Whenever I setup a new Windows PC, I always forget which virutal CD/DVD software I use. So this is a note to myself: it's MagicISO. It allows to mount an ISO image right after the software is installed, without requiring a reboot, and it works with both x64 and 32-bit version of Windows, including Vista and Win 7. Great tool!

Today I downloaded both iTunes 8.2 and iPhone OS 3.0. After installing everything, syncing the iPhone with my 64-bit Vista failed at the end of the process with this message "The iPhone cannot be synced. An unknown error occurred (13019)." I had to read through several pages of Apple forums to find the solution, which turned out to be unsyncing the music and then re-syncing it back again.

Setting up D-Link DPH-50U Skype VoIP adapter on my 32-bit Vista system took waaaay longer than I expected. Here's some hints that will make this task more manageable:

• Latest Skype version (4.0) does not support speed-dialing, which is required by the adapter to make outgoing calls to Skype users through the phone handset. You will need to download Skype version 3.8 to be able to make outbound calls to Skype accounts.
  
  
• Don't even bother to use printed quick installation guide and the driver from the provided CD - things didn't work and installation in reality didn't match the sequence listed in the doc.
  Get the latest driver from D-Link web site and use this manual to guide you through the software and hardware installation process.
  
  
• Finally, in order to make this whole thing work I had to manually adjust sound devices settings in Skype and point them to VoIPxxxxx devices.

Twice I tried to update iPhone 3G firmware using iTunes 7.7 running on 64-bit Windows Vista, and both times I was getting cryptic error with code (-1) somewhere in the middle of the process. Oddly, firmware would seemingly get upgraded before the crash, but I would still have to restore the iPhone from the backup - a process (was buggy on its own) that would not restore the applications I installed from Apple app store.

Thankfully, after I got iTunes 8, my latest upgrade to 2.1 version of iPhone software went without a problem. 2.1 was worthy upgrade: the most obvious change was improved battery life.

(Updated 7/4/2008). Unlike Windows XP or Windows Server 2003, changing a motherboard on a machine running Windows Vista (in my case Vista Ultimate x64 with Service Pack 1) is not mentioned in the Microsoft Knowledge Base article addressing the MoBo upgrade. I tried a couple of approaches described below, but the bottom line is that the same process worked for Windows Vista, with one important difference: Vista upgrade process takes many hours. Waiting for that first reboot - the point where you replace the board - took close to two hours! And then it took a few more hours to complete the upgrade process. In the end the machine booted up and most of applications seem to be working fine.

Applications that didn't fare well are:

• Daemon Tools
  Symptoms: When system is booting, a cryptic error message is displayed, complaining about Windows version or something. Worse, an attempt to uninstall Daemon Tools failed. However, deleting the folder with Daemon Tools made the problem go away.
  Solution: Uninstall Daemon Tools before upgrading the system, and reinstall it after upgrade is complete.
  
  
• Windows Mobile Device Center
  Symptoms: Connecting a smartphone caused Windows Mobile Device Center to crash.
  Solution: Repair Vista installation again. After I ran an upgrade installation of Vista again (overnight, because it takes untold hours to complete), this problem went away. Please note that unlike XP, Vista does not have a separate Repair Installation option. You must run Upgrade installation (for that start installation from Windows) in order to repair existing Vista installation.
  
  
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Dataset Editor
  Symptoms: Opening and XSD schema or a Dataset in Design mode in VS 2008 resulted in opening the file either as a text, or as XML.
  Solution: Please check this post.
  

Now a little more about how the first upgrade attempt went down.

Having to watch the upgrade screen for hours in order to intercept the first rebooting is no fun, and ironically can be mitigated by the bug on the "Vista x64 with SP1" DVD, which makes a rebooting process always stop indefinitely waiting for user input. This bug is a mixed blessing, because you can go about your normal life while waiting for the first reboot while the existentially-named "Gathering Files" step of the Vista upgrade sequence is running, but after you have replaced the main board you want the upgrade process do its reboots without your involvement, and that's where the bug turns from being a help to being a hassle. Anyway, you would be wise to allocate half-day for the motherboard upgrade on the Vista system, and by all means back up your system before the upgrade.

