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Software runs my life

Category: Microsoft Page 5 of 10

Microsoft Promotions

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On March 24, 2008

In Microsoft, Personal

Ok I don’t want to sound like an MS Fanboi, but there are actually a few cool things Microsoft related happening with me at the moment.

Skydrive

Skydrive is a very cool new file storage service from Microsoft. Really simple, you get 5GB of storage space and can upload any file smaller than 50MB. Sounds perfect for a “My Docs” backup system? The only catch is that there is no shell extension or decent folder upload tool yet. They do however have a nice drag+drop multi-file upload tool, which I guess will do for now. I would love to see a more integrated tool that actually backed your “My Docs” up for you, but my guess that is hidden somewhere in the greater Windows Live skunkworks for now.

Windows Server 2008 + Exchange 2007

Yes, I am migrating my servers at home to the latest and greatest MS enterprise offerings. This also means going to Windows 2008 x64, which is fine since I have been an AMD fanboi for some time, but it would have been nice of them to make the migration a little easier! I know hardware is cheaper than software these days, but it would be nice to be able to easily upgrade Exchange from 2003 to 2007 without having to have a spare x64 machine lying around. Anyway it is all underway, so keep an eye on my Netcraft page.

Windows November Bug

By

On December 11, 2007

In Microsoft

This white box behind the tabs of IE7 is the first sign that things are going wrong. Soon afterwards the toolbars start to disappear (also seen in the screenshot below). If you hover over where the minimise and close buttons would be these button appear, but the rest of the toolbar remains missing. It is instead replaced by whatever was underneath the toolbar at the time the window was moved! Very strange.

So what could the bug be? Display drivers are a good guess, but that is not the case. I tried different drivers with the same problem. Then the exact same problem occured on two other computers on the network! They had ATI graphics cards, as opposed to my Intel onboard card. Other strange problems manifest themselves:

Network objects like shared drives, printers etc. cannot be accessed, however the internet and Outlook work just fine. Applications start to fail with the above application errors, with the error being the same for any executable. It is also interesting to note that the style of dialog in the second example is different, reverting back to the Windows 2000 style interface. Very strange. Things recover a little if you close programs, however the problem always comes back once you start opening things back up again. The only ‘cure’ is a restart.

Having not installed any significant software in November (on any of the affected computers) I decided to check the Windows Updates for November 2007. The main one that I installed was 943460. The main files affected are shell32.dll and xpsp3res.dll, both pretty core files as far as I am aware. I have uninstalled the patch and it seems that the crash happens less often, but it is definitely still present.

If anyone has any advice I would love to hear it as this has me pretty much stumped. I am going to lodge a support case with Microsoft and see what they come up with.

nforce3 + ATI Graphics + Vista = Device Failed!

By

On May 26, 2007

In Hardware, Microsoft

 

The relentless pace of technology is exciting, but sometimes this fast paced environment leaves its past behind a little prematurely. I was on the receiving end of one such problem this week.

I purchased a new ATI graphics card, the x1950Pro AGP version to work with my existing nforce3 motherboard. It is running an Athlon X2 processor and has 2GB of RAM, so it isn’t an outdated machine by any stretch. I plugged in the new card expecting everything to go smoothly, however it kept failing with a code 43 “Device failed to start” error. Vista recognised the card correctly, however it just would not leave the graphical ‘safe mode’. I initially suspected the card was faulty, however after a bit of googling I managed to find others with the exact same problem.

In fact not only did I find others, I found an acknowledgement from Nvidia themselves of the problem. It was snuck in at the end of one of their website FAQ’s and reads:

There is a known issue with ATI AGP cards with NVIDIA nForce3 and Vista. This is currently being looked into and will likely be resolved with an MCP driver update.

In fact this problem has been known about and acknowledged since the start of this year, and reported on the 7th of February. Still nothing has been done, there is no MCP update and I am still left sitting out in the cold. Nvidia has been infamously slack with their Vista drivers in general, now they are blocking ATI cards too (Nvidia cards work fine)? I think that is a little too convenient and completely unethical to be honest.

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