Baltimore skyline

There’s an advert for Microsoft on currently that shows a kid taking some photos and with a few clicks stitching them together into a panorama. All thanks to the ease of use of Vista. So when I was in Baltimore this week I took some photographs to attempt to do the same thing. After all, if some kid can do it, I’m sure I should be able to. But when I fired up Windows Photo Gallery I was unable to find any options to make a panorama. So I fired up Windows Live Photo Gallery instead and that did have the option. In fact it was pretty damn simple to create a panorama, as you can see above.

But two things bother me. Why are Microsoft advertising Windows by showing the capabilities of an application that doesn’t ship with the operating system? And why are there two different photo gallery applications which seemingly do the same thing but are subtly different?

Windows Search now slows down Internet Explorer as well

One of the things that caused bad initial experiences of Windows Vista was Windows Search. As soon as you'd installed Vista, off it went indexing files on your hard disk. This could take some time and although it runs as a background task it still seems to impact the performance of your PC. Lots of people just turned off the service, although if they'd left it on for a while they'd have discovered that once the initial scan had been finished, it generally had a pretty low impact on system performance.

I left it on but I've never been overly happy with it. Fact is I don't do much searching on my PC and when I do I'm not too bothered if it takes a while. So having a constant tax on my performance (however small) seems a waste. Not only that, but it doesn't seem to index the files that are important to me. So when I do do a search I invariably have to switch to the 'search everything' mode which is really slow meaning the whole indexing palaver is completely wasted. I guess I should have set it up to index everything but never bothered, thinking it would cause the indexer to use up even more processor time.

But along comes IE8 and Microsoft have decided to use Windows Search technology to power the drop down list of suggested sites. Previously I'd used this a lot, type the first few letters of a site that I visit frequently and it would appear in the drop down list and I could select it rather than having to type the full URL. In theory that still works, but Windows Search always takes several seconds to decide what to show in the list, so it's as quick just to type in the full URL. I guess the list of suggested sites is better but the delay means it's completely useless. And typing another letter causes the search to start again from scratch...

But there is a solution to this. Disable the Windows Search service and the drop down works just like it used to do and I'm happy again. I guess this is a classic unintended consequence of powering IE8 with Windows Search, that even more people disable it.

Vista usage

I read this post on Mike Taulty's blog, which seemed to show widespread adoption of Vista

http://mtaulty.com/CommunityServer/blogs/mike_taultys_blog/archive/2007/12/06/10012.aspx

which led me to this post from Craig Murphy, again showing widespread adoption of Vista

http://www.craigmurphy.com/blog/?cat=27

which led me to this slightly more cynical view from Thomas Lee

http://tfl09.blogspot.com/2007/10/vista-adoption-numbers.html

which led to the original post from Alex Eckelberry

http://hackersblog.itproportal.com/?p=768

which again shows a less than rosy picture for Vista adoption. My guess is the first two are getting much higher numbers because they are MS-based development blogs, which are read by MS geeks, who are the people most likely to be using Vista. From my small sample space (from the Random Pub Finder) in December, of the 89% visitors who are using Windows, 7.6% are using Vista, meaning it's just overtaken Windows 2000. Personally I think this is a much more realistic figure. Most non-techy people I know don't know nor care what Vista is and continue to use XP quite happily. And I think they may be quite sensible, what are the compelling reasons to upgrade? I'm yet to find them. Under the hood there may be lots of changes, but on the surface there's not a lot to see.

Solving the Vista "Failed to play test tone" sound problem

It's almost a year since I installed Vista on my work machine. I sorted out most of the glitches a long time ago but I've not had any sound the whole time, which I kind of learned to live with. I'd pretty much given up trying to fix it, thinking I'd wait for SP1, which I was sure would sort out the problem.

So I saw SP1 RC1 was available and installed it and excitedly tried my sound. Still nothing... OK I thought, now is the time to figure out what the problem is. I tried out some of the SysInternals tools to see if they could provide some kind of useful info, basically to see if the audio subsystem was trying to access a registry key or file that didn't exist or it didn't have access to (I'd already decided it probably wasn't a driver problem since a completely different sound card had exactly the same problem).