Failed Mobo upgrade approaches included uninstalling board-specific drivers before turning the PC off and replacing the motherboard. It didn't work at all - machine went into reboot loop. Attempts to boot in the Safe Mode stopped at BTHidMgr.sys, which I later found could be related to having Nero's InCD installed. I don't have InCD, but I do have Daemon Tools, which incidentally is the only application that stopped working after the upgrade. I never tried to remove Daemon Tools before trying the Vista upgrade path, so the next time I would recommend trying the quick "uninstall drivers, uninstall Daemon Tools/InCD, Reboot" approach first. Only if that does not work, get the huge bag of popcorn and do Vista upgrade.

Recently I started getting "IO Error" while backing up my computer that runs under Vista. To back up I used Vista's "Backup & Restore Center". Somewhere closer to the end of the back up process it would just throw this IO error seemingly with no good reason. About five last attempts to backup ended with this error. I used to get that error a long time ago, and then the error would occur only sometimes, and on different systems. That time I was able to eventually track the problem to faulty USB cable, but this time was different - error was occurring on just one machine, and once it started happening - it never went away.

I noticed, however, that on the machine where the error was occurring, system drive where Vista and most of everything else is installed, is running out of free space. I got "only" 1.7 GB left. I didn't think that should be a problem, since 1.7 GB is still quite a bit. Nonetheless, I decided to reshuffle partitions to increase the size of my primary partition. Once I've done that, I made one more attempt to backup my machine, and this time it's worked.

The bottom line: be sure that drive you back up (or maybe just your system drive) has enough free space.

I will update this post if the error resurfaces or if I find out that amount of free disk space has nothing to do with the error.

After downloading and installing just-released Visual Studio 2008 on Vista x64, I got compilation error while trying to build the "Hello, World" application. The error was "fatal error CS0014: Required file 'alink.dll with IAlink3' could not be found."
It seemed to be a fairly common error during the Beta cycle of the Visual Studio 2008, but apparently it was not fixed - at least not for the 64-bit version of Vista. Similar to 32-bit versions, the solution was to install two Windows Update items found on the Visual Studio 2008 DVD in the "<dvddrive>:\WCU\dotNetFramework\dotNetMSP\x64" folder (for 32-bit version look in the "<dvddrive>:\WCU\dotNetFramework\dotNetMSP\x86" folder):
1. NetFX2.0-KB110806-v6000-x64.msu. Run it, wait forever, reboot when it's done.
2. NetFX3.0-KB929300-v6000-x64.msu. Run it, wait forever, reboot when it's done.

After those two updates were installed, the problem went away.

Update: This issue may have been fixed as of April 2008: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1426.

I spent approximately a week researching iPhone and everything related to it. Not a single time did I see anything that would suggest that iPhone does not sync with 64 bit version of Windows - not even on the back of the iPhone box, where system requirements are spelled out. So all the anticipation of playing with iPhone came down crashing when I put it in the cradle and got "Please connect iPhone to a computer running a 32-bit version of Windows XP (SP2) or Windows Vista." message:


This was the first Apple product I ever bought, and what a wonderful F-U I got. Apple is indeed not an engineering company, but a designer shop making cool-looking accessories - a Luis Vuitton of IT. The only thing remaining for Apple is to figure out that technology thing.

Quick Internet search established without a doubt that iPhone won't sync with x64 Windows systems and tech support rep confirmed that there is absolutely nothing they can do other that suggesting to install 32 bit operating system.

Anyway, the iPhone is going back. To be fair, Apple customer support was fast and helpful, and the rep who processed my return request waived restocking fee on the unit (I bought it from Apple online) and they promised to send prepaid FedEx shipping label.

Until recently I've been running MCE 2005 on Windows XP with Linksys Media Center Extender (MCX) connected to the XP box over 802.11a wireless network. That was a nice and stable setup, but with the technology moving forward it was time for an upgrade. I have successfully upgraded XP to Vista, and since Vista did not support "old" Media Center Extenders like the one I have, I had to get XBOX 360 - the only game in town when it comes to extenders supporting Windows Vista.

