I keep getting this weird error after my Windows session has been logged in for a long time. It happens if I try to run any Office program (Excel, Outlook, Word, etc.) or if I try to run Windows Media Player.

Logging off and logging back in fixes the problem, but that’s hardly ideal.

I found a forum post regarding the issue, and it seems that Microsoft is indeed aware of the issue:

In the meantime: You don't need to reboot, just log off and log back on. It's a per-user issue. That will clear it up if it's the same issue.  I realize it can be a pain and I'm not trying to minimze the issue at all, but the workaround is simpler/quicker than a full reboot.

It hits different people in different time frames. It depends on how many apps you are running and how often you have loaded/unloaded them.

I appologize that it takes this long, but we'd rather not give you an update that had other problems/regressions, so we want to make sure it's fully tested, and that can take a few weeks in an environment as complex as this, as I'm sure you know. 

Reading further, it seems the fix is actually finally released, but won’t be forced upon users (via Windows Update) until July. If you’re having this problem, you can download KB952709 and fix it right now!

I’ve been having really infrequent “random” blue screens/freezes ever since I got my new computer back in July. I finally tracked the cause to either be high disk I/O or high network I/O. I replaced my network card with a PCI-E Intel gigabit card, but that didn’t solve the problem. I was in Visual Studio the other day, and went to get latest on a project, and boom, blue screen.

It sometimes isn’t just a big blue screen of death, though. Other times it just freezes my entire operating system for 15–20 seconds, then it “catches up” with itself.

Looking at my Windows event log, I see a lot of entries like this:

Source: nvstor32
Event ID: 129
Level: Warning
Message: Reset to device, \Device\RaidPort0, was issued.

These messages seem to indicate a problem with my nVidia-based SATA chipset. Searching around “the Google”, I find other users in similiar situations. They all suggest turning off Native Command Queing (NCQ) in the nVidia drive controller’s properties:

I’ve done that now and rebooted, and it seems to have fixed the problem. Funny enough, under XP (on this same machine) I have never had the random lockups or event log entries, so it appears to be a Vista-specific problem.

So, who’s to blame? Is it nVidia? I’m running the latest nForce drivers for my chipset (nVidia 650i SLI MCP), which at the time of this blog entry is 15.08. Is it Microsoft’s fault? Are they doing something funky in the newer drive code that could be causing this?

Who knows. All I know is that I have to disable a potentially performance-helping feature in order to not crash my machine. Maybe Scott Hanselman’s run into this on his very similiar quad core rig? Oh well. That’s technology for you. As long as it’s not corrupting my data, I guess.

Over the past few years, I’ve accumulated a collection of add-ons for FireFox that I genuinely use almost daily to do my job. I’ve seen other “top development add-on” lists, and I don’t really agree with all of the items. With that said, here goes my take:

1. Console²
   http://console2.mozdev.org/index.html
   
   Allows you to filter the JavaScript Console by type, language and context, compared to the way the console works by default where it just shows everything all in line. You don’t really notice it, because it should’ve been built into Firefox to begin with.
2. Firebug
   http://www.getfirebug.com/
   
   Adds an full JavaScript debugging solution to Firefox and much more. Also helps debug your AJAX applications, because it has a network activity view to show you the ins and outs of your page. I can’t live without this add-on, really. Being able to set a breakpoint in my JavaScript and fully explore the DOM/variables while debugging is immensely helpful.
3. HackBar
   https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3899
   
   Just recently found this. It adds a toolbar to Firefox that helps you test for security problems with your app, mainly with querystrings/URLs. Gives you tools to automatically increase/decrease values, test for SQL injection, etc.
4. HTML Validator (based on Tidy and OpenSP)
   http://users.skynet.be/mgueury/mozilla/
   
   Another “core” add-on I use, that I couldn’t live without. This one adds native HTML validation inside of Firefox. You can use different types of validation, and choose how strict it is with your code. Even checks for accessibility problems. Use this and find out just how syntacticly bad your HTML really is.
5. LiveHTTPHeaders
   http://livehttpheaders.mozdev.org/
   
   Like the name implies, shows the live HTTP headers of your page, underneath the “View Page Info” section of Firefox, or via a pop up window in “realtime”. Lets you also change the headers and re-send the request. Kinda like Fiddler, but built into Firefox.
6. Save As Image
   https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3408
   
   Again, like it implies, it saves a webpage as an image. Useful for generating “thumbnails” of site designs, bug snapshots, etc.
7. Server Spy
   http://jacquetc.free.fr/mozilla/exts/ServerSpy/
   
