I’m sure it happened to everyone at least once. One day your PC is running perfectly and the next day it doesn’t even boot. Well, it finally happened to me the other day. So as the story goes about a week ago I start to notice that files on my second hard disk that has a capacity of 160GB, were becoming corrupted and refused to load at all. Oddly only some files were corrupted while others were still in perfect shape and it seemed that copying the file back off the drive and back on it fixed the problem so I didn’t really put much thought into it. So when a few nights ago I access that drive to pull off some source code, needless to say I was surprised when Windows told me the drive was corrupt and that I should run the ChkDsk tool.

I told the tool to run on next boot and rebooted, Windows began to load and finally the ChkDsk tool came up and told me something that almost made me fall out of my chair. ChkDsk was reporting the drive as RAW, the NTFS partition was gone. Booting back into Windows I quickly realized this should be an easy fix, just download partition recovery software, restore the partition, transfer the data to another disk and repartition and reformat the drive. If only things were that simple.

I ran the partition recovery software a few times, each time it told me that the partition had been detected and rewritten back to disk. Each time I booted Windows and saw that the drive still showed as RAW. At that point I gave up for the night and planned to try some different tools the next day. Well 24 hours later I turn on the PC on to find that it refuses to POST. After a lot of tinkering and the PC innards lying all over my desk, I think I’ve narrowed it down to a bad motherboard. The good news is I had no life or death important files on that computer (such us the Cronus UX2 source code, that stored on another machine), however I did lose over 100GB of media and the source code to the SGCSim Project. This hasn’t been a good weekend, but on a side note I did have pizza for dinner and my laptop still works so at least it didn’t end all that bad.