Cursory Google search revealed that even most basic and least expensive XBOX 360 version, the Core System, can run the extender application just fine by loading the MCX software from the Vista box over the network. Far more serious issue for me was how loud XBOX 360 is. The thing is that Media Center Extender box is located in the bedroom, and any fan noise from XBOX 360 would be very annoying. Linksys Media Center Extender was not just quiet - it was completely silent. It has no fans or motors at all. The price for the silence was that its CPU was underpowered and therefore it was mostly nothing but a dumb Remote Desktop terminal displaying the UI rendered on the XP box, with the exception of rendering the streaming media on the MCX box itself. XBOX 360 has a very powerful multi-core processor and therefore is easily fit to render all the fancy MCX UI right there, which makes UI of MCX running on XBOX 360 much more responsive compared the Linksys. The price of the performance, besides $300, is the fan and its noise. How much noise exactly? The whole reason I write this post is because after searching the "Internets" I was unable to tell whether the level of noise is acceptable or not. Some people complained that it's horrible, and some said it's OK. Well, here's the verdict: yes, the noise is bad and I can't believe Microsoft didn't find a solution to the noise problem, BUT the remedy is you can turn XBOX 360 completely off when you are not watching it! Noise level when you use the XBOX is not uncomfortable at all. The drawback is that it takes XBOX about 50 seconds to boot, load MCX application from the server, and launch the MCX UI when you turn the XBOX on (which BTW can all be done at once by pressing Mediacenter Green Button on the mediacenter remote). I don't mind paying the 50 second price for the complete silence of the turned off XBOX, while being able to enjoy fast and responsive UI of the XBOX setup.

Another quick note on the subject - the networking of the new extender. Linksys extender had both wireless and wired networking capabilities. I ran it over 802.11a (Wireless-A) network that is fast enough for streaming recoded TV and at the same time is not susceptible to interference from all the 2.4GHz devices like cordless phones and 802.11g (Wireless-G) networks of your neighbors. XBOX 360, however, has only wired networking capabilities, and since our house is not wired for Ethernet, I had to use ZyXel power line Ethernet adapter. I really like ZyXel power line adapters - they are great alternative to wiring your house or using wireless networks. When I was setting up extender piece on the Vista machine, MCE tested the network bandwidth and found the throughput not sufficient for streaming TV. I though it's strange because ZyXel PLA-100 adapter is supposed to be 85 marketing Mbit (about 45 real Mbit) - quite faster than 22 Mbit of the Wireless-A network that was working just fine. Sure enough, TV and video streaming ran absolutely smoothly over ZyXel PLA-100. However, whenever we get an HDTV set connected to the extender, we'll need to upgrade ZyXel adapters to speedier 200 marketing Mbit (hopefully about 100 real Mbit) PLA-400.

[June 12 UPDATE: The same day when I wrote this post I noticed that network performance of the setup has degraded to the point of recorded TV being unwatchable: picture would freeze or won't start playing back at all with the black screen, with "Network Issues" pop-up ever-present on the screen. I thought the problem is ZyXel PL-100. I replaced it with Viewsonic 802.11g access point connected to XBOX 360, and just like with PL-100 it worked flawlessly the first time I turned on the XBOX, but went down exactly the same way as the the power line adapter based network. Funny thing is that if I hit Fast Forward button on the MCE remote, FF works and produces absolutely smooth video! So at normal rate it crawls to the stop, but with fast forwarding there are no "Network Issues"? I was able to playback the same recorded shows over the same network connections using notebook and WIndows Media Player with no problems. I think Microsoft has a whole lot of explaining to do about its XBOX 360 "networking issues".

My Windows Mobile 5 based Cingular 3125 cellphone stopped syncing with Vista desktop quite some time ago. Synchronization error stated "ActiveSync encountered a problem on the desktop", which is weird since Vista has replaced ActiveSync with Sync Center and Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC). Checking error log on the device yielded reference to "Support Code 0x85010014", but no information on how to contact support. 

