New Virtual PC (currently in beta, integrated with Windows 7) is looking more and more like “light” Hyper-V. It requires hardware support for virtualization, uses same key combinations…
One thing that remains same is support for wireless network. Hyper-V deliberately doesn’t have direct support for it because of some issues, but Virtual PC ignores all and makes life a lot easier.
Today I was on coffee with dear friend and I learned that Microsoft has something called Project Natal. There I said that almost nothing can persuade me to get Xbox.
I saw this video and I changed my mind. There are things that could make buying Xbox a viable option.
There is always period between installing your favorite OS into virtual machine and installing integration component when mouse cannot be shared between host and virtual machine. Once you click on virtual machine, all your mouse moves are interpreted as virtual mouse moves.
To regain control you need to press some magic key-combo. On newest Virtual PC (beta) that combination is Ctrl+Alt+Left. This is quite a different than what Virtual PC/Server used before (Ctrl+AltGr) but Hyper-V users will find them self at home since same combination is used there.
Other useful combination to remember is Ctrl+Alt+End which simulates good old Ctrl+Alt+Del. In order to switch between normal and full screen, use Ctrl+Alt+Pause.
I will also mention few mappings that will probably cause quite a trouble with old games:
Alt+Home => Ctrl+Esc
Alt+Insert => Alt+Esc
Alt+PgUp => Alt+Tab
Alt+PgDn => Alt+Shift+TabI found no way to turn them off.
If you deploy web application or service and you get “Could not load file or assembly ‘SomeAssembly’ or one of its dependencies. An attempt was made to load a program with an incorrect format.”, chances are that you are running of 64-bit Windows.
Underlying problem is BadImageFormatException (you can check it in stack trace) but no matter how far down stack trace you take a look, you will not be able to link it to your code. Reason for that is that your application hasn’t started running yet.
IIS
By default IIS’ processes are 64 bits (on 64-bit system). Your code is in 32-bit world. Mix those two and you won’t get far. To fix it simple recompile of application in 64-bits or as “Any CPU” will do.
However, sometimes recompile is out of question. Maybe you have some 32-bit dependencies or you don’t have access to source code to recompile it. Whatever reason is, only solution is to force IIS into 32-bit mode.
Solution
That is simply done:
C:\inetpub\AdminScripts\adsutil.vbs set W3SVC/AppPools/Enable32BitAppOnWin64 True
Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.8
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Enable32BitAppOnWin64 : (BOOLEAN) TrueThis will cause all IIS processes to work in 32-bit mode and that solves our problem. Not even restart is not required.
P.S. Notice that you do need to install “IIS Management Script and Tools” for that script to be available.
There is new Microsoft’s search engine called Bing. Name itself reminds me of Alan Ford’s quote: “Hello, Bing, how’s the brother?”. While meaning of that greeting is not so nice (trafficking stolen goods), it means that I will remember it without problems.
Search interface is clean (with nice picture background) and search speed is good. However, after spending one day with it, I cannot say that I am too excited. When I look at all those things it can do, I feel cheated. All that seems really useful, but in reality almost everything is limited to North America. All I got from it is just generic search engine results.
P.S. It even fails at recognizing that I come from Croatia. Getting results of Slovenian pages does not help me much.