   Shows (on the bottom of the browser) what web server software the current domain is running. Useful for planning out what web capabilities you’re working with when initially meeting with a client.
8. ShowIP
   http://l4x.org/frontpage/showip
   
   Shows (on the bottom of the browser) what the current web server’s IP address is. You can then query that IP address with numerous lookup services to find history, etc. Useful for knowing what server you’re on, or figuring out a domain/subdomain’s structure.
9. URLParams
   http://urlparams.blogwart.com/share/index.php
   
   Adds a sidebar to Firefox that makes it very easy to edit GET (querystring)/POST (form) variables, as well as change your referrer, and submit them again.
10. View Rendered Source / View Source Chart
    http://jennifermadden.com/scripts/ViewRenderedSource.html
    
    Visually displays the source code of your page, using literally “blocks” of varying colors to represent each element in your code. Each block is collapsable as well. Gives you a quick way to see how deep an element is nested, where it’s nested, what tags are used, etc.
11. Web Developer
    http://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/
    
    One of the most important add-ons. Adds a toolbar to the top of Firefox that has almost everything a web developer could ever want/need for tweaking pages, tracking down problems, editing CSS on the fly, etc… This toolbar has it all. Really, go check it out now and install it. If you don’t install anything else on this page, you need to at least install this one.
12. Autofill Forms
    https://blueimp.net/mozilla/
    
    Like it says, it automatically fills forms! Useful for filling out forms with test data repeatedly.
13. Cache Status
    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1881
    
    Adds a section to the bottom of Firefox showing current memory and cache usage, and allows you to right click and reset/clear the caches (RAM/disk.) I use it just to have that cache clearing shortcut.
14. IE View Lite
    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1429
    
    Adds a right-click menu to your page that brings up the current URL in Internet Explorer. Useful for quickly jumping to “the other browser” to see what it looks like over there.

P.S. — An e-mail from Mike at HireAHelper.com prompted me to write this list. Check out his site if you need moving help, landscaping or general help!

I was using my favorite audio player/manager, MediaMonkey, this afternoon and ran into a really annoying bug. All of the songs in a particular album would play except for one. MediaMonkey would just skip the file, no error or anything.

At first I thought the file was “corrupt”, but it couldn’t be. It had only been ripped a few weeks ago, and plays fine in other players, such as Winamp, VLC and Foobar2000. I started to think logically about the problem, and noticed that particular track had parenthesis in it’s filename. I removed the parathesis, and replaced them with another character. Nope, still skipping.

So I thought more, and concluded that the filename was the longest filename on the album. I removed a few characters and tried again. Voila, now it works!

I do some research and find that MediaMonkey (at least the new beta for Vista) uses the Quicktime API to playback AAC files. I decided to try an experiment, and attempted to load the troublesome file (with it’s long filename) into Quicktime via Quicktime’s own “open file” menu. It’s leads me to a wonderfully unhelpful error message of “Error -37: a bad filename or volume name was encountered”. Oh, really?

Doing even further research, it seems that Quicktime can’t handle a file with a name longer than 60 characters. What the crap?

Searching around the web, I find a handful of people who have run into this same problem. Why hasn’t this been fixed yet? Is this why iTunes automatically stores most songs in a “cut off filename” state when “Keep my iTunes Folder Organized” is checked?

Ugh. Will someone at Apple get their head outta their butt, fire the entire Quicktime/iTunes for Windows development staff, and start over? I’m tired of it crashing, having exploits, making my computer slow to a crawl, and not playing back “HD” content on even screaming-fast PCs. All major reasons I switched to MediaMonkey. But alas, since MediaMonkey relies on Quicktime for it’s AAC playback, I’m going to have to truncate all my AAC filenames until a fix comes out.

If you use Vista, you’ve run into this problem. Vista seems to think that every folder contains music, because the “Artists”, “Album”, “#”, “Genre” and “Rating” columns are always visible. Look at my example above. This is after resetting all of the file type settings, etc… and Vista still thinks that a directory containing two MDB (Access databases) and a ZIP file warrant showing media columns. Ugh.

Please, Microsoft, fix this for SP1. The fact that it isn’t fixed already via a hotfix speaks volumes about how slow you react to even the smallest of bugs.

I’m sorry I rant so much, but these things are really upsetting me lately. Maybe you can relate to some of the topics?

