(Updated 5/10/2012 – I originally claimed that it was “trivial” to make a ClickOnce app require elevation – a commenter pointed out that ClickOnce does not support the requireAdministrator execution level at all. This does not let the vendor off the hook – they should not have used ClickOnce to deploy software that requires features ClickOnce does not support… FYI – there are workarounds from the deployment side)

One of our vendors distributes a couple tools as ClickOnce applications, but these applications perform privileged tasks that do not work with UAC enabled. A ClickOnce application cannot be elevated, nor can it be specified that it requires elevation, so the only way this application would have ever passed testing is if UAC was disabled on the developers’ machines, or Visual Studio is run as administrator)

Rant: UAC has been around since Windows Vista was released in 2006. As of this writing, that would be 6 years. Windows 7 has been out for 3 years. As much as some people might dislike the extra dialogs, UAC is a very good thing, and should not be disabled. There is no excuse for applications that do not handle UAC correctly. Adding the appropriate application manifest is not difficult, and when using ClickOnce it is practically trivial (5/10/2012: Errata: ClickOnce Doesn’t support UAC – I was thinking about Full Trust) and if an application requires elevation it should be distributed standalone or with an MSI setup project.

Don’t use ClickOnce for applications that require elevation; Add the Application Manifest with a setup project to require elevation; or better yet modify your app to not require elevation at all, but do not just pretend it doesn’t exist. 6 years… come on!

Ok, now that my rant is out of the way, if you are in a similar situation – a ClickOnce app that needs elevation to run, but doesn’t request it is a real pain in the butt.

“Run as Administrator” is conspicuously missing from the context menu:

if you try to create a shortcut to the app you will have the same problem. If you try to open the raw .appref-ms file, notepad automatically gives you the contents of the executable… It’s a bloody mess.

The (simple) solution requires both a batch file and a shortcut.

1. Right Click on the ClickOnce shortcut, and select Properties. Copy the content of the location field and paste into notepad.
   
   Add the trailing slash, and paste (or type) the filename (in this case “GoSyncUpdater”) followed by “.appref-ms”
   eg: “C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Company Name\GoSyncUpdater.appref-ms”
   Finally surround this with quotes, and save the file as a .bat file (e.g. runasadmin.bat)
   

   At this point, you can right-click on the batch file, and you will have the option to “Run as Administrator” – If this is all you need you are done.
   
   However, if you go to the Compatibility property tab to make the elevation required, the Privilege Level is disabled / grayed out…
   
   

2. Create a shortcut to your batch file.
   (You will notice that the Compatibility tab is similarly useless)
3. Edit the properties, Under the Shortcut tab Click “Advanced…”
   
4. OK out of the dialogs.

You now have a shortcut to a batch file that runs a shortcut to an executable. Convoluted, but it works. (The reason we don’t just make a shortcut to the executable directly is that the path will change when it is upgraded)

If you know of a better way, feel free to share.

I’m working on an app that given the URL for a book, needs to scrape the page looking for an ISBN. I have seen several of these out there, but I didn’t think they would be quite robust enough.

The main difficulty is the format – an ISBN can be 10 or 13 digits, optionally broken into sections separated by hyphens. (One could use spaces, but you have to draw the line somewhere…) The saving grace is that in every site I’ve sampled, (once the html tags are stripped out), the text “isbn” precedes the number itself. This should be the case even for simple tables (the two <td> elements are normally in the same row, thus consecutive). Then there is the hyphen issue. ISBN legitimately supports variable length groups.

So I have two (.NET style – remove the string “?<isbn>” from them to get a standard regex) Regular Expressions – one for ISBN-10 and one for ISBN-13.

Here they are defined in c#

            Regex rexIsbnNum10 = new Regex(@"isbn(.{0,3}10)?[^\w]{1,10}(?\d-?\d-?\d-?\d-?\d-?\d-?\d-?\d-?\d-?\d\b)");
            Regex rexIsbnNum13 = new Regex(@"isbn(.{0,3}13)?[^\w]{1,10}(?\d-?\d-?\d-?\d-?\d-?\d-?\d-?\d-?\d-?\d-?\d-?\d-?\d\b)");

To use them, you grab the contents of the web page, strip out the html tags, make it lowercase for simplicity (or use case-insensitive regexs), apply regexIsbnNum10.Matches() to the string, and you should have all the ISBN-10 values nicely enumerated. Likewise for ISBN-13.

