Visual Studio Setup

Installation and containerization of the Visual Studio family of products

Setting up Visual Studio 2005 to Download Debug Symbols

In Getting Debug Symbols even for Retail Builds I detailed how to set up your machine and Visual Studio .NET to download public symbols from Microsoft's symbol server. This process has changed for Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2. When debugging your projects it's often helpful or even necessary to see the functions in the call stack. Without symbols...

Getting Debug Symbols even for Retail Builds

Here inside Microsoft we of course have access to private debug symbols to help debug issues like I do in Windows Script as a member of the Customer Product-lifecycle Experience (CPX) team. We use a host of debugging tools like Windbg.exe, ntsd.exe, and even Visual Studio .NET. You can even download some of these debugging tools and related ...

x64 Windows Platforms have Shipped

Not so long ago, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 for x64 were released to manufacturing (RTM'd). Today, they have finally shipped and are available to consumers, but you won't find these yet on retail sales shelves.Windows XP Professional x64 Edition is available on x64 machines now, and users with x64 machines now can exchange their 32-bit...

Potential Legal Risks with Unauthorized Wi-Fi Access

Bruce Schneier pointed out an interesting article that got me thinking and even made me laugh a little. From the article: Suppose you turn on your laptop while sitting at the kitchen table at home and respond “OK” to a prompt about accessing a nearby wireless Internet access point owned and operated by a neighbor. What potential ...

Themes Fixed in .NET Framework 2.0 Beta 2

Surely by now you've seen the news on the Blogs.msdn.com homepage that both .NET Framework 2.0 Beta 2 and Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 (both also known as "Whidbey Beta 2") have been released, so I won't mention it. ;)I do want to share, however, after having written an article a long time ago entitled Windows XP Visual Styles for Windows Forms1...

Hacking the CAB for Smaller Patches

Working on 32- and 64-bit patch support for Developer Division projects like the .NET Framework 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005, I've been involved with many threads and in many meetings about the various scenarios and solutions for producing patches that target our supported platform architectures. .NET will ship in three different flavors ...

Windows Installer 3.1 Redistributable Available

Windows Installer 3.1 is now available as a redistributable from the Microsoft Download Center. Among the changes are support for MSIs targeting x64 platforms, which I described in a previous blog entry; some fixes for source resolution problems; and opt-in behavior for flyweight patching, which would've been a major burden for the Customer ...