TOPIC: MICROSOFT
9th May 2008
Windows system error codes can be indecipherable, so it's useful to have a list. Microsoft has one on its Microsoft Learn website that may help. However, the decodes may not as explicit as I would like, but they're better than nothing when you don't get anything other than the number.
23rd January 2008
When you buy a piece of software and get accustomed to its ways of working, it is natural to want to continue using it. That applied to a number of applications when I moved over to Linux in the latter half of last year, and one of these was Adobe's Photoshop Elements 5.0, a purchase made earlier in the year. My way forward was to hang on to Windows by way of VMware. However, Elements fails to edit or save files in the Linux file system accessed through VMware's shared folders feature. I have yet to work out what's happening, but the idea of using a more conventional networking arrangement has come to mind.
Another idea that intrigued me was the idea of using WINE, the Windows API emulator for Linux. You can get it in the Ubuntu and openSUSE software repositories, but the WINE website has more to say on the subject. That's only the first stage, though, as you might see from WINE's Wiki page on Photoshop and its like. However, their advice is a spot incomplete, so I'll make it more explicit here. You need to run Winetricks from its online home as follows:
wget kegel.com/wine/winetricks; sh winetricks fakeie6
wget kegel.com/wine/winetricks; sh winetricks mdac28
wget kegel.com/wine/winetricks; sh winetricks jet40
The first line flicks a switch to fool Microsoft components to install thinking that they are installing into a Windows system with IE on board. Without this, the rest will not happen. The second installs Microsoft's native ODBC drivers; Elements will not function at all without these if my experience is any guide. The last step is to add JET support so that Elements' Organiser can get going. With all of these in place, having a working Photoshop Elements instance under Linux should be a goer. Apart from the odd crash, things seem to be working OK on Ubuntu and openSUSE seems hospitable too. Further experimentation may reveal more.
Update: The WINE Wiki has now been updated (and links back here!). As per dank's comment, the above lines can be condensed into what you see below:
wget kegel.com/wine/winetricks; sh winetricks fakeie6 mdac28 jet40
14th January 2008
Being an experienced computer, I set Windows Explorer to display hidden files when using a Windows PC. However, on my Vista-empowered laptop, that causes two desktop.ini files to appear on the desktop, one for all users and one for my user account. And displaying hidden files does not seem to be something that you can do on a folder by folder basis. With XP, this did not cause hidden files to appear on your desktop like this, so the behaviour could be seen as a step backwards. A spot of googling exposed me to some trite suggestions regarding re-hiding files again, but deleting them seems to be the only way out. Despite the dire warnings being issued, there didn't seem to be any untoward problems caused by my actions. For now, I'll see if they stay away, yet episodes like this do make me wonder if it is time for Microsoft to stop treating us like idiots and give us things that work the in which we want them to function. Well, I'm glad that Linux is the linchpin of my home computing world...
20th October 2007
ZoneAlarm cut off VMware's access to the internet, so it was time to reinstall it. However, I messed up the reinstallation and now there seems no way to reinstate things like they were without tampering with my Windows XP installation status, and I have no intention of doing that. The thing seems to think that it can start a TrueVector service that does not exist.
Since I have to have some security software on board, I made a return to the Symantec fold with my purchase of Norton 360. That does sound extreme, but I have been curious about the software for a while now. You get the usual firewall, antivirus and antispam functions with PC tuning, anti-phishing and backup features available as well. It is supposed to be unobtrusive, so we'll see how it goes from here.
Update:
PC Pro rates the software highly, while Tech.co.uk accuses it of being bloatware. Nevertheless, the only issue that I am having with it is its insistence on having Microsoft Update turned on. For now, I am sticking with Shavlik's NetChk Protect, especially seeing what Microsoft has been doing with its update service. Have a look at Windows Secrets.com to see what I mean. Other than that, it seems to working away in the background without intruding at all.
5th September 2007
Mapping network drives on Windows usually involves shuffling through Explorer menus. There is another way that I consider to be neater: using the Windows command line ("DOS" to some). The basic command for creating a mapping goes like this:
net use w: \\yourserver.address
To ensure persistence of the mapping across different Windows sessions, use this:
net use w: \\yourserver.address /persistent:yes
Here's how to set up a mapping that logs in as a different user:
net use w: \\yourserver.address password /user:you
The above can include domain information as well, and in a number of different forms: domain\username is one.
