Do typos bother you?

Typos do bother me. I guess that's because when I am reading something, they hit (and hurt) my eyes pretty quickly (so if you are seeing typos on this blog, you know why: I do not read my own blog :) and it sort of gives the impression that the person who was writing it may not have paid enough attention to the piece, somewhat decreasing the over all value of it.

Anyway, today I was looking at my Google Reader RSS subscriptions and noticed a new article from Microsoft KB here: "Configuring WinRM for HTTPS" (click on pic above to see the actual page).

There is nothing special about this KB other than that it is on its 8th revision (wow!) as of May 17, 2012, yet apparently information was printed without going through a spell-checker. In fact, there is a note at the bottom of the article which prepares us for such typos:

Note This is a "FAST PUBLISH" article created directly from within the Microsoft support organization. The information contained herein is provided as-is in response to emerging issues. As a result of the speed in making it available, the materials may include typographical errors and may be revised at any time without notice.

I sent a message to them using the feedback system at the bottom. I wonder how long it will take them to correct it.

Update: 2012-06-29
Almost the same story but this time, it's about an Apple Knowledge Base article. Here is a very common typo in article about 'Apple Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter: FAQ' (HT5309) that was last modified 10 days ago (click on picture to see the actual page).

Unfortunately, there is no feedback mechanism on the page to tell Apple about this.
Oh, Microsoft page is still not corrected. I guess they are not reading the feedback.

Resolving Office 2010 Beta Activation Issues

My Office 2010 Beta installation has been working fine for the most part but apparently activation kept failing. Here is the step by step fix posted at MSDN Social. If you are getting 0x8007232B or similar errors when trying to activate Office 2010 Beta, give it a try.

Search Commands from Microsoft Office

Woot! I never liked the ribbons as it made it more difficult for me to find out when I was looking for a command. I found myself going to help and searching many times.

Well, help is here. Microsoft seems to listen! In their www.OfficeLabs.com site, they released a new toy called Search Commands, which makes finding command in office very convenient. Try it out, if you are one of those users annoyed by ribbons.

Path Maximum Transmission Unit (PMTU) Black Hole Routers

Windows XP SP3 promises detection of Black Hole Routers, which is supposed to improve over all networking experience especially for laptops. While investigating the subject, I came across a good, comprehensive article about PMTU (Path Maximum Transmission Unit) at Microsoft site.

By default PMTU Black Hole Discovery for TCP/IP is disabled on Windows XP machines. It can be enabled though:

Setting: EnablePMTUBHDetect
Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters
Value Type: REG_DWORD Value: 1

"Changes in PMTU black hole router detection in Windows Server 2003 and in Windows Vista" is a good follow up article.

Enabling of PMTU Black Hole detection and changes are all result of Microsoft's "Next Generation TCP/IP Stack".

The Cable Guy from Microsoft has an article on enhancements that "Next Generation TCP/IP Stack" (terrible name IMHO) offers.

Outlook hangs due to Search Issue

I love to keep all my e-mails. So, I have huge outlook .pst files dedicated to some some active lists that I subscribed more than 10 years ago. Recently, I noticed that instant search in Outlook 2007 was not functioning properly. It would never find anything.

I checked the instant search index status (Tools > Instant Search > Indexing Status). It said something like
"Outlook is currently indexing your items." 1 item remaining in Inbox 150000 items remaining across all open mailboxes

It was clear that instant search was not working properly. So I checked "Windows Search" service by typing "Start > Run > services.msc"
Services was up and running...

Then I checked "Control Panel > Indexing Options". I decided to rebuild the index. So, I clicked "Indexing Options > Advanced > Rebuild" and changed Index location to a folder in a different drive that I usually use for backups.

Things went totally haywire after that :( Whenever I tried to check Indexing Options, it gave me messages like "Retrieving windows Search status" or "Windows search is performing maintenance". Restarting service did not help.

To add to my troubles, Outlook 2007 stopped working. I was able to start it in Safe Mode but it would not start in regular mode and just freeze during startup.

