I wasn't fortunate enough to attend the Bill Gates town hall in person today. Though it was being webcasted to all MPRs on campus - I decided to watch it from my desk, after all I feared shedding a tear in front of a whole bunch of colleagues. But the load on the network gave me the slip and I had to go into an MPR. I couldn't help but shed a tear - but I wasn't alone - the man himself shed a few tears when the energetic Big Boy Ballmer couldn't hold himself together any longer, that moment, I’m sure the whole world broke down. Dang - Today hurts deep.

As I ask myself when the first time was I ever heard of Bill Gates. I can't even remember it’s something like how you don't even remember someone telling you – “this is your brother” or "this is your sister". I grew up knowing this chap - he wasn't just a hero, or just an inspiration, he is a way of life - someone who we look up to as a role model who we can’t replicate even a smallest fraction of how we live not just our professional life but also our personal.

The media covered the day pretty well, even my mother who is generally up to date on things but not technology in particular, was eager to speak to me today about how the media was covering Bill. However, everyone seems to be bidding farewell to Bill. This is ok for people who just saw him as an entrepreneur, as a computer industry leader. However, for people who look up to him as a role model, it’s just another chapter, they realize that Bill Gates is just being himself, doing things others didn't even dare to dream. He started this company even before I was born, I believe in everything that this company does, I'm a part of it just cause of him. ..and I hope someday, I get the courage to give up all the small little things I may have done but hold close and move on to be of any little help I can be to people around the world, be it in Education or Health.

Bill, you just didn't create Microsoft, you created the software industry. Every person in this industry, be it they work for Microsoft, its partners or even its competition, holds you in high regard, we hope to work hard, smart and in every way to push this industry and its state of the art forward and continue to make you proud!

Read more on Sukesh's blog at https://www.awesomeideas.net/page/IIS7-Mobile-Admin.aspx

Sukesh has also shared the source code on Codeplex, if there is a feature you'd like to contribute towards, you can find the project at https://www.codeplex.com/IIS7MobileAdmin/

Thanks a ton for this utility Sukesh, it sure rocks!

As it turns out in WPF you need to use the _ (underscore) char instead of a & to assign a shortcut key. Thanks to a colleague of mine who pointed out the reason for it being that using a '&' in XAML would require typing &amp due to XML syntax.

Rob Relyea and a few others from the VS 2008 Designer and Blend team discussed on an internal alias as to how to make it easier for developers moving from the Windows Forms/Visual Basic world to be made aware of this change. If you do have any suggestions do drop a comment below or you can also leave a comment on Rob's blog post on this topic here.

Rajesh Sampath and I will be speaking at Tech ED India (or Techmela as it’s called in its new incarnation, which is an amalgamation of Tech ED, Mix, MEDC and ITPC all happening at the same time, same place!). We will deliver a talk titled Model Driven Development using Microsoft Domain Specific Language Tools. We will start with a background on Model Driven Development, touch upon Software Factories and then dive deep into Domain Specific Language Tools, what they are, how you can create your own Domain Specific Language and at the end take a look at an implementation of a DSL within Microsoft IT.

So if you are in Mumbai attending TechMela this Saturday (16th June) and are interested in Domain Specific Languages then do drop by for our session slated at 16.20.

Update: The Slide Deck from our session can be downloaded from here. Some demo video's of our DSL's are here and here.

We had an application that would generate an Assembly using CodeDom based on certain parameters. The parameter list for one scenario got so huge that the app generated a class with a constructor with 39,000 lines of code. When we tried instantiating an object of this class our app would just crash with a "Common Language Runtime has detected an invalid program" - InvalidProgramException.

PEVerify.exe would not return any errors (and say that the IL is just fine) but when you try and run NGEN.exe it would fail at that gigantic method.

So the problem is with the JIT compiler. There is a limitation on the number of local variable the JIT compiler in the CLR can handle for .NET 2.0 - which was restricted to a max of 32767 (which includes the local used by the JIT itself as well). So once in a blue moon with a GIGANTIC method that you just can't do with out for some strange reason will give you this Exception. This problem is documented in KB (I would like to point out that this is not the only scenario in which the CLR would throw the InvalidProgramException, this is one of the reasons you'd see it).

There is a Hotfix available for this problem now which increases the limit of local variables from 32767 to 4 million. The problem (and hence the reason for this blog entry) is that KB 919514 (https://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=919514), which is related to the Hotfix doesn't seem related at all from the description. And the KB that does sound related KB 312544 (https://support.microsoft.com/kb/312544 - problem  #3) doesn't speak of the Hotfix. Our appologies for this confusion - I've written an email to the content team to resolve this documentation issue.

Till then please read KB 919514 and contact PSS for the Hotfix. This fix has already been branched into the Orcas release.

 UPDATE (29/12/2006) : I just got a notification that the content team has updated KB 312544 to reflect the availability of the Hotfix.

The Windows Vista blog lists 12 Cool Features of Windows PowerShell. I just wanted to add a couple more. So here goes…

[upto #12 here]

13) Native support for navigating the Windows Registry & Windows Certificate store

Browse through the Windows Registry and Windows Certificate store like how you would browse through a folder structure on a Hard drive

Switch to the registry by typing cd hklm:

PS C:\> cd hklm:

Browse hives like Directories/Folders  

PS HKLM:\> cd software

PS HKLM:\software> dir

   Hive: Microsoft.PowerShell.Core\Registry::HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\software

SKC  VC Name                           Property
---  -- ----                           --------
  1   1 C07ft5Y                        {(default)}
647   0 Classes                        {}
 10   0 Clients                        {}
  3   0 ComputerAssociates             {}
  1   0 Crystal Decisions              {}
  1   0 Gemplus                        {}
  1   0 InstallShield                  {}
  1   0 L&H                            {}
  1   0 Macromedia                     {}
146   0 Microsoft                      {}
  2   0 ODBC                           {}
  1   0 Policies                       {}
  0   1 Program Groups                 {ConvertedToLinks}
  1   0 Schlumberger                   {}
  0   1 Seagate Software               {ConfIIS4}
  0   0 Secure                         {}
  2   0 VapiVS71                       {}
  2   0 Windows 3.1 Migration Status   {}

Its the same with Certificate store - just use cd cert:  

14) Native support for XML

Windows Powershell has native support for XML, infact XML is a data type. Here’s an example, for simplicity sake I’m not reading the XML from a file but typing it in. Its really easy to ready XML off a file BTW.

