.Net Meanderings

Well I gave it my best shot but unfortunately there were too many bits missing for me to be able to run with it as the platform for running the Guerrilla WinFX class on Nov 7th. I've repaved on to Win2003 now and we'll run on that.

The three things that were the crunch for me were:

• No IIS
• No MSMQ
• No ability to project through a projector (or at least none that I could get to work)

So its a wait for beta 2 and re-evaluate then

As I've said, I'm running with Vista as my main OS. Since I installed I've been having problems activating Vista which was getting worrying that I only had 8 days left.

Unfortunately the activation dialog has only been appearing when I have been logged on  as a normal user. . It has requested elevated permissions to run so I authenticate with admin credentials but still get Access Denied so I realised that I maybe needed to log on as a proper admin session and run the activation..

I searched on the web but it all the hits mentioned license.exe or licence.exe (there was disagreement over the actual name) which wasn't on my machine. It turns out that that file was a beta one thing and isn't part of the CTP build I'm running.

Finally Jabez Gan posted an answer to my newsgroup question saying that the activation dialog executable is ...

(drum roll)

SLUI.EXE

In a previous post I was bemoaning the fact that httpcfg.exe does not ship with Vista or the WinFX SDK. This then sent me on a quest to find a copy.

After searching the web a bit I discovered it was on the Windows Server 2003 CD - ah don't have one of those to hand. Back to the drawing board

Ahh good news - you can build it from source as it comes with the Platform SDK. Serveral hours later and one Platform SDK installed, can I find the source? No. Back to the drawing board.

More searching revealed it was part of the XP SP2 Support Tools - now thats more like it. So I downloaded them and they refused to install on Vista (not XP they claimed). So I set the compatibility to XP for the executable and it still didn't work. Back to the drawing board.

Finally I rummaged through some old Yukon tech preview CDs I had and came across a Win2003 evaluation disk. On here was the support tools MSI which thankfully installed without checking it was installing on Windows 2003.

So now I am running as non-admin self-hosting services with HTTP endpoints quite happily.

More from the Vista battlefront.

OK so I'm looking to develop with least privilege (Dominick would be proud of me). So I am running on Vista under a user account (i.e. non-admin). As the WinFX curriculum lead for DevelopMentor I kind of need to be able to do things like write WCF (Indigo) code. So, knowing that non admins can't register namespaces with http.sys I realised that I had to run httpcfg.exe to register the namespace I wanted and make it available to the account I am running as as non-admin. Now Dominick has a really neat tool for generating the arcance syntax that httpcfg uses so I downloaded that and got my command line ready ...

'httpcfg' is not recognized as an internal or external
command, operable program or batch file.

hmm ...

So it turns out that httpcfg.exe - the tool you need to do self hosting for http endpoints in WCF while not running as admin is not part of Vista, WinFX or WinFX SDK. And you need to self host if you want to run any protocol other than HTTP until beta 2. And svcutil.exe can't  bind to a non-http endpoint before beta 2. So all together, if you want to run as non-admin under Vista, you really need httpcfg.exe at the moment.

Come one! Can we please get httpcfg.exe distributed with the WinFX SDK at least.

At the PDC we were shown sample after sample generating RSS, consuming RSS and the new RSS integration in Vista. Due to a rather unfortunate dose of studpity I managed to lose all my newsgator settings as I repaved on to my Vista config.

OK I thought - nows a prime opportunity to give this amazing RSS integration a whirl - two hours later I still could find no evidence of it on my install. So what about the amazing sidebar, surely that is there somewhere with some of the widgets - ummm, apparently not. 

So have I missed something and the sidebar and RSS integration is hiding somewhere in a corner of config or did it not make it into the Sept CTP Vista build?

More Vista news as i find it

So Microsoft call it dogfooding. I guess I had to take the plunge on a number of fronts. I've installed Vista on my laptop - yes, not in a VPC. Not only that I have now abandonned by .NET 1.1 dev environment (theres a major repave on the way if I get a 1.1 consulting gig ;-) ). I decided, as we are going to run (assuming I don;t have a completely hideous experience) the first run of Guerrilla WinFX on Vista, that I would repave my machine on to the same config as the course will run on.

So I installed Vista non my Dell Precision M60 (NVIDIA FX go700) and it went slowly but smoothly. Unfortunately it turns out there is not LDDM driver for my video card so I don;t have the Aero Glass shell. However, I'm not doing this for the wizzy graphics (although they would have been nice) rather to make sure all my samples and labs work in the config I've specified for the course machines. 

Here is my install experience:

Vista: very slow but OK until the supplemental drivers (I think thats where they infill hte missing Vista drivers with XP ones). It froze after installing my network card - running it again found nothing else to install although I do have a couple of component s it doesn;t know what to do with.

WinFX runtime - no problems - installed clean

VS 2005 beta 2 Team system (PDC disks). Would not install off the DVD, started asking me to insert the DVD - "its in there you fool!!!". So I copied it to my external HD and the rest of the install was no problem until it came to the compact framework bits and some driver was missing. I don't care about the CF at the moment so not an issue.

WinFX SDK and VS extensions no problem. I looked for the Workflow projects and found they weren;t there - theres a separate install on the PDC DVDs.

Office - no problems. However I'm having some issues getting authentication to work against one SMTP server. The server is owned by Ian Griffiths so I could blame him instead ;-).

So I then install World of Warcraft - yes I do spend some of my time running about as a Gnome who can summon demons - well sue me. The install was fine but I didn;t want to wait for the painful online patching process so I downloaded the full patch. I had to copy the patch file into the WoW install directory and run the patching software as admin and it all worked.

I should mention that not only have a switched onto a beta OS but I've started running as non-admin (am I mad?). Running as non-admin as so far proven OK - but I've alot of things still to try. The one isue I had so far (that wasn't obvious) was that the WoW online patching software requires admin access. So you can run WoW as non-admin, you just can't get any updates - which i guess OK as you;re patching something in the program files directory.

I started off not really liking Vista due to some of the pain - but I have to keep reminding myself that its beta software - which is kind of cool that I have to remond myself - its not staring me in the face the whole time. I'm surprised its so stable really - I've defragged my HD with it which I thought was very brave.

Anyway more on my Vista experience to come.