Quick brute force "google & fix" approach didn't work, so it was until now that I found time to find the solution. As many articles on Internet point out, Support Code 0x85010014 problem is related to syncing with Microsoft Office Outlook. In my case it was Outlook 2007 running on Windows Vista Ultimate Edition.

Despite legions of people experiencing this problem, it was surprisingly hard to find the workaround. The fix (first mentioned here) turned out to be simple: repair Microsoft Office installation by going to Control Panel -> Programs And Feature, selecting Microsoft Office 2007 and then clicking Change button on the toolbar.

In Windows XP one could just double-click an .MSI (Windows Installer) file to start package installation: MSIEXEC.exe is associated with the .MSI extension and if user had administrator rights installation would go forward. Clicking .MSI file was functionally identical to running Setup.exe bootstrapper, provided Setup.exe didn't have additional functions other than starting the installation.

In Windows Vista things are different. When Vista's User Account Control (UAC) is turned on, launching Setup.exe is not quite the same as running MSIEXEC.EXE /i mypackage.msi. The difference is that when Setup.exe is started, Vista runs it in "elevated" mode, which gives the process more privileges. MSIEXEC.EXE does not seem to run in elevated mode and therefore behavior of the installation may be different.

The issue seems to be manifesting itself most often when an MSI setup package made using Visual Studio executes custom action steps implemented as an Installer class. I am not sure what exactly happens but I noticed that MSI error 2689, which is a common result of failed custom action, will go away if installation initiated using Setup.exe instead of just clicking on .MSI file.

Bottom line: On Vista always start installations by launching Setup.exe instead of double-clicking .MSI file.

Another possibility to consider: if you were not a victim of computer virus attack in the last five years (Windows XP lifetime), then you are may want to simply turn Vista UAC off.

I need to test my software on a variety of 64-bit Windows versions. I hoped I would be able to use Microsoft Virtual Server, which I've been successfully using for a while for 32-bit tests (including German, Russian and Korean flavors of Windows - quite a feat for a Ukrainian with English as a second language), but to no avail - at this point even latest MS Virtual Server is unable to host 64-bit guest operating systems. So despite enjoying being lazy, I was forced to check out free VmWare Server. I hoped to run it on my main Vista x64 dev box, but VmWare Server did not install correctly on Vista x64. That was quite a setback for my product delivery schedule, because I realized I needed another box with 64-bit Windows 2003 Server on it to be sure I could run VmWare Server. I dug through my closet with PC parts and after combining what I had with $200 worth of parts bought from NewEgg.com I had a modest 64-bit box with Pentium D 805 and 1GB of DDR memory. VmWare has installed without a problem, but when I attempted to install Windows XP x64 VmWare Server told me that my Pentium D CPU is no good because when it comes to Intel CPUs, 64 bit guest OSes can run only on EMT64 units with Virtualization Technology (VT) support! Fortunately, my dev desktop had Core 2 Duo E6300, which does have VT support, and both Pentium D and Core 2 Duo use the same LGA 775 package, so I was able to simply swap CPUs and ta-da! - after that VmWare finally started cooperating and is installing XP x64 guest OS as I'm typing this article.

Conclusion: If you want to run 64-bit guest OS in VmWare using Intel CPU you will need a box with a processor supporting Virtualization Technology, and run Windows 2003 x64 as a host OS.

After deciding that PDAs are too large for everyday use, I anxiously waited for my cellphone contract to expire so I could get Cingular 3125 Windows SmartPhone. On paper it had everything I wanted: GSM, latest Windows Smartphone OS (which means I can write .NET programs for it), extension flash card, and synchronization with Outlook Email and Calendar. Describing my experience with the phone would be a full-fledged entry on its own, but I am not ready to talk about that right now. Today I'll write about synchronizing my windows smartphone with Vista.

The big news is that ActiveSync is no more. Unlike older versions of Windows on Vista external devices are synchronized using built-in ActiveSync replacement called Sync Center. Back on XP ActiveSync has rarely given me any issue with couple of iPAQ PDAs I owned for the last few years. Therefore Vista's Sync Center got me confused from the start because its tray icon  does never seem to be reflecting the reality: is shows syncing in progress while it has finished long time ago, or it claims that no devices are connected, while the phone is connected. I was trying to troubleshoot connection issues, when I almost by accident stumbled across Vista Mobile Device Device, where connection and synchronization status were displayed correctly. From that point forward I started ignoring Sync Center and would simply click my phone icon in the Sync Center to go straight to the Mobile Device Center.

