Microsoft Mathematics Add-In for Word and OneNote

Heh, this one is pretty awesome. Calculus and plotting in Microsoft Word :-). Best of all, it's a free add-on.

Microsoft Mathematics Add-In for Word and OneNote

And while we're on the subject of educational software:

Biology Add-in for Word

Chemistry Add-in for Word

You can even grab the source code for this: http://chem4word.codeplex.com/

BSOD analysis simplified with BlueScreenView

Sure, you can do a lot more than a simple !analyze -v with WinDbg, but if you're doing tech support and keep getting spammed by minidumps or just want to solve something quick and easy, you can use BlueScreenView.

Basically, you can see the drivers found on the stack at the time of the crash, a list of all drivers loaded in the kernel or XP style BSOD as it would appear in the crash. You can also create HTML reports to send to your clients.

The process is simple. You point BSV at a bunch of minidumps, you look at what driver is on the stack - then you upgrade it (oh, look, it's NVIDIA, time to upgrade). Or uninstall it (oh, look, I'm running some daemon tools thing pseudo-driver, to time remove it). Then you see if Windows stops crashing. If not, go to plan B - WinDbg, Driver Verifier, etc.

Microsoft banned from selling Office in the US by Texas Judge

Here's something you don't see everyday.. Texas judge bans Microsoft from selling XML based products like Office 2007 in the US:

http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/08-12-2009/0005076218&EDATE=

http://files.newswire.ca/816/CourtDocuments.pdf

This creates a pretty nasty precedent... remember, OpenOffice does the same thing too...

The patent:

http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5787449/fulltext.html

Firefox Firebug vs. Internet Explorer 8 Developer Tools

Looks like IE 8 has a pretty neat feature called "Developer Tools". It's _very_ similar to Firebug:



Being able to import Firefox and Opera settings and adding quite a few of their features makes IE 8 pretty interesting.

Change Analysis Diagnostic tool for Windows XP

Here's a neat tool for digital forensics, reversing or malware analysis:

This tool allows you to track changes in:

• Software Programs
• Operating System Components (hotfixes and updates)
• Browser Helper Objects
• Drivers
• ActiveX Controls
• Autostart Extensibity Points

Get it from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/924732

Windows 2008 R2 Datacenter x64 Beta Hands on Preview

Windows 2008 R2 is also in the works.



Some major changes there it seems. The 2008 release was a bit rushed IMHO (Hyper-V still in Betas on release and so on).



And again, our new friends, the taskbar and the ribbon from Windows 7 are present:



Also comes with PowerShell v2.

Task manager, resource monitor and performance monitor got a few new additions also:



Overall, my first impression is a positive one. Seems pretty responsive also.



For some reason a lot changes withing the monitoring tools and taskmanager remind me of Mark Russinovich's Sysinternals tools.

Even trivial applications such as CALC got a new facelift and functionaly in Windows 7 and 2008 R2 . Like "Programmer mode" calc:



Even minor applications are getting a facelift. Paint gets ribboned too:

Winodws 7 beta hands on preview

A first look at Windows 7:



Looks and feels pretty much like Vista SP1 on steroids.



Graphically it's not much different from Windows Vista (with the slight exception of the taskbar). There's some minor UI changes and so on though.

VMware actually assumed it was a Windows Vista when I selected the ISO, and proceeded to start "EasyInstall" and automagically installed the OS without any kind of input.

So, at least from the installer point of view, it's pretty much 100% compatible with Windows Vista.

All VMware tools and drivers installed fine also.

Even our old friend "The Ribbon" is omnipresent. Now even mandatory when using Wordpad:



Of course, remember, this is still a beta...



All and all, it can be considered somewhat as an evolutionary change from Windows Vista, and not a revolution by far. It's more of a Windows Vista SP2 "Plus". I just wonder how this will reflect on Vista sales and such.

Script for automating hardlink creation

::
:: Linking script
:: Usage: ln "source\REGEXP" destination

@echo off
set sourcedir=%1
set destdir=%2
if "%1" == "" goto usage
echo "Linking" %sourcedir% "\*" to %destdir% "\*"

if not exist %destdir% mkdir %destdir%
:: Create the destination directory if it does not exist

:iterate
shift
if "%1" == "" goto end
for %%i in (%sourcedir%) do fsutil hardlink create %destdir%\%%~nxi %%~fi
goto iterate

:usage
color 4f
echo "Usage: ln.bat source-directory\REGEXP destination-directory
echo "If the destination directory does not exist it will be created."
echo "If a fully qualified path is not used, current directory will be used"
pause
color

:end
set sourcedir=

Scripting VMware Infrastructure with PowerShell

You can script VMware Server and VMware Infrastructure using Microsoft PowerShell CmdLets and the VMware VI Toolkit. It's really great for scheduling and automating tasks, since the scheduler in VMware Infrastructure Client is severely limited



You need to install the .NET Framework (2.0 at least), PowerShell 1.0 and the VMware VI Toolkit. All are freely available.

Get-VICommand to list available cmdlets and read the VI Toolkit Cmdlets Reference for documentation.

