Lostapalooza

Today, I stumbled upon a very strange problem with the “Find in Files” feature in Visual Studio 2008. No matter what I selected from the “Look in” dropdown or the “Look at these file types” selector, I would always get this error: “No files were found to look in. Find was stopped in progress”.

The solution (found here) was simply to press CTRL+Scroll Lock.

I have no idea what caused this since I don’t even have a “Scroll Lock” key on my keyboard, a Logitech Wave, and needed to find an old keyboard just to press the key combo.

Does anyone know what caused the problem to happen?

We’ve recently upgraded our development tools from Visual Studio 2008 to Visual Studio 2010. We instantly fell in love with VS2010 and spent the day at the office showing each other cool new features that we just found.

The next day, we worked from home through a VPN tunnel. That is when we noticed that connecting to Team Foundation Server 2008 was very slow. I am not talking about a couple of seconds slower, I’m talking about many, many, seconds slower. It was not slow before with VS2008 nor was it slow when we were in the office. Believing that the slowness was caused by VS2010 connecting to TFS2008 we migrated TFS to TFS2010. The mind-numbing slowness continued.

Based on other people’s experiences with TFS2010 slowness we then disabled the anti-virus, tried safe-mode, verified the latency of the server and other possibilities but nothing out of the ordinary surfaced and nothing we tried worked.

I finally found a post on the MSDN forums and an older one that gave us our answer.

There seems to be a difference in how VS2010 handles network proxies. By default it uses web proxy auto-discovery which was the culprit.

To fix this problem open %VSINSTALLDIR%\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe.config (e.g.
c:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe.config
) and add this line to the <system.net> section of the file:

<!-- Disable web proxy autodiscovery (download and compilation of javascript to determine proxy) -->
<system.net>
<defaultProxy enabled="false" />
<defaultProxy enabled="true" useDefaultCredentials="true">
<proxy bypassonlocal="True" proxyaddress="http://yourproxy"/>
</defaultProxy>
</system.net>

Here is what my <system.net> section used to look like:

<system.net>
<settings>
<ipv6 enabled="true"/>
</settings>
</system.net>

This is what it now looks like:

<system.net>
<defaultProxy enabled="false" />
<defaultProxy enabled="true" useDefaultCredentials="true">
<proxy bypassonlocal="True" proxyaddress="http://yourproxy"/>
</defaultProxy>
<settings>
<ipv6 enabled="true"/>
</settings>
</system.net>

– Update 29/06/2010–
By doing so we discovered that we no longer online access to the Extension Manager (Tools -> Extension Manager…) from within Visual Studio 2010. I will try to figure out a way to allow everything to function correctly.

– Update 29/06/2010–
I have finally figured it out. I’ve updated the post to reflect the change.

Extreme Rice on YouTube

If you are using Google Chrome 3.0 Beta or above, you can now change its appearance with a new set of themes!

Now, off to the Google Chrome Themes Gallery!

I snapped this from the restroom in the office building where I worked.

Do not use the bathroom

I guess I have to keep it in and go at home!

As a .NET developer, I come across some errors that just make you scratch your head wondering what is going on. This story tells of one of those times.

I’ve  been at my current client for a bit over a year working with a great team on an internal AJAXified ASP.NET web application using a 3rd party UI library. This application is used by both local and offshore users. Up until about a month ago all was well and barely any errors were logged.

I just bought my first non-plastic water bottle.

Here it is with the list of all the features.

My water bottle and its list of features

Zoomed in water bottle features

I don’t know what I would have done without it!

This was taken in my street.

Cone Warning

I would like to thank the movers for warning me that there is a big white truck in the street with their tiny orange cone.

I had recently bought a 3 PC license for BitDefender Antivirus 2009. This was the first time that I actually bought antivirus software rather than using AVG Free. The reason I decided to purchase BitDefender Antivirus 2009 was that I wanted a reliable and low impact anti virus for my Windows Home Server.

The PCs I have installed it on had the following operating systems:

• Vista Ultimate 64-bit SP1
• Windows Home Server 2003
• Windows 7 64-bit

Less than 30 days later, I removed it and installed another anti virus solution from one of their competitors. If I have problems with the new one, I will probably write about here. Before going into why I removed it, I will discuss some of the things I actually liked about it.

Note: These are my personal experiences and might not reflect those of others. The 32-bit version might work better on non-WHS operating systems but I do not have any.

• Things I liked about BitDefender Antivirus 2009

Price. The price point was really good. A 3 PC/1 year license cost me $29.99 without any coupons. That is really a good price for 3 PCs.

PC Monitoring. BitDefender would monitor last scan times, last update times as well as other non-virus related items such as password quality, pending Windows Updates, etc. This was nice especially when used in conjunction with the network feature.

Network. The network feature was a really cool feature that allows you to monitor all your PCs running BitDefender from any of those PCs. To set it up all you have to do is the same network password on all PCs and that is it, automatic monitoring! You could also setup a main update server that would download the updates in one place so that the other PCs can download from there, thus allowing for faster updates on slower connections.