Here's how the two look like when my phone is connected:
Exhibit A: Phone connected but Sync Center does not show that


Exhibit B: At the same time Windows Mobile Center sees my phone connected and correctly reports time of the last successful sync.

The Verdict: Skip Sync Center and use Mobile Device Center.

I wanted to try new Vista's feature called ReadyBoost (how many marketing brainstorming sessions did it take to come up with the name?). It's essentially a copy of Vista's virtual memory page file on a flash drive, which is about 10 times faster than the hard drive when it comes to readying small non-sequential chunks of data.

My new Cingular 3125 Windows Smartphone rejected a 1GB MicroSD card made by Kingston, so I found nothing better to do with the flash as to make it a ReadyBoost drive. There are a couple of ways to turn a flash drive into a ReadyBoost storage:
   1. Bring up volume's properties dialog and go to the ReadyBoost property page;
   2. Select appropriate option from the auto-play dialog box after you inserted the drive into the usb port.
I read somewhere that card readers will not work as ReadyBoost drives, that only actual thumb drives will, but my experience is actually opposite: 256MB thumb drive from Dine-Elec was reported by Vista as too slow for ReadyBoost, but Kingston's MicroSD in the USB card reader passed the speed test and was made a ReadyBoost drive.

Well, I didn't notice any difference in performance after ReadyBoost was up. May be it's because my system has 1.5 Gig of memory and 7200 RPM drive, which means on those rare occasions when it needs to swap pages, it is fast. But notebooks will probably benefit much more: on laptops with limited memory and slow 5400 RPM hard drives fast flash card is much more likely to deliver some performance benefits.

When security experts get together with lawyers we end up with security features that shield software publishers from liabilities and don't do anything to improve security - just think of all the overly complicated, impossible-to-remember passwords forced upon us, with passwords end up written on the post-it note stuck to your monitor. So much for security. The same thing is Vista's User Account Control. UAC pops up so many security warning that after just one day of using Vista I stopped reading them altogether. After one more day of playing whack-a-security-warning, I decided that time is right to turn User Account Control off for good.

To turn UAC off start with launching Control Panel: Start -> Control Panel, and then type "turn user" in the search box and then click the "Turn User Account Control (UAC) on or off" link:

Then UAC screen will appear. Just clear the check box and hit OK button. Vista will probably require rebooting.

Once you have rebooted, your life will be back to normal, except the nagging red shield icon in the icon tray reminding you are truly extreme person living on the edge.

Norton Ghost 9 does not work on Vista. That's a diagnosis that could have stopped me from using Vista altogether. However, I found that Vista's Backup & Restore center does what it's supposed to, with some caveats.
I skimmed through the Internet trying to find answers to a few questions that bothered me:
1. Is it possible to restore system using Vista setup DVD and the OS image on the external drive?
2. Is backed up image compressed?
3. Is it possible to restore system to a partition or volume of the size that does not match the original OS partition size?

I was surprised to find that information I was able to find on the topic was just derivative from Microsoft marketing material. Here's what I found.

1. Yes. all you need to have to restore your system is Vista DVD and the backup image on any kind of media. Just boot from Vista DVD and then follow the lead of these screenshots:






2. Image is slightly compressed - not nearly as much as Ghost did. Original size was 35 GB, backup image size was 28 GB. I had to upgrade my external backup drive to ensure Vista backups can be handled from now on. Another interesting thing is that core of the backup image is a file with .vhd extension - the same used by MS Virtual Server. I wonder if it will be possible run saved OS VHD image in MS Virtual Server.

