I was installing Visual Studio 2008 sp1 on my fresh installation of Windows 7 RC, when my installation failed with an "Operation Aborted" message, and there's a strong chance that almost everyone trying to install VS 2008 sp1 on a X86 machine would encounter it. I found on stackoverflow that deleting the following key - HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SQMClient\Windows\DisabledSessions or other equivalent methods like renaming the key works like a cinch.

It seems to be the same "SQM bug" discovered by Rafael Rivera and reported by multiple bloggers including Paul Thurrott. And I'd agree with him that claiming "Machine Throttling" is causing the failure is a bit of a stretch, as I noticed that I didn't had "MachineThrottling" under HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SQMClient\Windows\DisabledSessions. So although WinSqmStartSession() in ntdll.dll did crash on my system it didn't happen because MachineThrottling was enabled in the registry.

If you need to run the command prompt with elevated privileges on a regular basis if not as often as the standard command prompt. You probably would have have probably created a shortcut in the start menu programs folder or your desktop for easy access.

But how do can you visually differentiate between a normal command prompt window from an elevated command prompt window. Of course, the title of elevated CMD.exe is prefixed by "Administrator: " followed by <Your Shortcut Name> e.g. I always name my shortcut "ELEVATED CMD" so the title says "Administrator: ELEVATED CMD". But there's another way, you can set the colors of the command prompt windows to be visually different. I bet its easier for you to see which command prompt window below is running with elevated privileges.

Normal vs. Elevated Command Prompt

So all you gotta do is change the colors of the command prompt once inside Admin. Elevated mode and again for the normal command window (that you usually invoke via typing "CMD" in Start Menu's Run Command). You might receive a prompt to save the settings for the current Window or the shortcut that launched this window, choose the latter option. I prefer to work with white background so I have set it to Green text for Normal and Maroon for ELEVATED CMD whereas the color for popup text in both cases is gray.

I wouldn't have to make this post if I could post a comment on Jesse Johnston's entry which would most probably solves the problem for anybody. It's just that there's a small explanation missing. Since you will be running Visual Studio as the administrator not pseudo admin that you may probably be, and since that's a different account than yours, remember to install AnkhSVN for "All Users" instead of "Just Me".

I thought this would be so easy to find, a simple search for "Backup IE 7 Search Providers"  on Google would fetch me the answer. But no sir, I found no such thing! I even did a search on Microsoft and even the Knowledge Base but didn't find what I was looking for. The one page that did help me find the solution has an altogether different title.

Well the good news is that; it is really easy!

Simply backup the following registry key and you're done.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchScopes

Robert McLaws has put it so well. I wouldn't want to say anything myself. But I'll add this there are many zealots who are not fortunate enough to be in one such programs but very much qualified to handle the responsibilities that come with participating in a software test program. Had I not been in the program that let me install the QFE and test it out, I would have definitely wanted to have it. But that's not because I am a fanboy (which I am) but because I know I have the skills, qualification & skills to handle it. This brings me to say that perhaps Microsoft should prioritize the Vista SP1 beta opportunity to people who made valuable contribution to the Vista beta program (read: qualified for the complimentary copy).

Anybody who has seen O Brother Art Thou would remember what a fun filled adventure it was. The blind man's prophecy in the beginning of the movie about the hidden treasure the 3 convicts were seeking and the treasure they would ultimately find, is probably what would best describe the pursuit of millions of people seeking the ever so elusive Vista SP1 and the 2 updates - KB938194 & KB938979 could yield.

I absolutely adore Jim Allchin, so much; that nobody at Microsoft can ever take his place in my mind. But I think there's been too much of negative speak about Steve Sinofsky on the blogosphere. But Office 2007 is a great product isn't it? And so is the case with SP1, Especially the enormous amount of skepticism about whether SP1 would indeed provide performance improvements. Well turns out, most people may well obtain the performance boost by August 14th, when Vista Performance & Reliability Pack is released to the public. For the lucky ones who are enrolled in relevant programs on Connect you can download it today. And it seems the results are encouraging...