Using the ISBN-13 as an example, this regex will match:

ISBN 978-0130190772
ISBN-13: 978-0130190772
ISBN13: 978-0130190772
ISBN: 978-0130190772
ISBN-13: 9-78-01301-9077-2
ISBN-13 — 9-7-8-0-1-3-0-1-9-0-7-7-2

It will not match if there are less than or greater than 13 numbers, or if the “ISBN” and the “13” and more than 3 character apart, or if the ISBN-13 is more than 10 characters away from the number itself (or letter / number falls in between)

I’ve been searching for info about the CRM 4.0 Client Auto Update for hours, and just kept getting the same two articles. Maybe it’s Google, maybe it’s my search terms… either way here is a nice comprehensive post that should have been at the top:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM AutoUpdate Exhaustive Guide

Around April 10, 2012 Microsoft updated the Internet Explorer 9 installers with a broken version. Until this issue is fixed, your safest bet is to use the older installer here, then update with Windows Update (just do not perform an initial install from Windows Update).

See the Microsoft Answers thread here: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_other-windows_update/windows-server-2008-r2-sp-1-internet-explorer-9/ac2ed42f-7faf-4731-8af9-7a50d946138a
Jonathan Sahagun found a direct link to the previous, working version of IE9 here: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/confirmation.aspx?id=23332

There are two solutions – probably the safest solution is to uninstall then reinstall an older version. The alternate solution is to make a couple registry changes.

Symptoms

After this bad version of IE9 is installed, you will be continuously prompted by Windows Update to install Internet Explorer 9 – it appears as though it cannot tell you already installed it.

If you attempt to install it again, the update will fail (with Error “Code 9C48  Windows Update Encountered an unknown error”), but it will continue to repeatedly offer the update:

Additionally, there is a conflict between the version embedded in the files, and the version reported by IE:

To see the version conflict, browse to C:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe, view the properties, then the details tab, and note the Product version number:

In my case, it is 9.00.8112.16443 (file version is 9.0.8112.16443)

Now, within Internet Explorer, got to Tools –> About Internet Explorer

The version doesn’t match – 9.0.8112.16421
(Note: On my other system where IE9 was installed before April 10, this is the version number on both the files and in the program)

Solution #1 – Confirmed, Probably supported

If you haven’t already installed IE9, use the following link to install it: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/confirmation.aspx?id=23332

If you already installed it: uninstall it, then reinstall using the linked version.

If you have installed other applications since installing IE9, this may break things. I have also seen the uninstall leave IE in an inconsistent state… so naturally I sought out an alternative.

Solution #2 – Quicker, safer, riskier

It looks like this version conflict is a registry setting:

In HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer  (and also HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Internet Explorer), svcVersion should match Version and W2kVersion. Change it to 9.0.8112.16443

And Viola, IE9 reports the correct version, and Windows Update stops offering the Installer.

Hopefully Microsoft will figure out the mistake soon (as of this writing it has nearly been a week) fix the installer, and fix Windows Update to recognize and remedy the broken installs.

We had a Windows 7 workstation that was exhibiting “wonky” behavior when opening SharePoint folders in Office 2010 Word (and explorer in general). When it was supposed to open the save-as dialog to a SharePoint folder, it would instead show the default “My Document” folder. You could still enter a SharePoint url, and it would load correctly, but the initial dialog refused to open SharePoint.

Using Fiddler2 I was able see that the problem computer was using a different WebDAV client than the working workstations from the User-Agent in the requests. The first request is identical:

But the second request is all kinds of different.

Normal Workstation:

Problem Workstation:

The next request gets even weirder:

Followed by “MSFrontPage/4.0”.

FrontPage 4.0? Mozilla 2.0? It looks like we’ve travelled into the year 2000! And to some extent, we had. Microsoft Data Access Internet Publishing Provider (MSDIAPP) is the Ole DB provider used by Windows Explorer to access WebDAV since They first started doing it. The feature is also sometimes called “Web Folders” (remember dealing with this in Windows XP?)