Dell – A friend of mine, Nicole, brought me her Dell laptop to take a look at, since it will no longer boot. I figure it’s a bad hard drive.. the signs point to that, so I order a drive and stick it in, preparing to reinstall Windows. System can’t find the drive.. or wait, it can, oh wait.. it can’t. It randomly just doesn’t see the hard drive. I check online, and find that the world pretty much agrees that the Dell Inspiron 5150 is the crappiest model of laptop to ever roam this earth, plagued with engineering flaws that cause chips to crack, the CPU to overheat (2), and power plugs to short out. This led to Dell getting a class-action lawsuit brought against them, and them losing. As part of the settlement, they must pay for repairs up until Sept. 30th, 2007.

Now, Nicole’s already had the motherboard replaced by a tech once before, sent the laptop in for repair, had yet another motherboard replacement, a power adapter replacement, etc… and it’s still not working right. I had her speak to Dell again and get another motherboard. They say they can’t send one at first, citing some policy that once a motherboard’s been sent out, they can’t send out another (what?!) but the tech eventually agrees to send one out. They receive it the next day, and I examine it. The “new” board is actually refurbished from 2005 and looks terrible. I decide to swap it out anyway, and what do you know? It doesn’t work.

I’ve heard that some people have had luck e-mailing the “Customer Advocate” team at Dell (Customer_Advocate@Dell.com) and I did e-mail them six days ago, but haven’t heard a peep. I’m e-mailing them back tonight and asking for them to at least respond. I’m seriously doubting they’ll bother responding back.

Microsoft/Windows Vista – I had to completely re-install Vista two days ago, because SQL Management Studio stopped connecting to servers. Just straight up would not connect to any server anymore. Just gave me a generic fatal network error message. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling, cleaning out the registry, deleting files, etc… just couldn’t get it to work. And seeing as SQL Management Studio is pretty much a requirement to do my job, I had to reinstall everything to get it working again. Ugh.

Then, I decided to upgrade my laptop’s hard drive and memory, since I had skimped on it before, but now that I use it for work, I need it to be much faster. Bought a 100 gig 7200 RPM laptop hard drive and two gigabytes of RAM. Put the new hard drive in, and Vista says it’s now deactivated. What?!

Maybe you know that I’ve had problems with Vista’s lame activation in the past. How about the time I put in a soundcard? Or the time I reinstalled Vista (after having it installed for months beforehand?) Now I get it for installing a hard drive. Of course I have to call, read off a number to a guy in India, and then he reads me back another code, and I’m activated again. What a waste of my time.. and there was really no reason to get “deactivated” in the first place.

Microsoft/XBox 360 – My XBox 360 recently started getting the red rings of death. It wasn’t so bad at first, but then it got ridiculous, locking up like 20 minutes into a DVD, etc… so I decided to send it in. The first call, I spent about an hour waiting and talking to a tech, leading me through troubleshooting steps (which obviously aren’t going to fix the red rings problem.) Of course I get disconnected in the middle of this, so I give up for that night and try again a short while later. This time, the tech tells me that their computer systems are down, and I need to call back in 30 minutes. Ok.. so I do call back, and the automated voice prompts tell me that I can just do a service request online. Well why didn’t you say so in the first place?

So I file a request, they send me a little box to package up my XBox 360, and I send it back (to somewhere in Texas.) You can check the status of your repair via their http://service.xbox.com/ site.. at first it said my unit had not yet been received, then it changed to received.. and now it says “No Repair”, and that my warranty is invalid. Obviously I freaked a little, and snooped around online for “no pending repair”. Looks like this means they swapped it out for a refurbished console. Okay, that makes sense, but why should the service status be so misleading? Why can’t it say “swapped out” or “replaced” or “replacement shipped”? Instead, I have no way of even knowing if the accepted my repair, shipped it, etc.. talk about lame.

I guess I’ll wait a few more days and see if an XBox 360 comes to my door via UPS. If not, I’ll have to call and deal with a guy in India.. (gee doesn’t that sound familiar?)

Nissan – I love my car. No really, I do. The navigation system needs work, but other than that, gravy. Except I keep having a problem where my driver’s seat has it’s leather “unhooked” from the seat itself, near where the seat touches the center console. I attribute it to me being a bigger guy, but still, it shouldn’t be coming undone. I’ve had Nissan fix this twice now, and it still keeps popping off. So I e-mailed corporate and they e-mailed me back days later, asking for my mileage and where I last had it serviced. I send them back the information, and they say a “specialist” will be in touch with me by the following business day. It’s been two days, and nothing. I’m not that upset yet, but when you say following business day, you probably should mean it.