PS C:\> $MyXml = [xml]"<Order><OrderNumber>11111</OrderNumber><CustomerName>Bill Gates</CustomerName><Product>Windows Vista Ultimate</Product><Qty>99</Qty></Order>"

So at the Windows Powershell prompt I create a variable $MyXml and pass it a string which contains my Order XML. Notice the [xml] casting that I’m doing, so what I end up with in $MyXml is an XML Object.

I can then access my XML Object simply by typing it out to see the root elements

PS C:\> $MyXml

Order

-----

Order

Or I can see the inner text of the Root elements, Windows Powershell infact formats the output for me in a nice table. It will be much better to view your XML in this way when you have say a lot more nodes within the Order root element.

PS C:\> $MyXml.Order

OrderNumber         CustomerName        Product             Qty

-----------         ------------        -------             ---

11111               Bill Gates          Windows Vista Ul... 99

If I want to I can even access a particular node in my XML like this

PS C:\> $MyXml.Order.CustomerName

Bill Gates

PS C:\>

Well there is a whole lot more, you can even use XPATH, here is a great article on MSDN if you are looking out to play with XML using Windows Powershell - https://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/topics/winpsh/payette3.mspx

The list can just go on… I’d better stop. Windows Powershell – a shell you’ll fall in love with if you are an admin or a developer – just go try it today!

Where ever you are reading this blog from, I can say with 93% certainty that you are reading it on the software that Microsoft created. For me Microsoft is much more than just a software company that I work for - its a way of life, everything that you do, you impact millions of people, changing the world is a habit at Microsoft. The 70,000 of us worldwide, are inspired to do that only by the *xtra larger than life* leadership. Anybody who has had even a glimpse of the passion and aggression expressed in our annual company meetings and global briefings knows Microsoft isn't to be taken lightly; this isn't just a company, its probably 1 point less than being a religion. No matter how humble Gates was being during the press conference on Thursday in saying that his contribution to the hot new products Microsoft comes out with is over estimated - Well Mr. Gates every employee in your company can do that cause he/she is inspired by you, its not *just* your technical talent, its just the person that you are that inspires everything we do.

Being successful is probably the easy part - what is difficult is not to let success get to your head - not to let the success we've had in the past to change us, not to let that change then cause us not to be successful in the future. Gates has been an inspiration and an icon for me in this respect. Being humble when being the worlds richest man I'm sure isn't easy. I still recall from late 2005 in my second meeting with Gates, a colleague of mine asked (the most asked question) how is it being the worlds richest man? Gates giggled - and then the reply he gave was almost identical to what he said this Thursday, with wealth comes responsibility and he feels responsible on how he spends his wealth and that he has to give back to society the wealth the society has given him in the right areas which is health and education. No one can replace Gates at Microsoft - he will be very dearly missed. I'm sure he will continue to stand by us and continue to inspire the teams at Microsoft even after two years to head out and "Change the world, in ways, it needs to be changed".

In the era of the dotcom boom - I remember seeing an advertisement of a company called 3rd agenda. The advertisement carried the justification for the company's name - Gods 1st Agenda was to create the world, 2nd to send his messengers to spread religion and this company was entrusted with the 3rd agenda which was to evangelize technology. At that time, way back in the year 2000, I was amused but nothing else by the wit. Today it comes back to me. I'm a religious person, have strong belief in god and his prophets, I also believe that there will no more prophets. Maybe technology was really next on Gods agenda, maybe we really are witnessing the execution of the 3rd Agenda. Nothing has changed in the past 30 years as much as Technology and Gates was at the center and was responsible for most of this change.

Though it’s very difficult for me to accept the fact that Gates will no longer be our Cheif Software Architect but for the nobel cause that Gates will be devoting his time to two years from now, my respect for Gates has only grown many folds.

Friday morning saw the dawn of a whole new era, a whole new Microsoft, a whole new world. The leadership that gates is handing over the flag to is strong, young, energetic, inspired, aggresive and passionate about changing the world in just the same way that Gates was 31 years ago. Hello *New* World. Microsoft's leadership might have changed but not its source of inspiration - which has only got stronger, with which we will build better products that out customers can derive more value from, With Gates still as our Chairman we will continue to in Gates's words “change the world, in ways, it needs to be changed”.

•	The Windows Installer service may not start.
•	The Windows Firewall Service may not start.
•	The Network Connections folder is empty.
•	The Windows Update Web site may incorrectly recommend that you change the Userdata persistence setting in Microsoft Internet Explorer.
•	Active Server Pages (ASP) pages that are running on Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) return an “HTTP 500 – Internal Server Error” error message.
•	The Microsoft COM+ EventSystem service will not start.
•	COM+ applications will not start.
•	The computers node in the Microsoft Component Services Microsoft Management Console (MMC) tree will not expand.
•	Authenticated users cannot log on, and a blank screen appears after the users apply the October Security Updates.

Please take a look at the following KB for a resolution to these problems - https://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=909444