In Windows Vista, they replaced the old “Web Folders” with a WebDAV Mini-redirector. This new library caused problems for many people, and Microsoft repackaged the “old” web folders for Windows Vista in a software update. With the release of Windows 7, the MSDIAPP Web Folders are now deprecated, and installing them on Windows 7 is unsupported.

So this Windows 7 PC had somehow gotten the old MSDIAPP WebDAV extension installed, and it had taken over. Not only that, but according to this page:

Web Folder Client (MSDAIPP.DLL) Versions and Issues List

This workstation had the second oldest version of msdiapp.dll – 8.103.2402.0 – installed in C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\System\Ole DB. The version that came with Windows 2000, and Office 2000 SR1. The file date is in 1999.

So now that I had identified the problem, how to fix? Finding this proved much more difficult than I would have expected. Cutting to the chase, the necessary steps to remove this component are chronicled here in a microsoft forum post WinXP clients with Office 2007 won’t communicate with WebDAV server, in Chris Ni’s reply. (Don’t worry if the link is broken, I’m including what you need below)

Without further adieu,

Steps to uninstall MSDIAPP Web Folders from a Windows 7 machine

These instructions were modified from a post by a Microsoft support tech here. I followed them myself with good success, but your results may vary.
Proceed at your own risk – I am not responsible for any damage this may cause to your computer. I highly recommend making a backup first, or at the very least ensure you have a good System Recovery snapshot.

Make sure you have all Office applications closed (you probably should just close everything) before proceeding.
Also be warned – if the user has any files checked-out in sharepoint, this check-out will be broken. Check them in before doing this, or you will have to discard the checkout later.

First, paste the following into a batch file, and run it from an elevated command prompt – Do not paste directly into a command prompt, it will not work right.

REM Removing MSDAIPP (Rosebud) files
MSIEXEC /x {90120000-0010-0409-0000-0000000FF1CE} /q
MSIEXEC /x {90140000-0010-0409-0000-0000000FF1CE} /q
del "%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Application Data\Microsoft\MSDAIPP\OFFLINE" /f /q
del "%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\MSDAIPP\OFFLINE" /f /q
SET ROSEBUDBASE=%CommonProgramFiles(x86)%
IF "%ROSEBUDBASE%"=="" SET ROSEBUDBASE=%CommonProgramFiles%
del "%ROSEBUDBASE%\System\OLE DB\MSDAIPP.DLL" /f /q
del "%ROSEBUDBASE%\System\OLE DB\MSDAPML.DLL" /f /q
del "%ROSEBUDBASE%\Microsoft Shared\Web Folders\MSONSEXT.DLL" /f /q
del "%ROSEBUDBASE%\Microsoft Shared\Web Folders\1033\NSEXTINT.DLL" /f /q
del "%ROSEBUDBASE%\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\40\bin\FP4AWEC.DLL" /f /q
del "%ROSEBUDBASE%\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\40\bin\FP4AUTL.DLL" /f /q
del "%ROSEBUDBASE%\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\40\bin\1033\FPEXT.MSG" /f /q
del "%ROSEBUDBASE%\Microsoft Shared\OFFICE12\Office Setup Controller\Rosebud.en-us\RosebudMUI.XML" /f /q
del "%ROSEBUDBASE%\Microsoft Shared\OFFICE12\Office Setup Controller\Rosebud.en-us\SETUP.XML" /f /q
REM WebFldrsXP files
del "%ROSEBUDBASE%\Microsoft Shared\Web Folders\MSOWS409.DLL" /f /q
del "%ROSEBUDBASE%\Microsoft Shared\Web Folders\PUBPLACE.HTT" /f /q
REM Clear Web Server Extension cache
del "%USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Microsoft\Web Server Extensions\Cache" /f /q
del "%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Web Server Extensions\Cache" /f /q

Don’t worry if you get warnings that folders are missing – some of them may not exist, it is ok.

Next, create a .reg file and paste in the following – make sure you save it as unicode!, and that the last line is blank.