But even if they do contact me.. say, tomorrow.. what is this “specialist” going to do for me? Just tell me to bring it in to get fixed? It obviously keeps happening.. it seems like an engineering problem to me. I don’t sit in my car funny, aka slamming your butt onto the seat as you jump in. And I always try to be “centered” in my seat, so I just don’t get it.

Anyways, I’m sorry for such a long rant. But maybe you can relate to some of these. I don’t think I’m expecting too much from these companies, and it just goes to show how little they care for their customers in general.

The Windows desktop may stop updating correctly after a Windows Vista-based computer has been running for an extended period of time: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932406

I started having this problem a LOT lately. Not quite sure why. I’m installing this hotfix, maybe it’ll do the trick. I’m sharing the info. in case it helps others out..

This just pisses me off.

I recently had to reinstall Vista on my work machine. Upon finishing the reinstallation, I went to activate Vista online (with Dell’s OEM key.) Vista claims the key is invalid. So I have to call Microsoft’s automated activation line.

If you’ve never had to call this line, consider yourself lucky. Granted, it’s as simple as they could make it, but it’s just a pain. You have to read off six or so groups of numbers, each group containing six numbers themselves. In return, you get the same amount of numbers back to type in and verify the installation. If the automated process fails, you get transferred to Microsoft’s Indian tech. support center (apparently) to manually get the return codes.

Anyhow, after the call, and speaking to a live person, I was activated and ready to go. Until the next day, at least, when a dialog popped up and said my copy of Vista was no longer activated, and I had three days to re-activate. Yet another call to Microsoft’s automated activation line. Yet another group of numbers to type in. Valid again, yay.

I thought that would be the end of it, but today on my home machine, I got the dialog in the middle of programming. What? I purchased an OEM copy of Vista Ultimate for my home machine months ago, and have been running it without fail since then (activated it online originally.) Whatever. I try the online activation, but get a different dialog back, saying that my product key is in use on another computer. No, dummy, it’s not. Yet another call to Microsoft’s activation line. More numbers read off and returned, and finally I’m activated again.

I never had this problem under XP. Ugh. Methinks they clamped down on the product activation a bit too much. Meanwhile, I’m sure pirates and such are enjoying Vista for free regardless.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Vista, and recommend it for everyone. But this is just silly.

Windows-Now.com has an excellent write-up on how to reset the view settings under Vista. It is not exactly the same as it was in XP! In XP, the “Reset All Folders” button worked literally for every folder. Under Vista, it only resets the current “type” of folder you’re looking at. For example, you could be in a “picture” type folder, and will only be resetting all folders that Vista determines contains pictures.

Also, if you want to get rid of the auto-type-sensing functionality altogether, they have another article on how to do just that.

Found a flickr account with this photo from inside Microsoft’s Zune department, of an “Amnesty” bucket with some iPods in it. Reading the comments is hilarious.

I love how Apple supporters are so defensive. God forbid there should be competition in the marketplace! Or that the Zune team should poke fun at Apple. Because Apple never does that.

<sarcasm>Yes, we should all own an iPod and do the exact same thing. Clearly iTunes is the best software out there.</sarcasm>

Ugh. This is the sort of fanboy-ism that I hate. It’s the same thing that drives Mac vs. PC debates. Look, use whatever OS/platform you want. I don’t care. What’s ironic is that Apple totally advertises that you can run Windows on your Mac, yet makes fun of Windows/PCs constantly. Which is it, Apple?

If you follow my blog, you know I sold my iPod a while back and bought a Zune. I did this because I was fed up with iTunes being a complete performance joke. Argue with me all you want, but plenty of other people are running into similiar problems with iTunes on Windows. I really like my Zune, but it isn’t without its faults. I wish the Zune team was a little more “open” to communication about their software, as there are some fairly simple tweaks they could make that would help immensely (see my post for some examples.) I have even more bulletpoint items that I don’t like about the Zune, but overall, I’m more happy with it than I was with my iPod.

And one thing I noticed when I first listened to my Zune was how crisp/fuller songs sounded. These were the same format (AAC) being played on my iPod and my Zune.. and the Zune would almost always sound better. According to this YouTube video and this forum post, maybe I’m not crazy. It appears the Zune does have better sound quality in general than the iPod. Yay Zune.

I am looking forward to what the future holds for both Zune and iPod… competition can only be a good thing in this area. Do you really only want Apple-based digital audio players out there on the market? (And before someone mentions Creative and the other companies with DAPs… yeah, right, like they’re even in the same league as iPod/Zune.)

Now playing: Tom Petty - Yer So Bad