Update: The original forum posting on AeroXP has gone poof! But you can still read about the 2 updates - KB938194 & KB938979

If you're installing SQL Server on your Vista Business/Enterprise or Ultimate machine chances are you do intend to use it for development purposes and obviously have already installed IIS. But chances are you might receive a warning message on the System Configuration Check page of the SQL Server 2005 Setup.

"Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) is either not installed or is disabled. IIS is required by some SQL Server features. Without IIS, some SQL Server features will not be available for installation. To install all SQL Server features, install IIS from Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel or enable the IIS service through the Control Panel if it is already installed, and then run SQL Server Setup again. For a list of features that depend on IIS, see Features Supported by Editions of SQL Server in Books Online."

Do not cancel setup to install the missing features in the hopes of re-installing SQL Server again. Cause I did and to find out that SQL Server (more particularly the database services) wouldn't install. You can simply install the required components without canceling the setup and resume it. I've tested that it works.

Let's first see what are the required IIS components that SQL Server depends upon. Well there's a KB article that has the official word on the components you'll need. If you prefer a more graphical illustration refer to the images below:

That's it, resume the setup. You'll notice that the setup again detects your IIS configuration and will continue and will finish without any problems. But what to do if you canceled the setup and ended up on this page via a search engine. Well the solution is fairly simple.

What happens in a re-installation attempt is that the setup determines that you already have SQL Native Client installed on your machine and doesn't extract the MSI package which unfortunately is a very-very important package. So to successfully re-install SQL Server 2005 you must uninstall all of the 4 entries you find in your Add/Remove Program Control Panel Applet bounded in the yellow rectangle in the image below.

Note that you may not have all four items on your list, the item just above the rectangle is of course not on your list as it didn't install successfully. Although you don't need to but I recommend reboot and when run the setup again you will be able to install SQL Server to seamlessly work with IIS.

I thought this was a regular Friday morning… You reach the office, you go through the emails and check up on the latest tech news before starting to work, like I've been doing for years. Not Today! Just when I saw the headline on Neowin - Microsoft Says Thankyou! to Select Vista Testers. I said, "Wow! This is exciting."
Steven Parker (of Neowin) reports "To everyone that took part in the Windows Vista beta test, only those that submitted at least 1 bug report will be offered a complimentary copy of Windows Vista Business or Ultimate."

So immediately I go to Connect and see if the 2 bugs that I filed; which had been fixed in RC2(build 5744) entitled me for a "Thank You" from Microsoft worth $400. IT  DOES!!!

Thank You,  Microsoft.

"Remember Remember the 5th of November… ". Ahh yes, the day is finally upon us…

Paul Thurrott is reporting on WinInfo that Windows Vista might RTM on Monday, Nov. 6th, 2 days ahead than it's commonly believed to be…
"My sources at the software giant confirmed this weekend that Microsoft is set to finalize Windows Vista as early as Monday and release the product to manufacturing. The final build number is expected to be 6000.16386.061101-2205, I'm told."

I had decided not to post news items that can be accessed from the more popular Windows enthusiast sites, I realized I can use the feeds section of the home page of my "blog only" site which adds more value to it, but I guess I can make a few exceptions like this one . And in case you're wondering, yes the title is inspired from the 2nd episode of Half-Life 2 (I don't mean Half-Life 2: Episode Two).

For all practical purposes Virtual Folders are, what are now known in Windows Vista as Search Folders. After all if you search for "Virtual Folders" in Help & Support the top result is "Saved search (definition)". Virtual folders have had a rough ride during the Vista development cycle. With the demise of WinFS it was obvious that they would take the biggest casualty. However virtual folders still existed with much dignity in Windows Vista Beta1 (build 5112) and a few more successive builds. Fast forward to RC1 build 5728... Search Folders have by now changed their extension from .vfolder to .search-ms, keeping the relatively simple architecture, you can read a nice introduction to virtual folders on Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Windows here .

Let me now introduce you to what I call Ghost Folders; for the lack of a proper term. They are different from Virtual folders because of the fact that unlike a search folder which exists in the file system in some form (as it is nothing but an XML file) these Ghost Folders don't seem to have any existence in the file system. I store my music, pictures, videos and files & documents in 4 different partitions (volumes in true Windows speak) of a different hard disc. So, after installing Windows Vista I change the location attribute of Music & Pictures in the Start Menu to point to these folders. Here's how I did it for the Music folder (Note: Windows does not suffix "folder" in the description text after either Documents, Pictures or Music unlike your account name's folder, hover your mouse over each of these 4 icons to see what I mean).