This will remove all the registry entries associated with MSDIAPP. I did a double-check on a good workstation, and none of these entries should exist, so they should be safe to delete.
That being said, you do this at your own risk – as with all things registry related it may cause your computer to explode.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{11480D94-C3A5-11D3-BA7C-00C04F7948B3}]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{AF320921-9381-11D1-9C3C-0000F875AC61}]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{BDEADF00-C265-11D0-BCED-00A0C90AB50F}]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{D9D5678A-76CE-4804-AAFC-1DA2502DB0BC}]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{E1D2BF40-A96B-11D1-9C6B-0000F875AC61}]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{E1D2BF42-A96B-11D1-9C6B-0000F875AC61}]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{F6FD0A00-43F0-11D1-BE58-00A0C90A4335}]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{F6FD0A01-43F0-11D1-BE58-00A0C90A4335}]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{F6FD0A0E-43F0-11D1-BE58-00A0C90A4335}]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{F6FD0A0F-43F0-11D1-BE58-00A0C90A4335}]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{F6FD0A11-43F0-11D1-BE58-00A0C90A4335}]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{F6FD0A13-43F0-11D1-BE58-00A0C90A4335}]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MSDAIPP.BINDER]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MSDAIPP.BINDER.1]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MSDAIPP.DSO]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MSDAIPP.DSO.1]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MSDAIPP.WEBFOLDERFORMS]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MSDAIPP.WEBFOLDERFORMS.1]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MSDAMAGG.Binder]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MSDAMAGG.Binder.1]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MSDAMON.BINDER]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MSDAMON.BINDER.1]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PROTOCOLS\Handler\http\0x00000001]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PROTOCOLS\Handler\http\oledb]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PROTOCOLS\Handler\https\0x00000001]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PROTOCOLS\Handler\https\oledb]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PROTOCOLS\Handler\msdaipp\0x00000001]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PROTOCOLS\Handler\msdaipp\oledb]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Publishing Folder]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MasterAggregatorForIPP]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TypeLib\{ED222A11-E1C6-11D0-B1E1-00AA006DCDF4}\1.0]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TYPELIB\{F6FD0A0C-43F0-11D1-BE58-00A0C90A4335}\2.0]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\WECAPI2.FpFile]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\WECAPI2.FpFile.1]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\WECAPI2.FpFolder]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\WECAPI2.FpFolder.1]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\WECAPI2.FpMetaInfo]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\WECAPI2.FpMetaInfo.1]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\WECAPI2.FpStructureElement]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\WECAPI2.FpStructureElement.1]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\WECAPI2.FpStructureModification]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\WECAPI2.FpStructureModification.1]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\WECAPI2.WebExtenderClient]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\WECAPI2.WebExtenderClient.1]

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Active Setup\Installed Components\{73fa19d0-2d75-11d2-995d-00c04f98bbc9}]

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\DataAccess\RootBinder\http]

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\DataAccess\RootBinder\https]

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\Advanced\Folder\Thickets]

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MyComputer\NameSpace\{BDEADF00-C265-11D0-BCED-00A0C90AB50F}]

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\WebFolders]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Shell Extensions\Approved]
"{BDEADF00-C265-11D0-BCED-00A0C90AB50F}"=-

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Shell Extensions\Blocked]
"{BDEADF00-C265-11D0-BCED-00A0C90AB50F}"=-

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Shell Extensions\Cached]
"{BDEADF00-C265-11D0-BCED-00A0C90AB50F}"=-

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{BDEADF04-C265-11D0-BCED-00A0C90AB50F}]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PROTOCOLS\HANDLER\IPP\0X00000001]

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\DATAACCESS\ROOTBINDER\MSDAIPP]

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\MSDAIPP\PROVIDERS\{9FECD570-B9D4-11D1-9C78-0000F875AC61}]

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\MSDAIPP\PROVIDERS\{9FECD571-B9D4-11D1-9C78-0000F875AC61}]

[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\CURRENTVERSION\SHELL EXTENSIONS\APPROVED\{BDEADF00-C265-11D0-BCED-00A0C90AB50F}]

[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\CURRENTVERSION\SHELL EXTENSIONS\BLOCKED\{BDEADF00-C265-11D0-BCED-00A0C90AB50F}]

[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\CURRENTVERSION\SHELL EXTENSIONS\CACHED\{BDEADF00-C265-11D0-BCED-00A0C90AB50F}]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\Web Extender Client]
"WecCtlFlags"=-

That’s it. You probably don’t even need to reboot – Windows will fall back to using the built-in WebDAV client.