I got nowhere with that so I moved onto my next idea, trying to figure out what was going on in the audio log files. If you change the registry key HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\WMI\AutoLogger\Audio\Start value from 0 to 1, log files get generated in %WINDIR%\system32\LogFiles\Audio (called something like AudioSrv.Evm.001). But I have no idea how to view these log files, they are in some kind of proprietary binary format. So I'd thought I'd harass Larry Osterman. I don't know the guy, but he's the only member of the Windows Audio team who I'm aware of that blogs. But before I had a chance to make a fool of myself I saw a link on one of his comments by someone who'd solved their own Vista sound problem for themselves.

There were two nuggets in there. First up was the suggestion to debug the issue using the WinAudio sample from the Vista SDK. That way, you find out exactly what error message the audio APIs are returning. The second nugget was the solution to his particular problem, which was to delete the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Ole\DefaultAccessPermission. I didn't think it would fix my machine, since I'd followed quite a few other suggestions without success, but I tried it anyway. It didn't work. Or so I thought, until I rebooted and my speakers miraculously started making noise.

So I'm a happy camper, but there's a few things I don't understand. Why is the logging file format not documented? Perhaps it is, but it should be more widely publicised if it is. For that matter, why's it not just a text file? And why doesn't the audio stack just write to the event log like most other Windows components when something goes wrong? If I'd seen something in there saying access was denied to some COM component I'd have a clue what the problem was. 

And see this below? That's what I'm listening to. Yes, music!

Currently listening to Something , Blue Jay Way (Tran by The Beatles from the album Love

Addendum for non-technical readers

• From the Windows Start menu, choose 'Run...'.
• Type regedit in the 'Open' text box.
• Navigate to 'Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Ole
• Delete the registry key 'DefaultAccessPermission'. If it isn't there, chances are this isn't the problem causing your lack of sound.
• Beware that fiddling with your registry can cause system problems if you modify important settings.

SonicWall VPN client for Vista released

My post about the SonicWall Vista client beta is one of the most popular things on here, lord knows why. Anyway, the final version has been released and it is working perfectly for me. I've not had any problems with Vista complaining about two computers with the same IP address being connected to the network. I realise I'm really tempting fate writing that...

More reliable wireless

When I set up our wireless router, I initially set it up as an unsecured network and restricted access to certain MAC addresses. This worked fine but when we had visitors who wanted to use our wireless connection, it was a bit of a pain to allow access to their laptop. So I changed the router's configuration so it used WPA security and it all seemed to be working fine.

But then a couple of things happened which I didn't realise were related to this seemingly simple change I'd made. First, the wireless connection would stop working every few hours. This affected any computer connected to the network and would typically last a few minutes and then everything would be fine again. This was particularly annoying when I was connected to somebody's VPN and would have to re-establish a connection. The second problem was my Vista PC started to lock up completely. This was less frequent, about once a day.

I put the first problem down to the number of wireless networks in close proximity to our house. I guessed that they were just interfering with each other and causing the connection to drop every so often. Either that or our router was just getting on a bit. Then the other day I thought I'd give Vista's wireless diagnostics a spin and it told me the wireless security key was incorrect. What the...? This kicked my befuddled brain into action and realised these connection problems had started at the same time as the switch to WPA. So I switched back to an insecure network and lo and behold, the wireless connection is working a treat. Not only that but I haven't (fingers crossed) had a Vista freeze since the switch back.

So, if you're having wireless troubles, consider switching to an insecure network. I guess it may well be specific to my router but it may just work. Yeh, hackers can probably read my email, but frankly I hope they have more interesting things to do with their time.

Blogging is like the lottery

The lottery people Camelot used to say "You've got to be in it to win it". Of course the chances of a big win are tiny but if you never buy a ticket you'll never win anything at all. So it is with blogging, you're pretty unlikely to ever get a big crowd of people to your blog, but occasionally you might get that £10 win. Every post is another ticket in the blogging lottery and every so often you'll get a few hits from one.

