A blog about .NET, C#, and all of the other technology toys I use.
Displaying 1 to 25 of 458 archived entries.-
Published on 18 Jun 2006 by Scott Dorman
Since last years TechEd everyone has been hearing about .NET 3.0 and the cool features of LINQ, lambda expressions, and all of the other cool new language features. I don't know about you, but I was definitely looking forward to them. We were also hearing about WinFx and “Avalon“ and
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Published on 18 Jun 2006 by Scott Dorman
Windows PowerShell (formerly known as “Monad”) is a Microsoft's answer to the power and flexibility of the Unix command shells. It should finally complete the Windows management picture by providing a solid command line shell to administer Windows systems. PowerShell is part of Vista, bu
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Published on 18 Jun 2006 by Scott Dorman
BitLockerTM Drive Encryption BitLocker allows the entire OS volume to be encrypted as well as any other volumes. In order to do this, a 1.5 GB unencrypted system volume is required. BitLocker requires Trusted Platform Module (TPM) v1.2 or a USB device and USB-capable BIOS and is implemented as a fil
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Published on 18 Jun 2006 by Scott Dorman
Performance and Scalability Vista makes fewer and larger disk reads for page faults and system cache read-ahead and has removed the 64KB limit. Fewer, faster, and larger disk writes for the system page file and mapped file I/O reduce the page file fragmentation and allow a larger cluster size. The C
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Published on 18 Jun 2006 by Scott Dorman
Kernel Transaction Manager (KTM) Before Vista, applications had to do a lot of hard work to recover from errors during the modification of files and registry keys. Windows Vista implements a generalized transaction manager called the Kernel Transaction Manager (KTM) which provides “all or noth
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Published on 18 Jun 2006 by Scott Dorman
Up until Vista, an application or a driver could prevent the system from entering a sleep mode (standby or hibernate) and was often caused by a bug or an overly aggressive power management policy. The problem with this was that the user might not know the system hasn't entered the appropriate sleep
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Published on 18 Jun 2006 by Scott Dorman
Delayed AutoStart Services There are a lot of services that are set to autostart that aren't needed by the boot process. Unfortunately these services start at boot time and login time, which can severely impact login performance. Vista solves this by allowing services that can request a delayed auto
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Published on 17 Jun 2006 by Scott Dorman
Interactive Logon Architecture Vista changes the logon architecture and replaces GINAs with Credential Providers. Credential providers are easier to write than GINAs and plug in to the logonui.exe. The biggest advantage of Credential Providers (besides being easier to write) are that multiple concur
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Published on 17 Jun 2006 by Scott Dorman
Boot Configuration Database (BCD) Vista unifies the boot mechanism to be platform independent. The information stored in the boot.ini file is now replaced by the BCD, which abstracts the firmware and is unified across different OS installations. The BCD also uses Unicode strings to support internati
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Published on 17 Jun 2006 by Scott Dorman
SuperFetchTM Everyone is probably familiar with Prefetch which was introduced in Windows XP. Prefetch really only handled single processes at process startup. In Vista, SuperFetchTM prefetches across a set of applications and takes in to account the frequency of page usgae and the usage
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Published on 17 Jun 2006 by Scott Dorman
User-Mode Driver Framework (UMDF) Everyone has seen at least one Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) when it comes to buggy kernel-mode drivers causing a crash or allowing privilege escalation. UMDF is Vista's attempt to solve at least some of these problems and supports migration of some USB, Blueto
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Published on 17 Jun 2006 by Scott Dorman
I/O Completion Port Improvement I/O completion ports allow threads to wait efficiently for completion of multiple I/O requests. Before Vista, each completion caused a context switch to the issuing thread. Now, the I/O completion is deferred to when the thread pulls off the completion port, which av
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Published on 17 Jun 2006 by Scott Dorman
Resource Quotas Prior to Vista, quotas were system-wide. Vista supports per-user hard resource quotas that cover: CPU usage working set minimum page file usage nonpaged pool paged pool Process and thread creation have new extended attributes contained in the STARTUPINFOEX structure and new API
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Published on 17 Jun 2006 by Scott Dorman
Cycle Time Counter Prior to Vista, the kernel accounted for CPU time based on the interval clock timer which had a resolution of between 10-15ms. This timing interval was not always fair or accurate since threads where charged for interrupts that occurred while they were running and a thread
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Published on 17 Jun 2006 by Scott Dorman
Windows Vista is coming and will be here sooner than some might think. By now you have probably seen the graphical changes coming in Vista with the new Aero and Aero Glass user interfaces (and the associated hardware needed to support them) and heard all about the new user account controls in Vista
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Published on 28 Jun 2006 by Scott Dorman
For those of you who didn't get to go to Tech·Ed this year, Microsoft has made some of the webcasts and breakout sessions available free. It isn't everything that was presented at the conference, but it's what Microsoft considers the best (or most popular) topics. Unfortunately, for those of wh
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Published on 04 Jul 2006 by Scott Dorman
One of the new security features coming in Windows Vista and Longhorn is the new BitLocker™ Drive Encryption technology. BitLocker™ is designed to help prevent information loss, whether it is by theft or accidental. Information loss is costly to business on several levels, and the U
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Published on 13 Jul 2006 by Scott Dorman
For those of you who attended Tech·Ed 2006, the recorded sessions will be available on CommNet for on-demand viewing by July 21st. The DVD should be received by August 15 and shipped to the address you provided during registration. The DVD's will contain the PowerPoint presentations and recorde
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Published on 13 Jul 2006 by Scott Dorman
Check out my article on adding an “On this day” section to your blog.
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Published on 14 Jul 2006 by Scott Dorman
If you want to improve your skills unlike this poor soul get to Code Camp we will even supply the food for lunch. Mark your calendars for July 15. I can't attend this one since I already have plans for the weekend that take me out of town, but if you are in Florida and want to go you should check i
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Published on 15 Jul 2006 by Scott Dorman
I have been an IM user since around 1999, when Yahoo! Messenger first came out. Since then, I've added AIM and Windows Live Messenger. As instant messegng became an integrated part of my personal and professional life, the one thing that has always bothered me was that I needed 3 IM clients, one for
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Published on 18 Jul 2006 by Scott Dorman
Microsoft just announced that it has purchased Winternals Software and Sysinternals. Winternals is a leading provider of systems recover tools for Windows-based enterprises and Sysinternals is one of the leading community and enthusiast sites for people interested in information about the internals
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Published on 24 Aug 2006 by Scott Dorman
Courtesy of the latest issue of WXPNews, I came across a very cool new blogging tool, named Windows Live Writer. This is a desktop application that makes it very easy to write new blog posts by providing a WYSIWYG ("What You See Is What You Get") editor that reminds me of a slimmed down version of M
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Published on 24 Aug 2006 by Scott Dorman
IE7 RC1 is here! I've been running IE7 since the first public beta and have really liked it. If you haven't already installed it, I highly recommend it. The RC1 build includes improvements in performance, stability, security and comparability. There have also been changes to the fit and finish of th
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Published on 25 Aug 2006 by Scott Dorman
I recently needed the ability to download a file from an arbitrary URL using .NET that was compatible in both .NET 1.1 and .NET 2.0. What I found didn't meet all of my needs, so I decided to write my own. As a result, I also posted my first Code Project article that contains the full details pl
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