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There are days when I reeeeeeally like dealing with Microsoft. Today is one of those days. Under the terms of my BizSpark license, I can legally install Microsoft Dynamics GP. It’s a huge accounting package if you didn’t know. The point is that we can use a fully featured accounting package for $0 instead of having to deal with the small business offerings from PeachTree or Intuit.

We are currently using Quick Book Business something 2009 blah, blah, blah… I loath Intuit and their pricing policies.

“Why does Quick Books 2009 complain every time I fire it up?”
“The 2009 version doesn’t support Win7. You’ll have to buy the upgrade.”

“What’s the deal with this rounding error? There are posts all over your support site about a bug adding a penny to transactions”
“We have a fix for that but you’re not paying for support so we can’t help you.”
“So you have a known defect in your product. You have a patch for the defect and you will not release it without a $80 annual fee.”
“That’s correct sir. There are two other ways to resolve the problem. Re-enter all of your transactions, by hand or purchase the latest version of our product. Sorry”.

No thanks. I’ll find something else. Maybe something from Microsoft.

I’ll be the first to admit no application is perfect. I am sure there are weaknesses in GP, but service packs are FREE from Microsoft. And if you do think there is a bug, they have a process to report it and get it fixed for all users. If I request support and the issue is found to be a defect, I pay nothing for the support ticket. If I screwed something up, then I pay the fee to get help getting it fixed. This seems a lot more up front and honest than what Intuit is doing.

I wrote about this a couple days ago. I have now confirmed my fix.

ENV:
Win7 Ent x64, VS 2008 SP1

Problem:
API restriction: The assembly ‘file:///c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\PublicAssemblies\Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.UnitTestFramework.dll’ has already loaded from a different location. It cannot be loaded from a new location within the same appdomain.

Solution:
Make sure you don’t have any extra references in your non-test projects. It happened to one guy on our team. The reference showed up during the check-in code review.

Remove “processorArchitecture=MSIL” from the UnitTestFramework reference in ALL of the test project files.

<reference Include="Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.UnitTestFramework, Version=9.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a, processorArchitecture=MSIL" />

becomes…

<reference Include="Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.UnitTestFramework, Version=9.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />

Restart VS. Reloading the project isn’t enough to get around the issue once it has popped up. I had to restart Visual Studio.

The issue went away after I double checked all of my project files and cleaned up the references in my test projects. (There are 12 projects in my current solution including 5 test projects.) I tested the fix by:

1. Deleting the UnitTestFramework reference from one of my test projects.
2. Re-add the reference via the UI by right-clicking on the references folder
3. Add reference
4. .Net tab
5. Select Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.UnitTestFramework
6. Click ok
7. Save all. At this point the processorArchitecture reference appeared in my project file.
8. Compile. Failure.
9. Manually edit the project file with Notepad2.
10. Save.
11. Reload project when VS notices the change outside of the IDE.
12. Compile. Failed.
13. Restart Visual Studio.
14. Load solution.
15. Compile solution. No errors.

Works on my machine…

This error popped up tonight when I tried to publish an app via ClickOnce deployment. This was the first time I had tried to publish since building up my latest machine. I had assumed the signing tool would have installed when I installed VS2008 but I was wrong. After seaching around for a solution, I realized that I needed to download the new SDK for Win7.

You can download ISOs or do a Web Setup (which is what I’m doing). The ISOs are
here and the WebSetup is here. I may have jumped too quickly on doing the Web Setup as I have two development machines, my quad core desktop and the netbook. Yes, I do development on a Asus EEE PC 1000HE netbook. I can even run multiple VMs via Virtual PC 2007 on the netbook. It’s a little slow but it works just fine. We’ll see how the installs go.

There’s also a new Win7 training kit available as well. It’s at here.

Enjoy

When I migrated files from my old system (XP) to the new one (Win7), I copied everything in my Outlook folder “c:\Documents and Settings\Wraith\Local Settings\Application Data\ Microsoft\Outlook” (if I remember correctly) and dropped them straight into the new folder “C:\Users\Wraith\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\”. This preserved all of my emails and my address book. It also preserved my association with Symnatec Corporate Anti-Virus. I kept getting errors everytime I loaded Outlook that the AV add-in couldn’t be found.

