Virtual machines are great for testing product installation and update scenarios. I use Virtual Server currently with a base platform and undo disks enabled to test installation. When done – no matter what the impact is to my virtual machine – I click "Turn off Virtual Machine and Discard Undo Disks". Within seconds the machine is ready...

Windows Live Search for Mobile 1.0 has been released as announced on Live Search's blog. I used the beta for a while and really like this mobile smart client. It has a lot of capabilities driven from Live Search, but the screenshot below is one of its best features. It also supports category searches and shows traffic for major cities. To see mor...

Attached is the OpenSearch Discovery document for http://blogs.msdn.com/heaths. You can also use this file in Windows 7 Federated Search. Federated Search lets you search the web and other locations for different document types all within Windows. To add this search to Windows 7, follow these simple instructions. This should add "Heath's Blog"...

When installing Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1, there are a number of errors that might occur due to insufficient disk space. You might see an error like the following that reads, Error 1307.There is not enough disk space to install this file: D:WINDOWSSymbolsdllmfc80d.IA64.pdb. Free some disk space and click Retry, or click Cancel to exit. Anot...

When installing Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 on Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the Microsoft Office System, you might see an error that reads, The installer has encountered an unexpected error installing this package. This may indicate a problem with this package. The error code is 2902. The arguments are: ixoRegAddValue, , You can see...

If Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 fails to install, you might find additional .msp files under %WINDIR%\Installer for each failed attempt. You should not simply delete these patches, however, because if one of the patches was applied successfully to one target product, deleting that patch will cause future maintenance installs – including repair...

When you install a patch using Windows Installer, the .msp file is cached in the %WINDIR%\Installer directory. This accounts for some of the space required by Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1. A single patch is cached only once regardless to how many products the patch applies. Starting with Windows Installer 3.0, any patches that contain the Msi...

This article includes attachments to downloads for hosting some of my private works. RssIEExt.msi

There are several known issues when installing Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1. I've documented these below and, when possible, have included workarounds and status on any pending fixes. Contents Error 1718.File '...' was rejected by digital signature policy Install Rolls Back and Breaks Applications like Live Messenger Visual Studio 2005 Service...

When installing Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1, you may see an error like the following (file name will vary): Error 1718.File D:WINDOWSInstaller50baad.msp was rejected by digital signature policy. Knowledge Base article 925336 had originally documented instructions using the Local Security Policy UI to work around this issue based on my previou...