Category Archives: windows

microsoft, software, windows

Contemplating an in-place upgrade to Server 2008? Read this first

Microsoft evangelist Neil Hutson has a detailed post describing what happens when you upgrade to Windows Server 2008. As with Vista, the new upgrade procedure is actually a clean install into which your old stuff gets copied afterwards:

Instead of just installing new versions of binaries over those of an existing computer, the new operating system is installed side-by-side with the older operating system. Then the data and settings are migrated from the older version to the newer version, and then the source is deleted. While this is architecturally more correct and certainly build a clean OS install, this does cause some obvious complications that you should be aware of.  Secondly in Windows Server 2008 the upgrade process is destructive to the pre-existing operating system state.

My instant reaction: there’s enough that go wrong, that a true clean install looks a great deal more attractive.

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.net, microsoft, software development, windows

Microsoft promises WPF DataGrid, big performance improvement for .NET clients

Microsoft’s Scott Guthrie posts about coming service updates to client-side .NET (Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Foundation). He says we can expect:

  • A new, quicker and more efficient setup framework
  • 25%-40% faster start-up for applications using .NET 2.0 and higher, and smaller runtime footprint
  • More hardware acceleration in WPF, plus better video performance and data-handling improvements
  • A DataGrid, Ribbon, and Calendar/DatePicker for WPF
  • Improved WPF designer for Visual Studio 2008

These address common real-world complaints. I’m sceptical; when version 1.0 of the .NET Framework came out, Microsoft said it was working to reduce the runtime memory footprint for Windows Forms applications, but it never happened. Let’s hope this time it will be different.

microsoft, vista, windows

Vista SP1 report

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I’ve installed Vista SP1 on several machines. Takes ages, but otherwise it’s been without incident.

This does not dramatically improve Vista (in my experience); but then again, it wasn’t that bad before. It does seem to speed up Explorer and zip extraction. It tames UAC slightly – some operations that used to require several prompts now only require one. Otherwise, I haven’t noticed much change, though I’m aware that it includes numerous small updates.

What I do find interesting is that Server 2008, which has the same core as Vista SP1, is delightfully smooth in comparison to Vista. Just don’t ever install the Desktop Experience on 2008 – this is a separate feature that is off by default – or whatever it is that makes Vista still somewhat prone to sitting and thinking when you want to get on with your work.

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internet, microsoft, windows

Doing Web 2.0

What ever Web 2.0 is, I reckon Danny Bradbury is doing it:

In fact, I’m finding online applications replacing Microsoft’s products almost entirely. I write my articles in Zoho Writer and mail those to editors straight from the browser, so that I don’t have to worry about synchronising Word docs between machines. I’m managing my article deadlines and my newsletter schedule using Zoho Sheet. I only use Office, quietly grumbling under my breath, for one client which demands that I fiddle about with Word styles to accomodate its content management system.

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microsoft, software, windows

Hyper-V in Server 2008 RTM doesn’t like non-US locales

Hyper-V is Microsoft’s whizzy new virtual server manager, which uses new virtualization features in recent Intel and AMD processors to support more efficient virtual machines. Intel’s extensions are called Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel-VT), formerly code-named Vanderpool, while AMD’s extensions are called AMD Virtualization (AMD-V), formerly code-named Pacifica. Here’s what Intel says:

How does Intel Virtualization Technology eliminate the gaps in current virtualization solutions?
Three ways. First, the technology provides a new, higher privilege ring for the VMM. This allows guest OSs and applications to run in the rings they were designed for, while ensuring the VMM has privileged control over platform resources. It eliminates many potential conflicts, simplifies VMM requirements, and improves compatibility with unmodified legacy OSs. Second, handoffs between the VMM and guest OSs are supported in hardware. This reduces the need for complex, compute-intensive software transitions. Third, processor state information is retained for the VMM and for each guest OS in dedicated address spaces. This helps to accelerate transitions and ensure the integrity of the process.

Hyper-V is a good reason to use Server 2008 x64 (it is not supported on x86), but it is not done yet. Microsoft has shipped a beta of Hyper-V in the release build of Server 2008, and is promising a full release within 180 days from now. It is not something to use casually – Paul Thurrott quotes Microsoft’s Bryon Surace as saying:

Conceptually, it jacks up the OS and slides in the Hypervisor underneath. So we clearly don’t want that installed by default on servers that won’t be running Virtualization.

