Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Beta

Visual Studio 2010 has SP1 lurking around. It just arrived in form of beta accessible only to MSDN subscribers but I am sure that general public will get it at Thursday.

Total download size is 593 MB in single ISO. Exact content of package was not published (as time of writing this post) so I risked my main development machine and I installed this service pack beta based on faith alone. Installation took around an hour with need for single restart and with annoying flashing of taskbar button every few minutes (probably as each independent package was queuing-up).

I must confess that I see no big difference. Everything is where it should be. There might be some new templates and there is probably a lot of bug-fixing around. However, everything appears to be stable and this is best thing I can say about any beta.

As expected, it also contains new offline Help Viewer. Cries for normal offline viewer started with Visual Studio 2010 beta and only grew stronger with final release. This service pack finally brought something that works as good as offline viewer in times of Visual Studio 6.

I am eagerly waiting to see which features I missed and what exactly is in this service pack. In meantime I hope that my machine will not crash… :)

[2010-12-08: Official announcement is available now.]

Repairing Hibernated Windows XP Mode.

I like Windows XP Mode a lot. As soon as I need to test something in XP, it is there. As soon as I am done, it just gets hibernated and waits for next chance to be used.

After upgrading my BIOS I could not get it to start anymore. It just said “‘Windows XP Mode’ could not be restored because either host processor type mismatch or lack of hardware-assisted virtualization support in the system.” I just love those messages that pinpoint issue to few unconnected solutions…

Fortunately (since I already used that Virtual machine and since Windows XP mode does not require hardware-assisted virtualization support anymore) I could quite easily scratch one error cause and focus my attention only to host processor type mismatch.

My BIOS error got Virtual PC into thinking that restoration would not be wise move. Since I had no idea myself whether this would be good move or not, I decided just to delete hibernation files and reboot machine.

First I had to find configuration file. I had not need for one that ends in .wmcx since there is absolutely nothing of any significance there. I needed one that ends in .vmc and it is usually next to virtual disk (mine was at C:\Users\Josip\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Virtual PC\Virtual Machines\Windows XP Mode.vmc). There is lot of data in it but I was interested only in section.

...
  <settings>
    <configuration>
      <next_id type="integer">1</next_id>
        <saved_state>
          <path>
            <absolute type="string">C:\Users\Josip\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Virtual PC\Virtual Machines\Windows XP Mode.vsv</absolute>
            <relative type="string">.\Windows XP Mode.vsv</relative>
          </path>
        </saved_state>
      </configuration>
    ...
  </settings>
...

In this section there was data that defines where hibernation support files can be found. To make machine forget that it was hibernated, I only had to DELETE this section. Once that is done I could start machine once more.

P.S. This same recipe should be valid for any other hibernated Virtual PC machine.

Fixed Width Columns in ListView

I like .NET’s ListView control and I often end up using it in places where even ListBox would suffice. ListView with single column in Details view is exactly look that I usually shoot for.

Of course, width of column needs to be adjusted in order to maximize usable space. This is easily done by simply resizing column to fit width of ListView but with some space reserved for vertical scrollbar. Here is code for e.g. Form_Load:

listView_columnTest.Width = listView.ClientRectangle.Width - SystemInformation.VerticalScrollBarWidth;

And, if there weren’t any users, that would be enough. Problem is that any user can change with of column and thus disturb our delicate balance :). Solution is in handling ListView.ColumnWidthChanging event. Somebody would expect that setting e.Cancel to true would be enough but this is actually not a case. Full solution requires two lines:

private void lsvFilters_ColumnWidthChanging(object sender, ColumnWidthChangingEventArgs e) {
    e.NewWidth = ((ListView)sender).Columns[e.ColumnIndex].Width;
    e.Cancel = true;
}

VHD Attach 2.00 (Beta)

VHD Attach was created to scratch my itch when it comes to working with virtual disks. As things go, that also meant that some corners were cut. As application went freeware, much of those corners were fixed. One that remained was DISKPART.

You see, attaching was done via API, but detaching of drive was done from command line via DISKPART and then results were parsed. This particular operation was very prone to error when it comes to localized versions of Windows. I will not even get into performance issues with it - let’s just say that DISKPART is not quickest program to initialize.

This version of VHD Attach finally replaces DISKPART with direct usage of Virtual Disk Service and thus it should handle LIP more gracefully (although program remains English-only).

Without further ado, download is available here.

Comments

For long time this blog dwelled in sub 50 visitors range. I was basically writing for my friends and occasional bystander. Comments were few and far between. As time went by and Google did it’s magic, I got more visitors and, unfortunately, more comments. Why I say unfortunately? Because most of comments are pure spam.

I like seeing comment. I like it even more when I get e-mail with some insight. However, these comments just contain text that is designed to massage my ego (e.g. “Aw, this was a really quality post”) and link at bottom is designed to grab occasional nervous clicker. Do not misunderstand me, I like my ego massaged, I despise link that follows.

Blogger platform helps me here with “great” spam filtering capabilities. I wrote great in quotes for a reason - this great platform hasn’t caught single spam comment. And thus all comment handling stays my chore.

I have no idea how to efficiently handle this. Going through all comments and deleting spam seems like only way to do it. However, do not hold it against me if I miss one or two.

Just don’t click them.