To delete a mapping, try this:
net use w: /delete
List all existing mappings:
net use
This is a flavour of what is available, and Microsoft does provide documentation. Issuing the following command will bring some of that on the command line:
net help use
2nd August 2007
My PC is very poorly at the moment and Windows XP re-installation is the prescribed course of action. However, I have getting errors reporting missing or damaged HAL.DLL at the first reboot of the system during installation. Because I thought that there might be hard disk confusion, I unplugged all but the Windows boot drive. That only gave me an error about hard drives not being set up properly. Thankfully, a quick outing on Google turned up a few ideas. However, I should really have started with Microsoft, since they have an article on the problem. About.com has also got something to offer on the subject and seems to be a good resource on installing XP to boot: I had forgotten how to do a repair installation and couldn't find the place in the installation menus. In any event, a complete refresh should be a good thing in the long run, even if it will be a very disruptive process. While I did consider moving to Vista at that point, bringing XP back online seemed the quickest route to getting things back together again. Strangely, I feel like a fish out of water right now, but that'll soon change...
Update: It was, in fact, my boot.ini that was causing this and replacement of the existing contents with defaults resolved the problem...
28th June 2007
When I start to lose interest in the features in a magazine that I regularly buy, then it's a matter of time before I stop buying the magazine altogether. Such a predicament is facing PC Plus, a magazine that I have been buying every month over the last ten years. The fate has already befallen titles like Web Designer, Amateur Photographer and Trail, all of which I now buy sporadically.
Returning to PC Plus, I get the impression that it feels more of a lightweight these days. Over the last decade, Future Publishing has been adding titles to its portfolio that take actually from its long-established stalwart. Both Linux Format and .Net are two that come to mind, while there are titles covering Windows Vista and computer music as well. In short, there may be sense in having just a single title for all things computing.
Being a sucker for punishment, I did pick up this month's PC Plus, only for the issue to be as good an example of the malaise as any. Reviews, once a mainstay of the title, are now less prominent than they were. In place of comparison tests, we now find discussions of topics like hardware acceleration, with some reviews mixed in. Topics such as robotics and artificial intelligence do rear their heads in feature articles, when I cannot say that I have a great deal of time for such futurology. The section containing tutorials remains, even if it has been hived off into a separate mini-magazine, and seemingly fails to escape the lightweight revolution.
All this is leading me to dump PC Plus in favour of PC Pro from Dennis Publishing. This feels reassuringly more heavyweight and, while the basic format has remained unchanged over the years, it still managed to remain fresh. Reviews, of both software and hardware, are very much in evidence while it manages to have those value-adding feature articles; this month, digital photography and rip-off Britain come under the spotlight. Add the Real Word Computing section, and it all makes a good read in these times of behemoths like Microsoft, Apple and Adobe delivering new things on the technology front. While I don't know if I have changed, PC Pro does seem better than PC Plus these days.
22nd June 2007
Having been exposed to an application at work that uses a lot of JavaScript, I fully appreciate what some mean when they discuss IE6's inefficient handling of JavaScript. After seeing a web page taking an age to reload and your CPU taking a hammering because of JavaScript processing, the penny does tend to drop...
Needless to say, this very much impacts the world of AJAX-driven web applications with their heavy dependence on client-side JavaScript. While IE7 does come to the rescue, there remain plenty of IE6 users still out there, and this is reflected in website statistics. This demonstrates a certain level of inertia in the browser market that not only afflicts the uptake of IE7 but also the likes of Mozilla, Opera and Safari. It also means that anyone developing AJAX applications very much needs to continue testing in IE6, especially if the product of their labours is for wider public use.
An example of such an application is Zimbra, an open-source web application for messaging and collaboration, and the people behind it have generously shared the results of their browser performance benchmarking. They did comparisons of IE6 vs. IE7 and Firefox 2 vs. IE7. IE6 easily came out as the worst of these, while Firefox 2 was the best.
