Microsoft tag

I just got myself a Microsoft Windows Media Center remote. When I opened up the box from the courier, I noticed no CD. Oh well, I thought, I’ll just download the drivers from the Microsoft website.

Wrong. There are no drivers available to download from the Microsoft website, even though there is a link on the page above saying “Download Software.” The drivers come pre-packaged in Windows XP Pro and MCE. So what do you do?

Search the internet! And I came upon this:

You can get them with the following procedure.
1) Download the Windows Update “Update Rollup 2 for eHome Infrared Receiver for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 (KB912024)” from microsoft. It is available from this page (Microsoft.com).
2) run the downloaded executable. When the Hotfix install wizard appears on the screen… STOP!! do not continue with the installation wizard.
3) run notepad, and open the file named kb912024.log that is located in your windows system directory (usually c:\windows\).
4) on the fourth line of this file you will find the path to the update executable (ie: c:\0d5602f37f532d2198a162164df6\update\update.exe).
5) Open Windows and navigate to the root of this path (ie: c:\0d5602f37f532d2198a162164df6). There you will find SP2QFE. Navigate to this directory.
6) In the SP2QPE directory you will find the irbus.sys file. In the “ip” directory will contain the irbus.inf file.
7) Copy these two files to a temporary directory of your choice.
Go back to the Hotfix install wizard and select CANCEL. The wizard will ask if you are sure… answer yes. The wizard will clean up after itself.

Thank you Cybrmage your method worked a treat!

Then all I did was check a box in MediaPortal and it worked. (Yes, I switched to MediaPortal over the weekend).

Yesterday I awoke at a time I didn’t know existed to attend the Microsoft TechEd Student Day 07 in Auckland… 6.30am. However, it wasn’t as bad as one of the guys coming with us, as he comes to Uni at 4am most days of the week (due to transport). It was worth going for the quick whip around new technologies Microsoft is pushing and some great insights into the IT industry (and some tips on how to get jobs which was a plus). Everyone got a copy of the upcoming beta software, including Windows Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008.

The day started out with Ryan Tarak talking about Visual Studio 2008 and it’s new features, and a quick overview of the platforms. It wasn’t this guy’s day, Visual Studio crashed on him while trying to demo the database features… I guess that’s why it is in beta?

Nigel Parker showed off Silverlight and XAML, along with the next version of Expression Blend (version 2.0). He showed how easy it was to create a scene, create some resources and work it in Visual Studio 2008. I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t more of a connection between the two tools however – would’ve expected more IntelliSense for resources.
Cool thing: Watching a window collapse into a small gadget that can be placed on the Sidebar.

We heard from Team Ackermen, the team from Waikato University that won the Imagine Cup 2007 in New Zealand, who scored an all expenses paid trip to Korea where they got to demonstrate it to Bill Gates and go up against 55 other countries. The theme for the ‘07 Imagine Cup was to use technology to improve education. The team won this through Gary’s Lab, a teaching environment for physics. I was quite impressed by the system, it used XNA (which they just picked up and went with) and Ageia physics.

Ryan came back to the stage to show the Microsoft Robotics Studio used with the Lego Mindstorms NXT. He showed a demo in both the simulator and the actual robot. Once again, the second demo with the hardware failed as the application couldn’t sync for some reason, so he used the simulation instead. Do I still want a Mindstorms kit? Well, I’m still a bit peeved that Dick Smiths were selling them off at half price the other day.

Nigel was back on the stage to present information regarding a recent trend on the internet – mash-ups, and Microsoft’s entry into the code-free way to make them. Popfly! I’ve already looked at Popfly [but haven’t written up about it yet], but it was still cool to see how quick and simple it was to create an object to put on anything. He also showed Microsoft Expression Media Encoder, which allows you to create Silverlight videos with customizable players. But where to store these? Why, the Windows Live Silverlight Streaming Service which gives you 4GB free to store your Silverlight streams.

