If you are working with Team System 2008, Microsoft has a few interesting tools you can download and use

1. Visual Studio Team System Web Access 2008 Power Tool
2. Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server Power Tools

Roland Weigelt has released a new verison of his famous Ghostdoc.  It's a minor release but it solves a few issues with some operators and rules.

Download it form the Ghostdoc website.

If you want a easy and fast way to ahve standard documentation of your code this is a very nice product.  I'm using it now on several projects.

Today we had a strange problem in our project.  One of my colleagues opens his solutions and he did a “Get Latest Version”.  Afterwards it seems that he lost his connection with the TFS.  All code was unbinded.

We checked if TFS was the default source control, which was true.  We want to manually bind his code again with TFS, which failed because there was no recognized server.

Me and another colleague had no problem with it, so we knew that the TFS server was working correctly.

Next we did following steps :

• Removing the workspace and create a new one
• Delete the local TFS cache

None of this worked.

As last step we removed the tfs server from the “Connect to team foundation server dialog box”, add again the server and now it works again.

We still don’t know what the problem was, but it was strange.

Update :

Txs to Gabriel Lozano-Moran I have more info on this problem.  It seems that this behavior is a bug in TFS 2008.  This happens when the TFS instance goes offline.  He also has a better solution too solve it.

More info can be found here : http://gabriel.lozano-moran.name/blog/PermaLink,guid,40ec1818-1e8a-45de-9111-7370544d3ba4.aspx.

I got a strange error with Excel 2007.  I copy an existing XLSX file that I can open without any problems.  I rename the file and opens the copy of it.  Now I got following error

If I click "Yes" the file ops and I got following message

The log just mentioneing nothing special as the same error message.  When I want to save this file, the popup for a new filename is coming up.  I can overwrite the original copy without any problem.  Afterwards the file also opens without any problem. For the rest everything in the file is working.  When I copy this file again, the same problem comes up.  It seems that copying the file will make the file corrupt.

By searching the net I found several solutions which doesn't apply this problem.  There are no Pivot tables or links to external files in.  Only listvalues on another sheet in the same workbook.

If I copy the file to another disk, there's no problem.  It seems more a problem on the network disk I use. I already found something with the date time stamp of the file. Don't know for the moment what's wrong with it.  Have to look for it.

This error comes up when you want to change your workspace and another one is already mapped to the directory you want to use.  even after removing the workspace.

It seems that the workspace is still in cache.

You can solve this by starting up the VS Command prompt and use the command

tf workspaces /remove:*

More info can be found here.

In this artcle we describe 3 registry hacks for Vista. The first one is to make accounts invisible on the logon screen. The second one describes how to make a better view on the map-window in explorer. And the third will give your PC a performance boost by keeping your most important system resource in RAM instead of the Virtual memory on hard disk.

As I’m had done a bit with the new protecting tool of Microsoft (SLPS), the word Code Tampering comes up a lot.  Not a lot of people know what it exactly means.

So here a little explication about Code Tampering and Tamper-resistant software.

Tamper-resistant software is software that is difficult to change, tamper with, and/or attack. Code obfuscation is one technique for achieving tamper-resistant software. Generally, the goal of code obfuscation is to make it difficult for attackers to determine what is happening in a block of code. If attackers use debuggers or emulators to trace instructions, code obfuscation can make the code difficult to understand or change. Or an assembly can be given a unique name when the publisher can include a public cryptographic key. The key goes into the Manifest. If the assembly has a public key, it is said to have a Strong Name or shared name. In addition, the publisher can digitally sign the assembly, using a public and private key. This prevents tampering with the Assembly. Digitally signing an Assembly places a cryptographic hash of the contents of each file in the Assembly. This is verified at run-time to ensure that it has not been corrupted or tampered with.

To start the new year, here a few new LINQ resources I have found :

• LINQ and datasets in the Compact Framework 3.5
• Understanding LINQ
• LINQ Introduction Part 1
• LINQ Introduction Part 2
• LINQ Introduction Part 3

Yesterday evening, I went to the cinema with my wife, brother in law and his girlfriend.  The movie we have seen was "The hitman".  But also outside was a stand of Coca Cola with their nice Christmas truck.  Here are some pictures (taken whit my mobile phone).

      

Strange Error : Hotfix

First.  I bought a new portable HD and I want to copie the data of the old HD to the new HD.  After a while I got the error "Out of memory.  There is nor enough memory to complete this action".  Although I have 4 GB (of which with 32 bit system only 3.4 GB is known and no other programs are running.  I still had more than 2 GB free of memory.  So this was strange.

After searching the net for it I came to this article : "Vista Problem ? Fill Out This Form" on "The Information Week blog" written by David Dejean. It seems that there's a hotfix for this problem, but you have to ask !!!!! Microsoft for the hotfix by using this link.  After filling in the form you are indicated that someone will contact you within 8 business hours.  So I'm patiently waiting now for the answer and the link to the hotfix.

Luckely I don't have to wait that long as there's a site called "The Hotfix share".  All the Microsoft hotfixes are located here.  SO if you know the number you can search for it and download the hotfix directly.  Well in my case the hotfix number is 942435.  This is the direct link to it where you can download the hotfix.  You must be registered.  After installing it, it seems that the problem is solved.

Update : after one and a hlaf hour I already got the response back from Microsoft.  I received an e-mail with a download link to the hotfix and a password to extract it.  So this was very quickly and it's the same file as on "The Hotfix Share" site.  Also warning was placed in the e-mail :

WARNING: This fix is not publicly available through the Microsoft website as it has not gone through full Microsoft regression testing.  If you would like confirmation that this fix is designed to address your specific problem, or if you would like to confirm whether there are any special compatibility or installation issues associated with this fix, you are encouraged to speak to a Support Professional in Product Support Services.

Upgrade XP Mediacenter to Vista Mediacenter

As second, at home I have an Acer iDea500 XP Mediacenter.  I have upgraded it to the Vista Mediacenter.  Luckely Acer has a full guide on their site.  Also they have two zip files you can download.  After unzipping these zipfiles to a certain location, you can start their wizard.  This wizard will first upgrade your drivers.  Be sure to read all the text, because you can't reboot during the installation, but have to wait till hte wizard mentions that you can reboot.  After this step, the wizard tells you that you can insert your Vista DVD.  Be sure to take the upgrade step.  After the upgrade to Vista, the wizard starts again and will upgrade all the software that Acer provides.  After this step my Mediacenter was smoothly upgraded to Vista Mediacenter.  This is a nice service of Acer.

The only problem I have is with my wireless netwerk.  As my wireless network is invissible it seems that my Vista Mediacenter can't find it anymore, even after filling in all the correct parameters for my network.  This while my Laptop with Vista has no problem to find it.  So for the moment I have set the broadcast of my SSID back to visible and now my Vista Mediacenter can find it.  Also normally after once the Vista have found the network it will be no problem anymore.  So I set the broadcast back to invissible.  Again no network can be found by the Mediacenter and my laptop still can find it.  Have to look what the problem here is.