Support. When I had problems, I would email their support and get an answer/solution relatively fast. They also refunded me quite fast after my request.

Found viruses that AVG Free did not. I had an old zip of some software that I have been hanging on to for many years. I knew that there was a virus in it but since I never really used it, the virus was not a problem. I was surprised that no other anti virus software that I have installed throughout the years never flagged the virus except for BitDefender Antivirus 2009.

• Things I disliked about BitDefender Antivirus 2009

Installation problems on WHS. Installation on a WHS was not straightforward. It would always fail so I checked their online support documents. They stated that I had to send them an email to get a special file to run to be able to install BitDefender on a WHS PC. Now, why have they not integrated this with their installer rather than having to wait about a day to get the WHS specific file? It is not as if WHS is not on the list of supported operating systems.

Network feature did not work. Despite being a cool feature, it did not work. Well, to be fair, it worked once. I set it up as instructed on the first day and really enjoyed the feature until it stopped working the next day. The network feature stopped detecting the other PCs on my network even though my firewall would let it go through.

Scheduling did not work. One of the important features of an anti virus solution is to allow you to schedule different scans at different times. The BitDefender control panel allowed you to change the schedule but pressing the “OK” button would not save it. If you decided that you did not want a full scan at 5pm every day, too bad, you cannot change it!

Last scan time not updated. Since I could not change the scanning schedule, my PC was always scanned at the default time. The scan would complete but the “Last Scan Time” was never updated. Even when I would manually start a scan and let the scan complete the “Last Scan Time” was not updated. This would cause BitDefender to complain that I had never run a scan and was quite annoying.

Kept my Windows Mobile Phone backlight on. OK, this problem is not for everyone but it was annoying to me. I use a USB dock to connect and charge my phone. Before installing BitDefender the phone’s backlight would turn on, synchronization would occur then the backlight would turn off. With BitDefender installed, the backlight would never turn off. Just when you would see it start to dim, it would go right back to its original intensity.

No Windows 7 support. Indeed, Windows 7 was still in beta but their official standing on it was that BitDefender 2009 would not support Windows 7 and that we would have to wait for BitDefender 2010. I understand that they do not have to support Windows 7 right now but many of their competitors already do. That did disappoint me.

Support not always useful. Albeit being relatively fast, their support was not really helpful. I went through these exact steps for every single problem I had except that I would start at step 3 after the first problem. The normal support steps are as follows:

• 1. You send a support request with the description of the problem.
• 2. You receive an email stating that you did not submit a request correctly and you must go visit the knowledge base article explaining the steps to do it correctly.
• 3. You download the information gathering software and run it, if you are lucky it doesn’t crash, and take a screenshot of the problem
• 4. You send the information files, screenshot and description to their support as stated in the knowledge base article.
• 5. You receive a link to an uninstaller (I guess the one that comes with the original installer does not work correctly) and a link to the 32-bit installer even though you stated in the description that you have a 64-bit operating system.
• 6. You do not realize that it was a 32-bit version so it does not install so you download and install the 64-bit version.
• 7. The problem still occurs so you send an email stating that it does not work.
• 8. You get a reply stating that they are working on it.

Did not integrate with WHS console. Even though it supports WHS, it did not integrate with the console as some their competitors do. To have it integrated, I would have had to purchase BitDefender Total Security 2009.

It is too bad that I have had so many problems with it because it did look very promising. The network and monitoring features really were nice and I will miss them. I will have to revisit the BitDefender solution once 64-bit operating systems become more prevalent.

Have you had similar problems and resolved them? What anti virus solution, would you use in my situation?

I’ve been using PointUI Home 2 Free ever since it has been released. It runs much smoother on my HTC Touch Pro than HTC’s TouchFlo 3D. It is also much more customizable. I recommend it to every one that owns a Windows Mobile phone.

From the description: http://tinyurl.com/ca3x4a

Building on the platform Home 2 Free provides Pro takes your experience to the next level. On the surface you’ll see additional functionality with a Contact Card with Details and Personal History, a Messaging screen that allows for custom viewing options, Folders in your Favorites and a growing list of Customization options including, Haptic Feedback (on some devices), Auto Lock, GSensor Support (HTC devices only) and Automatic Update checking.

Under the hood the scripting engine capabilities are extended to include more advanced features like GPS, SQLite Database Support and Advanced Customizaton Hooks to override default functionality Home 2. Why not check out our Roadmap highlighting functionality future releases will contain.

Download and installation was a snap. Just download and install the CAB file you get in the purchase confirmation email, enter your Customer ID and Purchase ID. Activation is done over the net and was instantaneous. Once installed, reboot, setup your Today Screen to only display PointUI Home 2 and that’s it.

It would have been an even better installation experience if it would ask you if you wanted PointUI Home 2 to be your default Today Screen item so you wouldn’t have to set it up manually.

For those looking to customize PointUI Home 2, you will find themes and applets in their community section, as well as the SDK and sandbox for developers among other things.

I highly recommend to at least go and download PointUI Home 2 Free. You will be convinced!