After looking for a solution online, I learned that deleting the extend.dat file would resolve the problem. Being the most trusting person on the planet, I renamed the file and restarted Outlook. No error. Cool. So there it is…

Delete or rename the extend.dat file if you are having problems with add-ins. Of course, this nukes all of your add-ins, but Outlook (re)associated the new anti-virus package when it started up.

Fixed.

Here’s the exact syntax…

c:\> rename “C:\Users\Wraith\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\extend.dat” “C:\Users\Wraith\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\extend.dat.old”

Hope that helps.

I found a simple fix for my problems with Media Player in Win7. Download the CODECs. Duh. Here’s where I downloaded a working CODEC. The files originally came from Shark007. Emigrate now fills my home office.

Picture if you will… A slightly sleepy programmer, typing away at his keyboard with Kingdom Come’s Get It On playing through the headphones.

Yes. I am a child of the 80s.

I have noticed some issues with Windows 7.

1. Media Player doesn’t work. Period. It never loads. It always crashes with a “Server execution failure.” I don’t know why and I haven’t had the time to reserach the issue. I’ve tried files on my local hard drive and files on my Home Server. It doesn’t matter.

   &bsp;

2. Windows Explorer isn’t refreshing. I worked on an invoice for a client last night. I copied an old invoice and renamed it. The result of the rename didn’t display. In other words, the window content stayed the same as before I renamed the file. I double clicked on the file and got a “File does not exist error.” I manually refreshed the page and there was my renamed file. Rather odd I should think.”

   &bsp;

3. Warhammer has no sound. I’m still getting sound from the desktop, but not from within the game. I really don’t like that. I prefer to hear when someone is taking a swing at me.

   &bsp;

I wonder what other issues will appear.

So am I an early adopter if I switched to the new O/S before it’s general release? I waiting until the RTM dropped and I HAD to do something about the systems at the office. I never considered Vista a viable desktop. I realize I’m beating a dead horse. Whatever.

I haven’t really slept in weeks. OK. Almost a month. I’ve tried sleep aids. I still wake up a couple hours later to wander downstairs and re-start working on computer builds and software issues.

I think that time is coming to an end. Read more…

Win 7 Ultimate downloaded.

“So what’s the difference between Ultimate and Enterprise?”
“The license key.”
“So I should be using Enterprise for my domain attached development workstation?”
“Yes.”
“Crap. <sigh> It only took 6 hours to download Ultimate…”

Instead of eating lunch, I picked up hardware to build up a new development workstation. I think I know what I’m doing tonight when I get home. I guess I’ll load Ultimate and see what’s what before I worry about the Enterprise issue.

Windows 7 is available on MSDN. Let the downloading begin!

The rumor finally reached my ears. According to a friend, who read a Tweet by Scott Hanselman, Windows 7 has been released to manufacturing.

What??? Cool!

So what does this mean to you?

It means that the end of Vista is nigh. It means that Microsoft is not the evil beast it used to be. They failed miserably with Vista. Win7 appears to be the exact opposite. They have tried to under promise and over deliver. Yes, I know they dropped some features during the development cycle. But when was the last time Microsoft released a new O/S on time, with a high possibility of success? I’ve sat through at least 6 programming presentations that were running on Win7 beta/RC versions. I never saw one barf. I saw beta issues, but the core O/S ran without rebooting every 15 minutes. And development machines are the most nasty, unstable machines around. I install and uninstall drivers and DLLs all day. It takes it’s toll. Win7 appears to be a very stable, fast, and thin(ner) O/S. It runs on netbooks. That’s something Vista could never do!

What does it mean to me?

It means that I can stop waiting to “upgrade” the Vista installs at the office and jump directly to Win7 Ultimate.

Technically, RTM means that Microsoft has released the O/S to large scale vendors like Dell, Toshiba, Asus, etc, so they can start getting their builds ready for mass deployments.

It means that we can finally dive a stake through the heart of Vista and move on.

I’m supper jazzed. I keep hitting the reload button for the Windows 7 Operating System page in MSDN. I know it won’t show up here for a while until Aug 6th.

What can I say? I’m OCD.