If you were considering ditching VirtualBox for Client Hyper-V in Windows 8, well don’t do it just yet. Enabling the Hyper-V hypervisor has performance and stability issues with host applications, there are all kinds of issues with the networking, it just doesn’t perform all that well, and there is absolutely zero graphics acceleration. And if you enable it, other Virtualization software will not work right.

If you remote desktop into your VM you can at least get sound, but on my relatively well endowed machine, the remote desktop was sluggish – more sluggish than RDP over the internet.

Despite Hyper-V being a low-level hypervisor, VirtualBox is blowing it out of the water in all respects. The networking is rock solid, performance is screaming, and you get sound and 2d / 3d acceleration. (Oh, and you don’t have to boot to an IDE drive)

Hopefully some of this gets worked out in future releases

I’ve been digging and experimenting quite a bit with the boot processes in Windows 7 (64-bit only), trying to accomplish completely unsupported things.

Here’s a couple things I have learned that you might find helpful

• 32-bit Windows cannot boot uefi, nor can it be booted from a (microsoft) efi bootloader. This includes Thin PC.
• The actual windows partition and installation doesn’t seem to care how it is booted – and it doesn’t matter how it was installed:
  • For UEFI, \Windows\system32\winload.efi is used to boot
  • For BIOS, \Windows\system32\winload.exe is used instead
  • Both sets of files exist regardless the type of system windows is installed on, and can be used interchangeably – I have taken a windows folder installed on a UEFI machine and booted in on a BIOS machine, and vice versa
• Windows Image Backups are always MBR, even if the source drive was GPT. (at least for the partition containing windows)
• Windows Image Backup’s recovery tool will not allow you to restore from a UEFI machine to a BIOS machine but…
• Because the image is MBR, you can boot it on a BIOS machine with a little work
• The image itself is unbootable because the partition offset of 64k is incompatible with a MBR boot. You need to have the bootloader on a separate drive.
• If it gives you errors when you try to boot from the separate drive, you may need to use some of the utilities listed here: http://idoneitmyself.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/windows-7-suddenly-wont-boot-reboot-and-select-proper-boot-device-or-insert-boot-media-in-selected-boot-device-and-press-any-key-repairing-the-windows-7-bootloader/
  Although you can skip the bcdedit stuff and use bcdboot instead
• bcdboot is your friend. It is available both on a running windows install and the windows recovery environment. Provided a path to a Windows installation and a drive letter, this tool creates the boot files, copies the boot loader, and configures the BCD store to just work.

Windows 8 gets rid of the Start button for a “hot corner” approach – peg your mouse cursor to the lower-left corner of the screen and you get access to the “Start screen.” It actually works pretty well, and is easier / quicker to reliably “hit” than the old start button. Likewise, the lower corner provides access to search and other options.

But say you have more than one monitor?

If you have two – it’s not really so bad. As long as the main display is the one to the left, and your second display is to the right – the right-side corners are easier to hit (Especially since there is actually a button on the right side)

But suppose you have three? And suppose you want your primary display to be in the middle. Suddenly the hot corners become unusable. Presently there is no solution that makes all corners work well, but you can at least get your lower-left “start” corner working better with a little “nudge”:

In your monitor setup, bump the side monitors up just a tad (you can click and drag to reposition them). The consequence of this is that windows that span monitors will not line up, but at least you can actually hit the start corner…

I would argue that in many ways the Windows 8 Consumer Preview does a decent job of integrating the touch and mouse input methods… as long as you only use one screen. But seriously, who does that anymore?

This window alone is about enough to make the Windows 8 Consumer Preview worth the trouble. What you cannot see in the picture is that the line and speed are updated realtime (faster than once per second). The graph makes it very clear when something causes the copy rate to slow down. It’s awesome.

This article is a must-read for anybody trying out Windows 8:
Windows Experience Blog – Getting Around Windows 8