1. Right Click on Music
2. Click on Location Tab
3. Click on the Move Button
4. Locate the new location in the file dialog
5. Click on the Apply Button
6. Click on Yes of the Move Folder Confirmation Prompt (All it does is copy the desktop.ini & Sample Music shortcut that was in the original Music folder)

Similarly I changed the location of Pictures. Two pretty interesting things happen here, which are also the 2 cases where you can see Ghost Folders.

1. Say in the above example I chose the location "H:\MUSiK"... now whenever I traverse to I: in Windows Explorer; I no longer see MUSiK folder, what I see is Music. But if I run DIR on H:\ drive I see MUSiK and not Music. See Picture…

Perhaps it's easy to unravel this behavior, apparently it's because of the new attributes of the Desktop.ini namely, LocalizedResourceName under [.ShellClassInfo] and/or the new section [LocalizedFileNames]. But someone curious enough can find out on their own why MUSiK appears to be Music in Explorer. However remember I said the Sample Music shortcut is also moved in MUSiK. I can't explain why it still says H:\Music in the folder path in the details tab. Look at the screenshot below. That's case 1 for Ghost Folders. Why does the folder path refer to a location that does not exist in the file system?

2. The second and even weirder thing happens when you open the user account folder by clicking on your account name in the Start Menu. You still see Music & Pictures in the explorer window.

On the surface ,nothing strange seems about it, but here's the weird part when I traverse to C:\Users\Dark Knight in Windows Explorer I do not see Music and Pictures file folders. Notice the item count in the picture above it's 29. Note: I have set folder options to show both "hidden" and "protected operating system files".

Notice the item count here - 27. Where did Music & Pictures go?
And running a "DIR /a" command did no good here. Almost immediately the one thing that came into my mind was "Reparse Points". Since my knowledge of junctions/symlinks on Windows was minimal, hence without further investigation I shot off an email to Scott Hanselman who; gratefully, replied rather sooner than I expected. Thank you Scott!

There are a lot of Junctions here basically for application compatibility purposes for old/current apps. There are 7 files too. But all of them would be recognizable to any Power User with the exception of the files with the .regtrans-ms extensions which seem to be transaction files of the registry (NTUSER.DAT being the User's registry file). But suppose I have the wrong idea about them. The GUID part in the filename reminded me of the old trick where one could obfuscate a normal folder into Control Panel or any other shell folder of the desktop namespace. I know this does not work on files rather only on folders, but assuming there's a new "feature" in Vista. The one thing bothering me was that even if there is a pointer of some kind inside my account folder it must physically exist in C:\Users\Dark Knight
e.g. When you create a folder called "Control Panel.{21EC2O2O-3AEA-1O69-A2DD-08002b30309d}" although it might appear as "Control Panel" in explorer where double-clicking on it will infact open the Control Panel, you can still see the full name of this folder & list it's contents i.e. Control Panel{GUID} in DOS prompt.

So maybe it's NTUSER.DAT{GUID}.TMContainer<NumericIndex>.regtrans.ms files that are now acting as pointers to the actual Music & Pictures. But, not only this does not make much sense, nothing seems to suggest that as both files from the Command Prompt screenshot bear the same GUID (remember there were 2 folders unaccounted for!). Considering the GUID might be for the user account and the contents of this file point to the Ghost Folders that also ain't true as there is no corresponding entry in the registry for {4bcf23ed-4700-11db-b1fa-a8319ff2f784} in my registry. Besides if it were somehow possible you wouldn't see Pictures & Music and 2 such files together in the user account folder! (Look at the screenshot with 29 items again) This damn thing has been itching my brain for the past 2-3 days now. I can't seem to explain why there's a difference between the 2 explorer views.

I know, I know! Not a matter of life and death here. But it would be really great if someone can explain how do the Pictures & Music folders appear when I open the <User Account> folder although they simply don't exist in the physical location (C:\Users\<AccountName>) and why do they show up as File Folder in the User Account window? Or if they do exist as some hip kind of reparse pointers in the file system what is it exactly?