3. This is the worst part. Restore completely removed all the partition information on the target drive. My target drive had two partitions: first for the restored OS was not formatted and was larger than original OS partition from which the image was made. Second partition had a formatted volume with some information on it. Before restoration started it asked whether is it OK to delete all information "on drive C:", without specifying what drive C: means. I assumed it's an unformatted partition, because formatted one was present and had another letter. Boy, was I wrong. Apparently what Vista called "drive C:" was actually physical disk 0, thank you very much. Vista's Restore completely re-partitioned the drive to make destination partition of the same size as the original one. This is the most destructive Restore utility I have ever seen. After restoration was over, I had to use Disk Manager's rudimentary knock-off of the Partition Magic utility that allowed me to extend the destination partition to the desired size. Of course, I had to re-create second partition and restore the information from the backup copy. So please MAKE A BACKUP COPY OF YOUR DESTINATION DRIVE before using Vista Restore function!

In the brave new world, where nearly all CPUs are 64 bit, and Vista x64 is poised to have a large market share, how many ASP.NET 1.1 developers will find themselves in the situation where IIS7 running on x64 OS can't create an application pool for .NET Framework 1.1, therefore making it impossible to debug ASP.NET 1.1 applications under IIS7 using Visual Studio.NET 2003? All because when looking for available ASP.NET versions, IIS7 is probably looking into 64 bit .NET Framework folder - "C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64", which only has 2.0 and 3.0 versions in it. Not knowing this would be the case, I recently installed Vista x64 on my newly upgraded Dev box and almost fainted when I realized I can't use VS.NET 2003 to debug legacy ASP.NET 1.1 apps. It took me a while to realize that our own Cassini Web Server for ASP.NET 1.1 may work just fine, because it has its own routines for discovering location of .NET Framework 1.1 files, and it can be used for debugging of ASP.NET 1.1 application in VS.NET 2003. I tried it a few days ago, and sure enough our little Cassini saved the day - Visual Studio.NET 2003 ran an ASP.NET 1.1 app on our Cassini in Debug mode without a hitch!

Microsoft Virtual Server R2 SP Beta works really well on Vista x64 and Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 CPU, which has Virtualization support. Installer was not completely hands-off - I had to add CGI module to IIS7 manually - otherwise VSWebApp.exe was treated as downloadable file and not as CGI module. MS needs to update VS installer to automate this step.

Please note that although MS Virtual Server R2 Beta can run on Vista x64, it can't host 64-bit OSes. To host 64 bit OSes you would need free VmWare Server installed on x64 Windows 2003 Server, and either AMD 64 bit CPU or Intel EMT64 CPU with Virtualization Technology (VT) support (like Core 2 Duo E6300 or E6400 CPUs).

[July 16, 2007 UPDATE:] After downloading Nero 7 Ultra Edition Update I was able to upgrade my original dysfunctional Nero 7 Essentials. I tried to uninstall Nero 7 Essentials, but uninstallation failed. I had to use Windows Installer Cleanup Utility to get rid of Essentials first. The good thing was that after Essentials was gone, Ultra Edition upgrade found registration key of Essentials and used it to get installed. Naturally, after it was installed it still only had functionality of Essentials, not Ultra. Nero 7 Ultra came as a ridiculous 120+ MB download, with tons of junk, like ASK.com toolbar, so I had to spend time making sure it won't get installed. Funny, but help system is not included into the 120 MB download. To my surprise there was no "Burn DVD Files" option in Nero Start Smart, which used to be there since Nero 6. Fortunately, I found "Burn DVD Files" in the Nero Express UI itself. At this point I haven't burned any dual-layers, but single layer DVDs burned at 16x speed on my NEC 3550A drive just fine. Hopefully days of no decent software for DVD burning on Vista x64 are over.
Success: Nero 7 Essentials with Ultra Edition Update.
[END OF UPDATE]

[ORIGINAL POST:]
Tried to burn Dual-Layer ISO image on Vista x64 with a few different pieces of software. These are the results:

Success: (with caveats) ImgBurn - does the job, but created a few dual-layer coasters, and almost invariably fails the burned disk verification at the end, even if disk is perfectly playable.

Failed : Nero 7 Essentials - filed to start after installation.
Failed : ISO Recorder V3 64 Bit - failed after finishing the first layer.
Failed: Active ISO Image File Burner - failed after finishing the first layer.