In the entire time I’ve had my XBox 360, I kept getting disconnected from the XBox Live service after 30 minutes or so, no matter what. I could be downloading or playing a multiplayer game, it didn’t matter. I thought at first that it was my wireless setup (I am using a Netgear wireless router as a “client” and going straight into the XBox 360) but it turns out I was wrong.

The XBox Live service has a “heartbeat” and if it can’t connect to specific ports after specific times, it assumes your connection is garbage and disconnects you. If you’ve got a UPNP (Universal Plug-n-Play) router, this doesn’t really affect you, since your XBox 360 tells your router to forward those ports and everyone’s happy. But I do not have UPNP compatible router; in fact I have the semi-expensive business-class Cisco PIX 501 firewall. Therefore these ports needed to be routed manually.

According to this Microsoft KB article, you need to open/forward the following ports:

TCP 80
UDP 88
UDP 3074
TCP 3074
UDP 53 TCP 53

My problem is now solved. I hope this can help someone else out there.

I’ve been hit by this a few times, and it’s darn confusing at first, but it makes sense (kinda.)

In ASP.Net, if you reference a control’s .Visible property, it not only checks if it’s been set to Visible = True, but also if it’s parent control is Visible = True. Only then will it return a “True” value back to you.

For example, let’s say you have a PlaceHolder, and inside the PlaceHolder you add a Label control:

   1: <asp:PlaceHolder ID="phParent" runat="server">

   2:     <asp:Label ID="lblChild" runat="server" />

   3: </asp:PlaceHolder>

And then in your code, you write:

   1: phParent.Visible = False

   2: lblChild.Visible = True

   3: Response.Write(lblChild.Visible)

Your response is going to be “False” because the Label’s parent control is not visible.

Just thought I’d share this as a warning to anyone else who might get tripped up on it.

If you’ve got a 30 gig Zune like me, you may have woke up this morning to find this:

It appears I’m not alone. Gizmodo is reporting that all 30 gig Zunes have apparently “failed” today. I’m guessing it’s a firmware/software bug (with 3.1). It’s pretty funny if you think about. Oh, nevermind, I guess it’s not.

Microsoft has this on their support page:

Customers with 30gb Zune devices may experience issues when booting their Zune hardware. We’re aware of the problem and are working to correct it. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks for your patience!

So there is hope, my friends. I’ll keep you posted.

Update: Microsoft has said that the problem will fix itself if you let the battery drain and reconnect/recharge it tomorrow, after 4am PST. Lame solution, but better than nothing I guess.

Tonight I set about trying to get my IIS7 server to serve files with the application/x-javascript content type as compressed. After a bunch of testing, back and forth, ultimately this is what worked for me in my applicationHost.config file:

<dynamicTypes>  
    <add mimeType="text/*" enabled="true" />

    <add mimeType="message/*" enabled="true" />

    <add mimeType="application/x-javascript; charset=utf-8" enabled="true" />

    <add mimeType="application/x-javascript" enabled="true" />

    <add mimeType="*/*" enabled="false" />

</dynamicTypes>

You have to be specific it seems, specifying the charset. And it needs to go before the regular x-javascript entry. Go figure. Hopefully this saves someone else some headaches.

Also, while you’re tinkering with applicationHost.config, you might as well change this:

<serverRuntime />

Into this:

<serverRuntime frequentHitThreshold="1" />

That specifies that IIS7 should compress/cache any static content the first time it’s requested. Otherwise, it defaults to “2”, which means it will only cache the compressed content if it’s requested at least 2 times within 10 minutes.

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!

Since getting my console back after having it repaired, due to the red ring of death problem, I haven't played it much. I decided today to sit down and play Assassin's Creed, and about five minutes into it, my screen starts to look posterized. Basically, it looks like the colors are reduced. Think cheesy 80's music video special effects. Here's some shots:

Of course, if I go to XBox.com and look up my repair information, it says I'm out of warranty. Fantastic. A console I hardly play is broken yet again. I'm going to try to call and deal with their customer service people (in India.. ugh.) But I doubt I will be able to get them to fix this for free.

I haven't found any other information online about this problem. I can't be the only one, though.

Stuff I've tried:

- Changing from 1080p to 1080i, 720p, etc. -- no change.

- Jiggling the entire cable, in case there's a short.

- Unplugging/re-plugging in the video cable.

- Performing the "Reset Video Settings" trick per Microsoft's KB article.

How *$()@% frustrating is this? Microsoft really doesn't get it sometimes.

Update: According to users who replied to my XBox.com forum post, the problem appears to be that the GPU is either overheating, or beginning to break away from the motherboard. This is similar to what causes the "Red Ring of Death" errors, but not the same. I think I'm going to just have to bite the bullet and pay for repairs, even though this is clearly a design flaw, and not a problem I caused.

Xobni (inbox backwards) is an add-on for Outlook that seems to fill in all the missing spaces that Microsoft forgot about:

Looks pretty spiffy. I really want to get into the beta, and you probably do too if you use Outlook. Click this link to check it out:

I was trying to open a project from SourceSafe under the new Visual Studio 2008, and my list of SourceSafe servers was blank. After a few moments of frustration, I found a CTP (beta) release of a pack of fixes for SourceSafe, and Microsoft suggests you install it before using Visual SourceSafe 2005 in Visual Studio 2008.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=FAF41EDD-924D-449F-AEFC-9C86DD499720&displaylang=en

The CTP seems to have fixed my problem, as I can now open VSS2005 projects from VS2008.

Overall I like it, but there’s still some slightly rough edges that will hopefully be addressed via minor updates.

Until I’m able to write further on the subject, I’ll leave you with the swank “Now Playing” screen:

7:52 pm Update: If you’re having album art troubles (where some of the album art doesn’t match properly), check out this workaround from Microsoft. I had a few that were off, but are now fixed.

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.