So don’t even think about using it for real just yet. When it does get finished, Microsoft recommends using Server Core rather than the full Server 2008 as the host OS. However, Hyper-V is interesting to developers as well as admins, so I wanted to take a look. Unfortunately, after I added the Hyper-V role to the server, the Virtual Machine Management Service failed to start, presenting the gloriously obscure message:

The service changed to an unexpected state.

This problem has been mentioned by others. Apparently the fix is simple but extreme: re-install Server 2008 using the English (United States) locale. Can’t you just change the locale in your existing installation? It didn’t work for me, and Microsoft’s Ben Armstrong says, “It is not sufficient to change the locale after OS installation.”

Once Hyper-V is installed, you can change the locale to what you want and it will still work, though I don’t know if this is supported.

Annoying. Yes, it is mentioned in the release notes – but what if Hyper-V beta had required you to set a non-US locale at install time. Do you think Microsoft would have flagged this problem more prominently?

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microsoft, software, windows

Vista SP1 shares same core as Server 2008

I attended a Server 2008 briefing yesterday and it was mentioned that Vista SP1 and Server 2008 share the same core. This is why Server 2008 declares itself as being Service Pack 1 even on its initial release. This isn’t news but I thought it worth a post since I’m not sure that the close relationship between Vista and Server 2008 is all that well known. If Server 2008 wins a decent reputation, which I suspect it will, then it may even help Vista’s tarnished image a little.

When Windows 2003 came out, some enthusiasts ran it as a desktop OS, because it ran better than XP and application compatibility was pretty good. There won’t be any point in doing this with Server 2008. Same code.

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microsoft, windows

Finding the preview pane in Vista’s Explorer

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I recently came across this (old but interesting) article on creating preview handlers for Vista.

If you have the preview pane showing, you can select a file in Explorer and see a preview of the contents. It is also used for email attachments in Outlook 2007.

This article explains how to use it to create a fast PDF preview based on Foxit, and another for previewing C# source with pretty formatting.

It occurred to me that I rarely see the preview pane in Explorer. It’s not enabled by default. So how do you enable it?

Explorer in Vista has a curious user interface. There are some handy features like favorite links, but adding links to this list is not particularly intuitive. Try drag-and-drop, or right-click the Favorite Links panel and choose Open Favorite Links folder. No, it’s not under Organize, where you would expect.

But I digress. In its default state, Explorer has a toolbar with two menus, Organize and Views. Other menus appear on a semi-random basis according to some broken algorithm which is meant to respond to the context.

If you dislike the capricious toolbar, you can show an old-fashioned menu bar, with top-level entries for File, Edit, View, Tools and Help. That is what I normally use.

Now you might expect that the option to show a preview would be under the Views option on the toolbar, and on the View menu on the menu bar. It’s part of the view, right?

Wrong. To get the preview pane to show, you need to select it under Organize and then the Layout sub-menu. It’s not in the menu bar at all.

Since it is on a sub-menu, it is not surprising that people don’t find it.

Further, I don’t get what concept Organize is meant to represent. It’s helpful to distinguish between things that change the view, like the preview pane or folder options, and things that change the files, like New Folder or Cut. So why is stuff in both categories on this single menu? Who would click Organize to find Delete? Alternatively, if Organize is about modifying files, what is Layout doing there?

Once you have found the preview pane, it’s probably best to turn it off most of the time. The problem is that when you select a Word document, for example, most of Word has to load in the background before it displays…slow. Still, if you have a bunch of Word documents with obscure names, and want to find out quickly what they contain, then the preview pane is really useful.

I hope a faster, more logical and more intuitive Explorer is high on the to-do list for Windows 7.

microsoft, multimedia, windows

Unravelling the reasons for Vista audio glitches

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Since Vista’s first release I’ve been puzzling over why audio in Vista is prone to glitches, when it is meant to be fundamentally better than it was in Windows XP.

I’ve posted previously on the subject:

Audio in Vista: more hell than heaven

Why does audio glitch in Vista?