Which is what happened with my little post about SonicWall on Vista, if only because nobody else has bothered to post about it. And if anybody wants to know, the latest beta still has the same problems for me, Vista complains that two computers with the same IP address are connected to the network. But I'm coming to expect these kind of issues with Vista. Bring on SP1...

Annoying Vista UI

In Vista, Media Player and Photo Gallery have very similar user interfaces. The toolbar thingy at the bottom of their windows looks almost exactly the same.

	This is Media Player
	This is Photo Gallery

But the big button in the middle works differently. If I'm watching a video in Media Player, the biggest button on the toolbar pauses the video. In Photo Gallery, it switches to slide-show mode, an operation that takes several seconds and I never want to do. If I'm not thinking about what application I'm in, I'll hit that big button to pause the video and see my computer grind to a halt whilst it does something I don't want it to do. Why have very similar UIs if the buttons do different things??? Consistent UIs are only any use if they behave consistently.

Why I'm not using UAC

Lots of people keep saying I should switch User Access Control on. So I thought I'd give it a try since I wanted to see how painful it was or if it was actually not so painful after all. And of course I'd like my software to run with UAC enabled without causing any issues.

But here's the problem. Vista is already screwed up on my machine, what with no sound, a SonicWall VPN client that screws up TCP/IP and complete machine freezes every couple of days. And UAC makes it even worse! Internet Explorer has some serious problems when UAC is enabled. It won't print, links that open new windows don't work and the dropdown menu on the back button doesn't work. Explorer always opens folders in a new window, even though it is set up to reuse the same window. Lots of applications won't work at all unless I run them as administrator (Visual Studio being the obvious example) which rather defeats the point of UAC. And these are the problems I've found after using UAC for about two days so there are bound to be more.

And of course I've not even mentioned the annoying dialogs that appear fairly regularly to disrupt my workflow.

So in principle using UAC may be a good thing and dogfooding it constantly with my own code would be a nice thing to do, but in practice it is too painful and I'm putting it back in its box until SP1 comes out. 

SonicWall VPN Client for Vista beta

One of the problems I've had with Vista is the fact the SonicWall VPN Client doesn't work with it and SonicWall haven't released a new version for Vista. Well they've finally got their arse in gear and released a beta version of the VPN client.

Send an email with “subscribe” as the subject of the email to gvc40-join@listserv.sonicwall.com if you’re interested in participating in the beta program.

It kind of works for me, although after a while Vista complains that two PCs are connected to the network with the same IP address. Then everything falls apart. Restarting the VPN client and my wireless connection fixes the problem.

Addendum (28th October) - The SonicWall VPN client for Vista is now out of beta and it is all working fine for me now.

More Vista pain

I finally cracked. I'd had enough of the complete lack of support from Dell about my lack of sound on Vista. The guy said he'd get back to me, of course he never did. Emails to Dell got no response. Yeh I could kick off another support call but it would just involve several hours of them uninstalling and installing drivers and failing to get anywhere, which I've been doing pretty well myself for several months. To top it all off, Dell sent me an email asking me to fill in a questionaire about my customer service experience. When I clicked on the link, all I got was a message telling me my access had expired. They even sent me a reminder to fill in the survey a few days later, again access expired. Hey Dell, there may be a reason you're not getting much feedback on your customer service...

So I thought, stuff this I'll buy a new soundcard, £20 and all my pain will go away. It all started out really well, Vista recognised it, went away to find the drivers and everything installed correctly, or so it said. Then I tried to actually get some sound out of the PC, nothing, nada, zilch. I pressed the dreaded 'Test' button, 'Failed to play test tone'. Aaaagh! Cheers Vista, why couldn't you play the test tone? I almost long for the usual massive hex number, at least something to work from. The event log is empty.

So now I have no idea what the problem is caused by. Presumably it isn't a driver or hardware problem, so is my Vista install broken? I really don't want to reinstall the whole thing.

On another note, Vista has developed a nice habit of locking up completely, the mouse stops moving, the keyboard doesn't respond, CTRL-ALT-DEL does nothing, the only thing I can do is hit the reset button.

