Today, Daniel helped my to solve a long standing miracle. For some unknown reason, Vista decided not to support hibernate on my Toshiba m400 anymore. So what to do:
Start the command prompt and type
powercfg -H ON
You won’t see anything on the screen, but when going back to your advanced power potions you will see both, hibernate and hybrid sleep again.
That’s all – and you can send your machine to hibernate again.
This update finally supports the new file formats of Office 2007 on your mobile device:
To allow Windows Mobile users to work with Office documents created in the Open XML formats, Microsoft has developed an upgrade for Word Mobile, Excel Mobile, and PowerPoint Mobile applications. This upgrade to the Office Mobile applications allows viewing and editing of Word documents and Excel workbooks and viewing of PowerPoint slideshows created by using Microsoft Office 2007.
Other improvements include:
• Enhanced viewing experience for charts in Excel Mobile.
• Ability to view SmartArt in PowerPoint Mobile.
• Ability to view and extract files from compressed (.zip) folders.
The update need approximately 7 Mb on your device. Therefore, I would recommend using a memory card for the installation.
While charging an iPod on a Windows Vista system without having iTunes installed, you might face the issue that the iPod is not willing to play any music as long as it is charging. Therefore, simply choose Safely Remove Hardware from the Vista task tray.
There you select Generic volume and click Stop. In the second dialog do the same, select Generic volume and click Stop.
After a few seconds your iPod will re-start and awaiting your commands while it is still charging.
Some features in Windows Vista to be fixed by KB 938979 and KB 938194 if you can’t wait for Windows Vista Service Pack 1.
Just another nice Twitter add-in, this time for Windows Live Messenger. After enabling the hidden Live Messenger Add-In API you can install Twessenger written by Kunal Kundaje. It updates your Windows Live Messenger status to your recent Twitter post. Nice work.
Twadget is a Widows Vista Sidebar Gadget written by Rod Begbie. It allows you to post to your Twitter account and read your subscriptions. Nice work.
Synchronizing my laptop folders with three servers on different locations makes it difficult to keep track of what is already copied. SyncToy 1.4 should help me in getting this managed since I haven’t used it on my new machine yet and my XP machine still running version 1.2.
I literally fought an epic battle with my Toshiba m400 since the first day I got it. For that reason I was not surprised when my colleague Frank Prengel from Microsoft Germany had some trouble with his m400 while preparing a demo with the Microsoft Robotics Studio (MSRS).
His first idea was about some issues with the April CTP 1.5 of the MSRS. Indeed, he got some errors like
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<s:Fault xmlns:wsa="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2004/08/addressing" xmlns:d=http://schemas.microsoft.com/xw/2004/10/dssp.html xmlns:s="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope">
<s:Code>
<s:Value>s:Receiver</s:Value>
<s:Subcode>
<s:Value>d:OperationFailed</s:Value>
</s:Subcode>
</s:Code>
<s:Reason>
<s:Text>Unabled to configure Lego NXT</s:Text>
</s:Reason>
</s:Fault>
Indeed, the error is a unfortunate result of a unhappy soft- and hardware combination. So, let’s see what we already have
Actually, the NXT documentation tells the NXT requires the Bluetooth stack from Widcomm or XP SP2. However, I know my m400 much much better than the people from Lego. Maybe you will realise that after installing the Lego software (either for RCX or NXT) you’ll get a message that the Lego software does not work with the Toshiba BT stack!? I.e. there is something special about the Toshiba BT stack… Fortunately, using the MSRS you don’t need any drivers or software to run the NXT. The build-in services provided by the MSRS are the one and only bits to run the NXT.
Now you can easily pair your BT capable devices with your m400. In the following you can see a iRobot Create and a Lego NXT paired with my m400.
Frank confirmed that after following the steps above his demo now “works as a charm”.
I am working on a user interface (UI) for a client tool of our current project. Though, the last two have been a epic battle fighting with a various of minor things. However, each and every of these things does cost a remarkable amount of time.
Starting with WPF many developers will spend mcuh time with skinning in WPF. It’s a cool thing, but you should leave these things to designers. It is a enormous time sink. You make huge progress in the beginning but end up with endless fine-tuning in the end. The first have a look at the Windows Vista User Experience Guidelines. The really thing: you don’t have to read everything online, just download the 630 pages as PDF document. You will see that skinning should be used carefully. Much more important are some new guidelines to keep in sync with the Vista UI. BTW: if you are looking for the Vista icons you should have a look here (but I haven’t told you that and so use them only to inspire you by creating own icons).
Well, what’s about the cool stuff such as the new Command Link in Vista? Should be a new control? Well, not that easy. Daniel Moth found out to check the Vista Bridge Samples coming with the Windows SDK. you should go definitely for the Windows SDK Update for Vista. Daniel also gives a first impression how to use the TaskDialogs provided by the VistaBridgeLibrary.
Now you will definitely run into trouble if you don’t create a manifest file for you application using the following dependency:
<dependency>
<dependentAssembly>
<assemblyIdentity type="win32" name="Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls" version="6.0.0.0" processorArchitecture="x86" publicKeyToken="6595b64144ccf1df" language="*" />
</dependentAssembly>
</dependency>
In my case, I also had to use strong-named assemblies since they are used within VSIP packages. You will realize that the VistaBridgeLibrary uses friendly assemblies, Junfeng gives a short introduction into friendly assemblies. You’ll discover that is not as easy since there have been some changes in Visual Studio 2005. Adrian figured out how it works. David cover’s the further steps and also provides a small tool to obtain the public key token of a signed assembly ready to be copy ‘n’ pasted into your Assembly.cs file.
SearchIndexer.exe does all the indexing stuff on your Vista machine. Not bad at all it is not possible to schedule when the indexer is running as it was able using MSN Desktop Search. E.g., there you have been able to send the indexer to sleep for a 10, 20 or 60 minutes or to avoid running the indexer whilst working on the machine. it looks like the only way to calm the machine down is by switching of the service at all. Another work around I am trying right now is to got to Control Panel / Power Options and choosing the High Performance Change power plan settings. There chose Change advanced power settings Search and Indexing values to Power Saver or Balanced. This should lower the indexing effort of the Vista Search significantly.