Steve Riley, the senior security strategist in Microsoft’s Security Technology Unit, was fantastic. He presented a talk about attack trends and technology, one he presents regularly. He gave insight into current hackers methods, how to appeal to the business to actually implement security (as in, speak in dollars), how many successful attacks actually worked and how Microsoft can catch the bad guys. Interesting fact he presented, despite Microsoft.com being a constant target for attacks there has never been a successful one. One guy piped up “That you know of“. “Please,” he responded, “there are whole teams whose job it is to know.” If you get the chance, go and see this guy.

It ended with the long overdue prize draw (they kept mentioning it between segments), where I won nothing.

Very good and disappointed I only heard of it this year, otherwise I would’ve gone previous years.

The Microsoft TechEd 2007 Student Day is this Thursday at the Skycity Convention Centre in Auckland. The talks I’m looking forward to,

• Nigel Parker is doing a demo of Silverlight – the Microsoft equivalent of Adobe’s Flex/Flash. With it spanning across Linux, Mac as well as Windows, it may well be worth knowing this. There is also the bonus of demoing XAML. Surprised there isn’t more on .Net 3 (or 3.5).
• XNA is being shown in a quick “Dev Jam.” XNA replaces the failed Managed DirectX libraries to make games for both Windows and the Xbox 360, however the Xbox 360 function is ruined by the fact that you can’t just pass round applications without your friends requiring XNA and a developer subscription.
• Ryan Tarak will be demonstrating the Microsoft Robitics Studio with a Lego Mindstorms NXT kit. Damn them, just as I was getting over wanting one — again!
• Nigel Parker will also be presenting information on Windows Live (why?) and PopFly (cool). I only just requested an invite to PopFly which is a tool similar to Yahoo! Pipes but has an attractive, easy-to-use, Silverlight based interface, so full of crazy effects (see the screencast on the website).

The day ends up talking to some ICT industry leaders bosses and interns, which will be interesting.

Anyone reading this blog going (or presenting)?

I haven’t heard much about this. Last month, the folks at Port 25 announced a new website for Microsoft. Port 25 is the open source lab at Microsoft. The website is basically outlining what Microsoft thinks of open source and what they are doing to keep certain people happy. No, the website is easy to remember (you add /opensource/ to the end of microsoft.com).

• Open Source at Microsoft

In relation to open source at Microsoft, an article appeared on Neowin last night saying how the Silverlight developer made sure that it was truly cross-platform by providing some of its top developers to offer guidance for the Linux version of the application framework (known as Moonlight). This has perhaps leveraged the platform as being attractive to develop for, as we know that previously Flash for Linux has been last on the mind of Macromedia (however Adobe has fixed that recently).

Neowin, NVNews have reported that a new patch has been sent out to testers fixing many, very annoying performance and reliability issues in Vista. Included in the fixes are the problems that drove me back to XP:

938979 Vista Performance and Reliability Pack
This update resolves a number of individual issues which may be affecting some computers running Windows Vista. These issues have been reported by customers using the Error Reporting service, product support, or other means. Installing this update will improve the performance and responsiveness for some scenarios and improves reliability of Windows Vista in a variety of scenarios. Some examples of the improvements contained in this update are:

* Improves performance in resuming back to the desktop from the Photo and Windows Energy screensaver.
* Resolves an issue where some secured web pages using advanced security technologies may not get displayed in Internet Explorer on Windows Vista.
* Resolves an issue where a shared printer may not get installed if the printer is connected to a Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 system and User Access Control is disabled on the Vista client.
* Resolves an issue where creating AVI files on Vista may get corrupted.
* Improves the performance in calculating the ‘estimated time remaining’ when copying/moving large files.
* Improves performance in bringing up Login Screen after resuming from Hibernate.
* Resolves an issue where synchronization of offline files to a server can get corrupted.
* Resolves a compatibility issue with RAW images created by Canon EOS 1D/1DS Digital SLR Camera which can lead to data loss. This only affects RAW images created by these two specific camera models.
* Resolves an issue where a computer can lose its default Gateway address when resuming from sleep mode.
* Improves the performance when copying or moving entire directories containing large amounts of data or files.
* Improves the performance of Vista’s Memory Manager in specific customer scenarios and prevents some issues which may lead to memory corruption.

