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December 2007 - Posts

How to Disable the UAC Prompt for a Specific Application

While I like User Account Control (UAC), there's always that one application that you need to run that requires admin rights. This is especially problematic if you need to automate that application from a batch file, scheduled task, or code build. While Read More...
Posted Monday, December 31, 2007 7:48 PM by jrobbins | 2 Comments

PowerShell Symbol Store

A while ago I wrote about Aaron Leerch 's Symbol Server Transaction Manager , which put a nice front end on managing your Symbol Server . As I have been harping for years, if you don't have a Symbol Server set up, you're not doing development. Aaron's Read More...
Posted Monday, December 31, 2007 7:39 PM by jrobbins | 1 Comments

Code Signing – It’s Cheaper and Easier than You Thought

One of the things I've always wanted to do, but never got around to, is to figuring out how to sign my code. Like most developers, I never really worried about code signing until Vista came along. Maybe it's just because I'm completely anal retentive, Read More...
Posted Friday, December 21, 2007 12:20 AM by jrobbins | 26 Comments

Cumulative Patching with WiX 2.0

Sometimes I wonder if Windows Installer will be the death of me. While I've successfully shipped device drivers, debuggers, and all sorts of bizarre products, I have to say that trying to get something installed on Windows is one of the more frustrating Read More...
Posted Monday, December 10, 2007 7:03 PM by jrobbins | 7 Comments

Use Two Debuggers at Once

One of my favorite debugging tricks is to get two debuggers on a process at once. Why should you sacrifice the ease of use of Visual Studio for the power of WinDBG ? Each of the debuggers has their place and when you're wrestling with that one tough problem Read More...
Posted Saturday, December 08, 2007 6:51 PM by jrobbins | 3 Comments

Reordering Your Taskbar Buttons (Fixing a Missing Feature in Windows)

Way back in 1993 at the Microsoft Windows 95 PDC, we all got to see the taskbar for the first time. Sitting there playing with the latest and greatest from Microsoft, I asked one of the developers on the shell team if they were going to allow users to Read More...
Posted Friday, December 07, 2007 5:25 PM by jrobbins | 4 Comments

MSBuild Debuggers!

It looks like I'm not the only one who wanted a debugger for MSBuild projects. When the MSBuild team asked everyone to spend $100 to prioritize features, the runaway winner was a debugger . Reading the comments to my original post (as well as the MSBuild Read More...
Posted Monday, December 03, 2007 2:44 AM by jrobbins | 2 Comments

PARAFFIN 1.02 – Numerous Bug Fixes

Very special thanks to Darren Stone for reporting several bugs and suggestions for PARAFFIN , my tool for assisting with maintaining Windows Installer XML (WiX) installations. I've posted a fixed version for your enjoyment. Here's what's new: Added -Win64 Read More...
Posted Monday, December 03, 2007 12:14 AM by jrobbins | 1 Comments