I started Outlook in safe mode and then ran Office diagnostics (Outlook > Help > Office Diagnostics), which found no issues. Google searches did not result in anything useful. Finally, I used Office 2007 CD to "repair" to no avail.

At this point I was not sure why Outlook was not working but because all this stuff did not happen the same day, at first I did not suspect them to be related. In fact, after an unexpected power outage, some Vista permissions were screwed up and I was thinking that issue could be related to .pst folder permissions.

Then it downed on me! I disabled/stopped Windows Search and then started Outlook. Puff! It launched without any issues. Basically, Outlook 2007 was detecting that Windows Search was not available,and disabling Instant Search.

I did a little bit more search on how to build index and found this MSDN thread:

"Set the registry value HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search\SetupCompletedSuccessfully to 0 and try restarting the Windows Search service."

I did and it worked. Windows Search started indexing items properly and Outlook 2007 launched without a hitch. Problem solved.

For reference, below is what I saw in the Event viewer when index was corrupted and restarting service would not help:

Log Name: Application
Source: Microsoft-Windows-Search
Date: 7/14/2007 4:28:59 PM
Event ID: 3026
Task Category: Gatherer
Level: Error
Description:
Advise Status Change failed. The system is probably low on resources. Free up resources and restart the service.

Context: Windows Application, SystemIndex Catalog

Details:
The content index server cannot update or access information because of a database error. Stop and restart the search service. If the problem persists, reset and recrawl the content index. In some cases it may be necessary to delete and recreate the content index. (0x8004117f)

Technet Webcast: Windows Hang and Crash Dump Analysis by Mark Russinovich

This is a great presentation from Mark Russinovich on BSODs.

Learn to analyze Microsoft Windows crash dumps, diagnose the cause, pinpoint a solution, and resolve the problem. Intended for system administrators, this webcast explains how system crashes occur and what happens when you reboot a crashed system. We lead you through the crash dump analysis process step by step, introducing the latest tools from Microsoft and handy tricks for isolating the cause of a crash.

Presenter: Mark Russinovich, Chief Software Architect and Cofounder, Winternals Software

Mark Russinovich is chief software architect and cofounder of Winternals Software, a company that specializes in advanced systems software for Microsoft Windows. He is coauthor of Windows Internals, 4th Edition (Microsoft Press, 2004), a Microsoft MVP, and he contributes to the Sysinternals tools at www.sysinternals.com, including Process Explorer, Filemon, and Regmon. Mark has a PhD in computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and is a senior contributing editor for Windows IT Pro Magazine.

To avoid possible problems, we suggest you temporarily disable pop-up blocker software before viewing the webcast.

Now that Tech-Ed is over, there are a lot of webcasts available. You can view Other sessions from Tech·Ed 2006 Webcasts: Power to the Pros.


View other sessions from Tech·Ed 2006 Webcasts: Power to the Pros.

Microsoft Surface

The launch of Microsoft Surface marks the beginning of a new technology category and a user-interface revolution. Surface, Microsoft’s first surface computer, provides effortless interaction with digital content through natural hand gestures, touch and physical objects. Surface computing breaks down traditional barriers between people and technology.

read more digg story

IIS Permission Denied Error

I had some asp pages that worked fine on IIS5/w2K but gave me an error like below on IIS6/W2K3.

Microsoft VBScript runtime error '800a0046'
Permission denied
/SelfService/e360.asp, line 69

I searched thru MS site but could not come up with anything. I found my answer on ASP emporium site.

Line 69 has an OpenTextFile command with option 8 to modify and IUSR_ did not have rights to write into that file/folder. To fix it,

- Created a local user acc
- IIS Manager > Browse to Web sites > Default Web Site >> Properties > Directory Security > Edit > Set User name:MachineName\, Password: password
- Give Write Permission to on C:\Inetpub\wwwroot

Ms. Dewey: Search with a twist

Microsoft live search has been live for a while. Have you heard about the ad campaign for it. I mean the viral search campaign: No? Welcome to Ms. Dewey then :)