938194 Vista Compatibility and Reliability Pack
This update resolves a number of individual issues which may be affecting some computers running Windows Vista. These issues have been reported by customers using the Error Reporting service, product support, or other means. Installing this update will improve the reliability and hardware compatibility of Windows Vista in a variety of scenarios. Some examples of the improvements contained in this update are:

* Improved reliability and compatibility of Vista when used with newer graphics cards in several specific scenarios and configurations.
* Improved reliability when working with external displays on a laptop.
* Increased compatibility with many video drivers.
* Improved visual appearance of games with high intensity graphics.
* Improved quality of playback for HD-DVD and Blue-Ray disks on large monitors.
* Improved reliability for Internet Explorer when some third party toolbars are installed on Vista.
* Improved Vista reliability in networking configuration scenarios.
* Improved the reliability of Windows Calendar in Vista.
* Improved reliability of systems that were upgraded from XP to Vista.
* Increased compatibility with many printer drivers.
* Increased reliability and performance of Vista when entering sleep and resuming from sleep.

Some minor annoyances that I had (such as the no sound when going into hibernation while something is making a noise) aren’t in that list, but still, this is very promising from Microsoft. See the link for the downloads.

Will it send me back to Vista? No, not yet. I’ll wait until SP1 thankyouverymuch. I’ve had my pre-SP1 fun - that’s for sure.

Speaking of computers, it seems mine is playing up tonight, but I think it has something to do with the powerboard I’m using, or even the power supply (need to get that replaced soon anyhow). I dunno though, there were times when not even the graphics card BIOS would start…

I find it amusing that Microsoft gave an error code to highlight something lacking;

What did I do? I was cleaning out my desktop that was covered with icons. I didn’t want to go through each one, so I created a folder, “Old Desktop,” selected everything and dragged them into it. The Recycle Bin was one of the bunch and this is what Vista told me.

What I found annoying was it gave me a “Try Again” option. I’ve seen that a few times. What use is Try Again if it can’t do it at all?

Looks like Microsoft also released Windows Live Hotmail. My Hotmail is no longer special.

The interface to Windows Live Hotmail is a lot like Outlook 2003 and runs like it too. If it wasn’t for the fact that I am quite into my Gmail POP3 I’d probably be using it. It has drag-n-drop, a preview pane, multi-selection, and colour themes.

It has been a long time in development. The only thing now is that people generally don’t like change forced upon them. I remember showing people WLHotmail and they disliked it cause it was so radically different. And I don’t think classic mode can help with that. Still, it is quite nice.

Microsoft have released a full range of the next version of Visual Studio, currently named “Orcas”, in beta to the public. This includes Professional, Team Server and all the Express editions.

• Visual Studio Orcas

They also released .Net 3.5 which apparently doesn’t have many breaking changes.

Orcas is supposed to fully support all .Net 3 technologies - Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation and Windows CardSpace. Not sure if the WPF also includes Silverlight (WPF/everywhere).

The Express editions of Visual Studio are very good and have all the main features needed to make software. Hopefully Microsoft will keep Orcas’ Express editions free as well.

Microsoft Open Source Software Labs (Port 25) have released a plugin that fixes a problem in the latest version of Windows - there is no Netscape Plugin for Windows Media Player built into Vista. It is backwards compatible down to version 6.4 (yes, long before WMP went all media-library like).

• Download the plugin at Port 25

This diminishes the need to go and download each DLL separately from a strange website.

It has also been announced that they will soon release a plugin to enable CardSpace in Firefox, the identity management system in .NET 3.0 for web sites. (In Vista, press the Windows key, and type cardspace, though card does seem sufficient)

Looks like Microsoft still need to update the Live.com search dictionary.