The next question to be asked could centre around the type of code that is processed inefficiently by IE6. While I wouldn't be at all surprised if a list emerged, here's one: using Microsoft's proprietary innerHTML object to update the DOM for a web page format. Having a quick trawl on Google, this came up for mention as a cause of memory leaks. It is also a Microsoft innovation that never got taken up by those overseeing web standards, hardly a surprise since a spot of DOM scripting achieves the same end. It may be faster to code than any alternatives, and it does have some support from other browsers, but it does seem to have got a bad name, so it should be avoided if possible. That said, it would be interesting to see a performance comparison between innerHTML and DOM methods in IE6.
7th June 2007
When I started it, my online photo gallery started out simply as a set of interlinked HTML pages. Over time, I discovered frames (yes, them!) and started to make use of JavaScript to make the slideshows slicker. In those days, I was working off free webspace provided by my ISP and client-side scripting was the only tool that I had for enhancing functionality. Having tired of the vagaries of client-side scripting while the browser wars were in full swing and incompatibilities reigned supreme, I went with paid hosting to get access to tools like Perl and PHP for server-side processing. Because their flexibility compared to JavaScript was a breath of fresh air to me, I am still a fan of the server-side approach.
The journey that I have just described is one that I now know was followed by many website builders around the same time. Nevertheless, I have still held on to JavaScript for some things, particularly for updating the DOM as part of making the pages more responsive to user interaction. In the last few years, a hybrid approach has been gaining currency: AJAX. This offers the ability to modify parts of a page without needing to reload the whole thing, generating a considerable amount of interest among web application developers.
The world of AJAX is evidently a complex one, though the underlying principle can be explained in simple terms. The essential idea is that you use JavaScript to call a server-side script, PHP is as good an example as any, that returns either text or XML that can be used to update part of a web page in situ without the need to reload it as per the traditional way of working. It has opened up so many possibilities from the interface design point of view that AJAX became a hot topic that still receives much attention today. One bugbear is efficiency because I have seen an AJAX application lock up a PC with a little help from IE6. There will always remain times when server-side processing is the best route, even if that needs to be balanced against the client-side approach.
Like its forbear DHTML, AJAX is really a development approach using a number of different technologies in combination. The DHTML elements such as (X)HTML, CSS, DOM and JavaScript are very much part of the AJAX world but server-side elements such as HTTP, PHP, MySQL and XML are also very much part of the fabric of the landscape. In fact, while AJAX can use plain text as the transfer format, XML is the one implied by the AJAX acronym and XSLT is used to transform XML into HTML. However, AJAX is not limited to the aforementioned technologies; for instance, I cannot see why Perl cannot play a role in place of PHP and ASP, both of which can be used for the same things.
Even in these standards-compliant days, browser support for AJAX remains diverse, to say the least, and it is akin to having MSIE in one corner and the rest in the other. Mind you, Microsoft did introduce the tools in the first place only for them to use ActiveX, while Mozilla created a new object type rather than continue this method of operation. Given that ActiveX is a Windows-only technology, I can see why Mozilla did what they did, and it is a sensible decision. In fact, IE7 appears to have picked up the Mozilla way of doing things.
Even with the apparent convergence, there will continue to be a need for the AJAX JavaScript libraries that are currently out there. Incidentally, Adobe has included one called Spry with Dreamweaver CS3. Nevertheless, I still like to find out how things work at the basic level and feel somewhat obstructed when I cannot do this. I remember perusing Wrox’s Professional AJAX and found the constant references to the associated function library rather grating; the writing style didn’t help either.
My taking a more granular approach has got me reading SAMS Teach Yourself AJAX in 10 Minutes as a means for getting my foot in the door. As with their Teach Yourself … in 24 Hours series, the title is a little misleading since there are 22 lessons of 10 minutes in duration (the 24 Hours moniker refers to there being 24 lessons, each of one hour in length). Anything composed of 10-minute lessons, even 22 of them, is never going to be comprehensive but, as a means for getting started, I have to say that the approach seems effective based on this volume. It has certainly whetted my appetite for giving AJAX a go, and it’ll be interesting to see how things progress from here.
5th June 2007
In an earlier post, I wondered about command line management of Windows processes. Well, I have since located the sort of tools that I was after as part of the Windows Sysinternals toolkit. It began as an independent endeavour and continued as such until Microsoft acquired them in 2006. You can find out more about the process utilities here, and the whole Sysinternals suite can be downloaded in a single package.