Five years, thousands of developers and what do we have? A prettier version of XP that for me is less stable and other than IIS 7 doesn't really offer much new.

Not liking Vista so much

Doing a search on Google for 'liking Vista' brings up this site as the third in the list. I'm not triyng to show off by saying this, but it perhaps shows that there's not that many people who are liking using Vista. And I'm slowly moving from the liking Vista camp to the not liking Vista so much camp. To be fair most of the problems I'm having probably aren't Microsoft's fault but they are still annoying.

My major problem is the lack of sound coming out of my Dell Dimension machine. This was forgivable initially since I installed Vista before it hit the shops but even though Dell have released new drivers I still can't get anything to come out of my speakers. Vista thinks everything is OK, the only indication that something is wrong is the 'Failed to play test tone' error message when I do a test of my speakers. I've contacted Dell and talked to a tech support guy who said he'd get back to me and I've never heard anything from him since. It seems like other people are having the same problem so I'm hoping this should be resolved soon. Good job I've got an XP machine with sound for Skype.

Next up is my USB wireless connection. It works fine but every time Vista starts up it tells me the driver has been blocked (5 times for good measure) and doesn't tell me how to get rid of the error message.

Finally, SonicWall haven't released a version of their VPN client that works with Vista. Apparently they should have one out by Q2. Again my XP machine has saved me, since I need to use SonicWall virtually every day.

Visual Studio 2003 on Vista

OK, I should have known better. I'd read about the lack of support for Visual Studio 2003 on Vista, but then I read another article claiming all I needed to do was turn off UAC. I was planning on doing that anyway, since UAC seems like the biggest PITA of all time (and I seem to avoid any kind of virus/malware without it). So I went ahead and installed Vista. And Visual Studio 2003 falls over all the fecking time... I can't edit any of the code-behind files in one of my websites.

Fingers crossed Microsoft will release a version of VS2003 that actually works on Vista. If it means turning off UAC, I'm cool with that. Their excuse is that they want to use their scant(!) resources on the next version of Visual Studio. Even if I believe they haven't got the resources to get VS2003 to run on Vista, can't they slow down a bit? .NET 1.1 does most of the things I want to do pretty well, .NET 2.0 adds a few nice things, but nothing mind blowing, I don't even care about .NET 3.0 yet, so I care even less about the next version. The thing is I have a job to do and that job is to get working stuff to clients, they don't care what version of .NET I'm using and certainly don't want to be paying for me to upgrade to the latest and greatest version every other day... 

Currently listening to 'Nothing' by 'No-one' from the album 'My soundcard doesn't work on Vista'

Liking Vista, mostly

I've got no sound, Visual Studio 2003 is a bit unsure of its new environment, it took me an hour to fix up my source control installation due to Vista clobbering file permissions, UAC is crap (I have turned it off and turned off the warning telling me to turn it back on) and SonicWall VPN Client doesn't work but... Vista is actually pretty good. Search works quickly for the first time ever in Windows (and searches emails as well!), the new UI is actually quite beautiful (something that could never be said about the XP Fisher-Price look), IIS 7 is a damn fine upgrade (although it took a while to get my ASP.NET 1.1 apps up and running) and performance seems to be pretty much the same as XP, which is quite remarkable given all the visual additions and extra services that have been added.

No doubt the Mac did it better two years ago but the Mac doesn't have any apps I need. My Mac OSX box sits unloved in the corner with nothing to do...

Vista headaches

I'm a bit of a fool when it comes to new software, if I can get a copy of something cool for free I'll probably install it. So, since the company I work for now has an MSDN license I thought I'd give Vista a spin.

So I pretty much ignored the warnings the installer gave me about the problems I might have and went ahead and installed it. And the warnings were pretty much spot on. I now have no sound and I can't play videos. I have no idea why but I guess it's a driver problem. Hopefully Dell will fix the problem PDQ because sound is kind of important for me since I use Skype all the time...

Other than that Vista seems to work fine. I'm not sure at this point whether the upgrade was worth it, nothing has jumped out at me as an aboslutely must have feature.