Vlad Hrybok's Tech Notes

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.

If it takes too long to redraw the screen when you access your remote virtual machine using VmWare Server Console or Microsoft Virtual Server admin page, consider terminaling into your virtual machines using Remote Desktop or Terminal Server client. UI works as fast as with any "real" remote PC. Entry-level Windows XP Home and Vista Home don't support Remote Desktop, but all Pro, Business, Media Center Edition and other flavors of Windows Vista, XP and 2003 work just fine. One of my co-workers told me Remote Desktop can be used for VmWare Workstation access, but I also tested VmWare Server and Microsoft Virtual Server R2, and those two also do it.

To enable Remote Desktop access a few things usually need to be done:

1. Enable RD access:

2. Ensure your user account is a member of the Administrators group.
3. The password on your user account is not blank.

The only issue I had with this setup was sometimes I couldn't ping the virtual machine due to networking issue. But when that happens all attempts to access that virtual machine over the LAN fail, including NetBIOS file shares, web access - anything.

Just-announced Windows Home Server is a good news for UltiDev LLC even though Windows Home Server currently is not much more than glorified Network Attached Storage and an automatic backup system. Windows Home Server is based on Windows 2003 Server and therefore does not have TV recording functionality for Media Center Edition one would expect from household server. But despite being driven by Windows 2003 Server, Windows Home Server does not seem to have web server and email server on it.

Our HttpVPN and Cassini Web Server products will make MCE attractive for every developer who can make a web-based application. To be truly useful household platform, all software for household servers should web-based and should accessible securely and reliably on Internet as well as and inside the home network. Good news for us is that we do it while Microsoft does not seem to.

I think people will feel much more comfortable when their data is stored on their own servers at home and being accessible everywhere using secure web connection, instead of having data stored on third party servers. Real "web 2.0" (God, I hate this marketing gimmick!) is not only user-generated content, but user-generated content stored on user's own servers and securely accessible from everywhere. This is what we are making happen with HttpVPN, which makes every programmer who can write ASP.NET, JSP, PHP, Perl, Python, ASP, Cold Fusion (or whatever else web development tool he/she is using) a potential winner in the huge but completely untapped market of home server software.

I feel good to be at the right place at the right time. You need to join in.

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.

I have Cingular 3125 windows smartphone. When I bought it I also got Kingston 1GB MicroSD flash card to stash my MP3 files on it. That didn't work well. The behavior was strange: all files and folders on the storage card were accessible immediately after phone was turned on, but some time later only folders in the storage card's root were shown by the phone's file explorer or Windows Media Player library - all other files and folders seemed missing until phone was powered down and then turned back on. I replaced the card with Sandisk, which worked fine - until something happened and all files on the card got corrupted or missing. I had to re-format the Sandisk card and I formatted it as FAT, a.k.a. FAT16. To my astonishment, it has started to behave just like my old Kingston card. I reformatted it again as FAT32 and it has started working fine! So here you go: format your storage card as FAT32 for using it in your Microsoft Windows Mobile Smartphone.

After installing VmWare Server on 64-bit Windows 2003 Server R2, I was unable to access VmWare Server's web admin page due to Service Unavailable error. VmWare support forum suggests to remove .NET Framework 2.0, which seems to help some people, but I fixed the problem by repairing .NET Framework 2.0 installation after VmWare server was installed. To do that go to Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs, select .NET Framework and hit Change/Remove button. In the dialog select repair and let it run. After that both Default Web site and VmWare web site were running fine.

It appals me beyond any limit every time I see a commodity turned into a product. Like with Mach-150 razors with 1200 blades in it, or printer ink cartridge costing more than a printer, it is a clear-cut scam every single time. Case in point: "high-end" digital A/V cables. One of my colleagues has recently bought 9ft HDMI cable for $100. It was all fancy, gold-plated, silver wrapped cable in a very pretty package. However, although HDMI is a cable used for Audio/Video purposes, it still does exactly the same stuff as your regular 1GB Cat 5 Ethernet cable or USB cable: it moves ones and zeros. Now, even in retail CAT 5 cable costs about $0.40 per foot. Look at all the USB cables around you connecting all sorts of equipment, from digital cameras and external hard drives to keyboards and printers - can you find any of them being gold-plated and costing upward of $40? All those cables are digital yet very inexpensive while moving your files and other data without any distortions.

So if one pays more than $0.40 per foot of ANY digital cable: Ethernet, DVI, HDMI - the person is a certifiable sucker and people who sold it to him/her are shameless snake oil peddlers. Go to eBay or www.AllElectronics.com and buy the cheapest cable you can find and you will be just fine.

You can bring up as many anecdotal evidence as you want about how generic cable sucked, and then monster cable made your TV picture crystal clear, but the fact remains: bits either go through or not regardless where they travel: on commodity Ethernet cable, or on the most exclusive and expensive HDMI cable. If you don't get TV picture all distorted like satellite TV signal during heavy rain, your cheap HDMI cable works perfectly fine and your TV picture CANNOT possibly be made any better by expensive "monster" cables.

I can't wait to see what will happen when all consumer electronic components will start receiving digital A/V feeds over the air using wireless connections. I think all the high-end cable manufacturers need to start diversifying now and get busy with creating gold-plated wireless antennas costing $200 and up.

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.