Cosmin's Hooking testify: Technologies

Debugging tools and fun

Tue, 13 May 2008 04:38:14 GMT

Technorati Tags: Team Foundation Server,Enterprise Developement

is an new version of WinDBG (Version 6.9.3.113) released with some improvements regarding symbols server support some other usefull commands check this out here http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/whatsnew.mspx .

and is a windows debugger extension open project on codeplex, quite interesting stuff you have to use the DDK build to compile, but it works, and the team have an blog too, quite interesting stuff up there http://blogs.msdn.com/ntdebugging/

Also an quite interesting topic regarding debugging large and complex applications posted by one of the Phoenix compiler team member on VC Blog, basic is how to use the /RTC compiler flag for run time error checks. This can help you find places where there is unintended data loss, finds usage of uninitialized variables, detects overruns and underruns, stack pointer corruption and stack corruption.

You can find more information about this at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/8wtf2dfz(VS.80).aspx

Zune up2date and Live Messenger Control

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 08:03:52 GMT

Yestarday was the Zune update procedure on MS site, and over Zune software too, so my device is now up2date

And some interesting stuff over one of the new feature of Live Messenger , Messenger HTML control can be installed and set here , to get an live touch with your friends, or contacts.

interesting topic from one of the Imaging Guys on MS Campus - Eduard Koller

NT Kernel Mode Time's changing and this time from scratch

Mon, 16 Jan 2006 21:44:58 GMT

These days, in time of trying different methods of Inter-Process communication i found one very interesting issue concerning usage of MmSecureVirtualMemory , and that on Michael Howard’s blog, so that give me some reasons for code review and for sure using Prefast over some classes. It is true that the amount of code for Windows NT kernel-mode applications is not comparable with that used in day by day applications but the implications of that code is at least twice heavy.

Here comes the issue :

If you run PREfast on code using this function and it's not in a try/except block, you may get this warning:

253 - MmSecureVirtualMemory locks VADs not pages.
Additional Information: Dereferences must still be protected by try-except.

The advice for this warning at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/wcepbguide5/html/wce50grfPREfastWarning253.asp is simple:

Defective Source

MmSecureVirtualMemory(NULL,
                      0,
                      0);

Corrected Source

; // use something else

So than, have fun by low-level development.

The beginning of Longhorn Era

Thu, 22 Dec 2005 15:12:48 GMT

One good Christmas present - the most stable version of Windows Vista yet.. Build 5270.
Chronicles of a Developer Just started When I first met Longhorn (build 4372) It was all physical for me, at first. I saw the spinning semi-transparent windows, the gradient indulgence, and the smooth video playback. I watched whatever demo movies I could find online. I didn’t make it to PDC in 2003 and 2004 , but I do believe that I got Microsoft’s message; Longhorn is going to change the computing experience as we know it today. I read the comments pertaining to the lack of performance when running Longhorn in a virtual environment and I knew the only choice for me was to buy a new pc. I wanted to experience and develop with in the operating system as effectively as possible and I knew that wouldn’t be possible without giving Longhorn its own hard drive. First Impression After the installation (Longhorn OS, Visual Studio Whidbey, THEN the Longhorn SDK), I was greeted by a new system default wallpaper. We had left famous green hills of Windows XP for the pre-harvest golden fields of wheat. I took note; the new Windows operating system was germinating. A new chunky sidebar to the right now displayed my computer time in the form of an analog clock. The clock is visually attractive and provides a first look at the visuals possible in Longhorn. The sidebar will act as a place for information that you would like to constantly monitor. Imagine the last five emails you received, stock quotes, your music play list or even the last five blog entries from that feed that you just HAVE to keep a close eye on. Blogs I am a big advocate of blogs. Microsoft’s openness through writing and reading blog entries, I believe, has lead to some valuable customer feedback. LonghornBlogs.com is a great place to find bloggers talking about Longhorn. In addition, a list of independent blogs should appear soon on the MSDN Longhorn Developer Center once the Longhorn blog landscape has solidified. MSDN The Longhorn Developer Center on the MSDN website has a lot of information to read through regarding the different aspects of Longhorn. The Longhorn FAQ cover a lot of the initial questions on getting started and some basic concepts. A lot of good articles are available online as well as the complete “Introduction to WinFX” book. I actually purchased the paperbound version of the book and found that it is a good primer for learning purposes, but some of the code samples do not work in the PDC Build of Longhorn.