Another Pro Musician gives up on Vista audio

I myself suffered from this. When I stuck a CD in my Vista PC back in November 2006, it would not play smoothly. I don’t recall ever having this problem before, even back in Windows 3.1 days.

The Guardian commissioned a piece on the subject which is published today. The research showed multiple reasons for Vista’s audio problems. It’s best to show these as a series of scenarios.

1. Consumer buying new Vista PC with on-board audio

The recommended audio driver type for Vista is called WaveRT. The architecture is better than with previous driver models; you can read an official paper on the subject here. If you look at the API, you’ll notice two interfaces, IMiniPortWaveRTStream and IMiniPortWaveRTStreamNotification. The second interface was added at a late stage in the Vista development cycle. According to CakeWalk’s CTO Noel Borthwick, this was because the original API, which lacked this event notification, was very inefficient. Although Microsoft fixed it, the on-board audio drivers came out using the old inefficient driver model for WaveRT. RealTek actually lists support for IMiniPortWaveRTStreamNotification as one of the fixes in its 1.82 driver update, released in November 2007 a year after Vista went RTM.

The fact that the on-board audio vendors provided WaveRT drivers at all was an indication of their early support for Vista’s new driver model. Vendors of add-on audio cards didn’t get round to this much later, or in some cases not at all.

2. Consumer with Vista PC and an add-on card

Although WaveRT is the recommended driver type for Vista, older driver types are also supported. At a higher level, the new WASAPI audio API also emulates older APIs like DirectSound and MME. The quickest way to come up with Vista drivers was to use these legacy APIs. The result is that drivers for add-on cards were probably using inefficient compatibility APIs.

In both consumer cases, this is about apps as well as drivers. Applications make a choice about which Windows audio API to use. In many cases that’s going to mean an emulated API.

3. Pro audio user with add-on card

The situation for pro audio users is different again. On-board cards lack necessary features for pro audio. Pro audio applications have long bypassed the Windows audio stack to reduce latency, using either ASIO or WDM kernel streaming. This avoids the problems mentioned in (1) and (2) above, because ASIO and WDM kernel streaming work the same in Vista as in XP. However, even here Vista is less satisfactory than XP, because the OS imposes a greater overhead, and because according to Borthwick there are bugs which only Microsoft can fix. An example is mentioned in this interview in Create Digital Music:

Peter: Some users have reported MIDI performance issues — specifically, jitter — under Vista. How much of an issue is this? What are the factors that cause it?

Noel: Both Cakewalk and Digidesign and Cakewalk logged this issue with Microsoft. The root cause of this problem was found to be in the WinMM.DLL and was due to an inefficient check being done on every WinMM API call.  It has been addressed in Vista SP1.

The issue itself was pretty severe and impacted MIDI timing on playback and recording. As compared to XP, in Vista we observed timing discrepancies as far out as 150 ticks. You could also run into cases where MIDI events were lost while playing.

Here’s one instance where SP1 definitely improves matters; nevertheless, Borthwick told me that SP1 is not a cure-all and some other bugs remain unresolved.

Myth-busting

Some people think that Vista’s DRM is responsible for audio problems. Nobody I talked to thought that was the case. It doesn’t apply in the common cases mentioned above.

What about moving the audio stack out of the kernel? Probably not an issue, certainly not in the pro audio case, where things work the same as before.

Fixing Vista audio

Vista audio is definitely improving. SP1, improved WaveRT drivers for on-board sound, decent drivers for add-on cards, all are happening. It probably will reach the point where it is better than XP in some circumstances, because there are genuine improvements in the audio stack. If you are reading this and get glitches, check that you really have the latest drivers and updates.

64-bit has the potential to be really good, though driver support is dire right now.

It’s still a sorry tale and I suspect has lost Microsoft a lot of momentum in the pro audio world, and also among consumer users like myself who were surprised and disappointed by glitching audio.

Preventable? Ultimately I feel this is a symptom of Vista actually being rushed (despite long delays), thanks to the famous reset. There’s also the question of why the WaveRT API wasn’t done right at an earlier stage, which (if the above analysis is right) could have saved much grief. Finally it seems that the emulation layers are just too inefficient.

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microsoft, software, windows

How to speed up Windows Vista: official and unofficial tips

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Microsoft has published an article on speeding up Vista, aimed at general users.