Creating hardlinks on Windows

You can use fsutil on Windows XP and Windows 2003 or mklink on Windows Vista and 2008 to create hardlinks in a Windows environment. This requires a NTFS filesystem.

Windows - Delayed Write Failed when copying to USB disks

Trouble transfering large files to USB devices? I've had quite some problems with Delayed Write Failed even after caching disabled, increasing the system page size, etc. when transfering large files to Western Digital USB 2.0 500MB and 2TB MyBook Devices (though this looks like an issue with USB storage devices in general).

Messages like these turn up in Even Viewer:

{Delayed Write Failed} Windows was unable to save all the data for the file . The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network connection. Please try to save this file elsewhere.

or

Application popup: Windows - Delayed Write Failed : Windows was unable to save all the data for the file. The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network connection. Please try to save this file elsewhere. 

To fix this enabled SoftRetry for USB transfers:

Start - run - cmd. Type:

• reg add HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\USB\EnSoftRetry /v Data /t REG_DWORD /d 1

Other hacks to get around this issue:

Look into HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management at LargeSystemCache and SystemPages.

Disable write caching on the disk (Right click the drive letter -  Properties - Hardware - Select the Disk - Properties - Policies - Optimize for quick removal).

Make sure you monitor errors under Start - Run - eventvwr.msc -> System.

Microsoft Reaserch Singularity Project - Open Source on Codeplex

You can grab the source code of the Singularity OS RDK - a Microsoft Research project from codeplex (Microsoft's version of SourceForge for Open Source Projects Hosting). It's basically an OS written mostly in managed code. It also uses a microkernel.



Running the thing is pretty simple. Just build world and run the ISO in VirtualPC.

Puttycyg, screen, zsh and irssi on Windows

Remeber PowerShell + PowerTab + PCSX + Console + Terminus?
Here's something even nicer: Puttycyg + Terminus + GNU Screen + ZSH + irssi:

Reading Microsoft Office 2007 formats with OpenOffice

You can rename the .docx or whatever to .zip and look at the .xml files, or you can use this:

OpenOffice plugin for Microsoft XML document format:

http://www.novell.com/documentation/openwg/esd/di_ooo_openxml_translator.html

Disk Cleanup Wizzard in Windows Server 2008

If you want to run the Disk Cleanup Wizzard (cleanmgr) on Windows 2008 Server you need to install the "Desktop Experience" Role and restart your computer.

So basically, start the Server Manager (CompMgmtLauncher.exe) - Features - Add Feature - Desktop Experience and restart your machine. IT doesn't mention this also adds the Cleanup Wizzard though, heh.



It's a bit counter-intuitive, but that's how it is. This also adds themes, Media Player, photo management and a few other useless things.

Windows 2008 Server Backup

I must say I'm quite pleased with the new Windows 2008 Server backup. A full backup of the system disk (Windows 2008 Enterprise and a few tools, about 15GB uncompressed with 3GB of SWAP. Windows Backup shows the volume as using 14GB) takes 6 minutes. Overall, a great effort, considering I'm doing this over a Firewire 400 connection.



And the backup is done:



A larger backup:

Hyper-V - Windows 2008 Virtualization

Can't say Hyper-V is much fun. It seems to fail in spectacular ways when it comes to running non-Windows operating systems. FreeBSD 7 (AMD64 and i386) builds fail to boot, OS/2, eComStation and QNX fail to install (QNX 4 installs, but fails to boot after), Solaris 10 doesn't get past the GRUB screen (at least in the 10 minutes I've waited) and other operating systems experience strange issues:

QNX in Hyper-V:


OpenBSD install:


Though OpenBSD did install after all:



So far, it seems that VMware Server (or ESX) is a safer choice. Even though it's probably possible to get some of these systems installed with some tuning, I wasn't all that pleased with graphical performance either. The Debian installer for example was very sluggish.

And it seems to crash quite often:



Still, the version in Windows 2008 RTM is actually Hyper-V RC0, so I'll wait for a release version to come out before bothering with it anymore.

OpenSSH - Secure Shell Server and Client for Windows

SSHWindows is a minimal Cygwin build of OpenSSH for Microsoft Windows systems. It's got both a client and a server, in a small package (~ 2MB).

Get Console 2 + Terminus if you need TABS :-). Works just like KDE Konsole or Gnome-Terminal + OpenSSH in any other UNIX or Linux system.

Disable or Enable NX bit in Vista via commandline

Data Execution Prevention (DEP) and the NX bit (No eXecute) CPU flag on AMD processors and XD eXecute Disable on Intel processors can be of great help in buffer overflow mitigation. Of course, it can also hinder other applications.

You can disable it in Vista by starting an Administrative cmd (right click cmd - Run As Administrator) and typing:

bcdedit /set nx alwaysoff
bcdedit /set {current} nx alwaysoff

BCDEdit can be used to enable or disable DEP, PAE and more.

You can also set DEP by right clicking My Computer - Properties - System Properties - Advanced System Settings - Performance - Data Execution Prevention.

Some applications don't work well unless they are selected as DEP exceptions (like Battle.NET via PVPGN or Hitachi HiTrack's JVM).

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 - Standalone and Windows Update released

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 was released to the general public via Windows Update and as a Standalone pack.

Download Windows Vista SP1.