It’s not too bad. Here’s the summary:

  • Delete programs you never use
  • Limit how many programs load at startup
  • Defragment your hard drive
  • Clean up your hard disk
  • Run fewer programs at the same time
  • Turn off visual effects
  • Restart regularly
  • Add more memory
  • Check for viruses and spyware
  • Disable services you don’t need

Still, it’s a bit scattergun. I prefer a two-stage approach to improving performance (same applies to a single application):

  1. Find out what is slow
  2. Speed it up, or leave it out

For example, the benefits of adding memory tail off after a certain point. Task Manager will tell you to what extent RAM is slowing down Vista. Further, adding memory beyond 3GB is pretty much wasted on 32-bit Vista, since the system can only address 4GB, and the BIOS plus devices will use a lot of the 4th GB address space. That said, a system that is critically short of RAM (in other words, constantly swapping out memory to the hard drive) is in my opinion broken and unusable. Adding RAM in such cases delivers huge rewards.

Uninstalling programs gives little performance benefit if they are not running (unless disk space is limited). The aim is to reduce the number of running processes, not entries in the Start menu.

Vista defragments your drive regularly, by default. The benefits are often rather small, so it would be equally valid to suggest removing it from the schedule, or scheduling it to run less frequently.

The advice to restart regularly needs examination. Yes, a reboot can fix a sluggish machine. But it shouldn’t be necessary, and I recall that keeping Vista always-on was intended to be a benefit of the OS. Yes, here’s a quote from Power Management in Windows Vista [ppt]:

  • Windows Vista promotes the use of sleep as the default off state

In the right circumstances, Vista can run for ages without any problem. I’ve actually had Media Center (Vista Ultimate) run for several months without any issues; though this kind of thing is not very green so that’s another reason to do regular switch-offs. Still, to my mind “restart regularly” is a symptom of some problem that should be fixed.

Turning off visual effects is reasonable advice, though once again it may not yield much benefit. I tried it on my system and was surprised how little difference it made. Reason: I am running with Aero and a decent-ish graphics card, and hardware acceleration seems to handle the visual effects rather easily. Once again, if it’s not the thing slowing you down, then removing it won’t speed you up. You can test this quite simply, though it is tedious. Try it both ways. Did it make a difference? Measure it if possible.

It really is worth using the built-in tools, like Task Manager and the Reliability and Performance Monitor, to see which processes are grabbing lots of RAM and CPU. One of the good things about Vista is that such tools are easy to find. Click Start, type “reliability”, and click the link.

I’d also like to see mention of some favourite candidates for slowing down Vista:

1. Outlook 2007

2. The indexing service

3. Anti-virus software

4. Windows Defender

Hmmm, at least three of these are from Microsoft. Perhaps they are too embarrassing to mention.

Finally, I suspect disk performance is a big factor in real-world Vista speed. The reason is that many apps are very talkative when it comes to disk access. Here’s something to try. Go along to the Systernals site and download process monitor. This gives a good picture of what the actual processes on your Vista box are up to. Note how many events are occurring, how many of them involve file i/o, and which processes are responsible. You will also discover a large part of the reason why Outlook 2007 is so slow.

PS Another article, also just published, has good coverage of swap files and ReadyBoost.

microsoft, software, windows

Polarisation

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Slashdot takes the IBM line:

At this point nobody has the vaguest idea what OOXML will look like in February, or even whether it will be in any sort of stable condition by the end of March. ‘While we are talking about interoperability, who else do you think is going to provide long term complete support for this already-dead OOXML format that Microsoft Office 2007 uses today? Interoperability means that other applications can process the files fully and not just products from Microsoft. I would even go so far as to go back to those few OOXML files you have already created and create .doc, .ppt, and .xls versions of them for future use, if you want to make sure you can read them and you don’t want to commit yourself to Microsoft’s products for the rest of their lives

Alexander Falk, CEO of Altova, which makes a popular Windows XML editor:

I see the ISO vote as a non-event. In my opinion, the real-world adoption of OOXML is primarily driven by the ubiquity of Microsoft Office much more than any standards body…In terms of actual customer inquiries regarding need for ODF, we have not seen any interest from our customers…My advice to dev shops is to start working with OOXML as early as possible.

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