Software Sleuthing
Software Testing, Development, and Related
Blog Migration
For more flexibility in my posting options, I'm moving off of blogs.msdn.com. New posts can be found...
Date: 10/22/2011
Your Password is Too Secure
For obvious reasons, Microsoft employees are asked to refrain from bashing other teams or products...
Date: 09/13/2011
WinDbg / i386kd Primer
A handful of people on my team are working with the Windows code base to ensure we don't break them...
Date: 08/29/2011
Console output with a transparent background color
In Windows land, if you want to print out colored text to a console, you will probably end up...
Date: 07/26/2011
How Testers Test versus How Users Use
With the emphasis on SDETs and generic Engineering teams, I've seen a growing disparity in how...
Date: 07/11/2011
Hex Conversion via a Batch File
Occasionally, when something bad happens, an application will return an exception code (which is...
Date: 06/29/2011
Common Process Termination Values
When your application does something the OS (or the application itself) doesn't like, often the...
Date: 06/13/2011
Batch File String Substitution with Nested Environment Variables
The SET command has some nice extensions that let you do various manipulation operations on...
Date: 06/03/2011
Limits of OLEDB and Access Passwords
People that know me know I hate useless error codes. During code reviews if I see someone attempting...
Date: 05/25/2011
The Many Faces of Visual C++
Microsoft has an uncanny ability to confuse and befuddle users with the ever changing names of...
Date: 12/15/2009
Magic Numbers: Integers
After many moons of sitting in a queue somewhere, the MSDN Tester Center just posted my intro...
Date: 10/09/2009
Test Plan Template
While looking at some of the traffic statistics for the MSDN Tester Center, I noticed that a bunch...
Date: 10/02/2009
The Brute Tester
A co-worker of mine was working on a tool to watch our release share for the appearance of a test...
Date: 06/01/2009
Crashed Conference Room (ɯooɹ)
So we have these fancy touch screen displays on the outside of our conference rooms which will tell...
Date: 05/21/2009
Upcoming Testing Conferences (2nd half of 2009)
Here is my semiannual post on testing conferences that will be occurring later this year. CAST July...
Date: 05/13/2009
Communication is Optional
Clear communication is essential to our jobs and yet it always amazes me how poorly we do it. I...
Date: 04/14/2009
Top 25 software errors
SANS, along with a coalition of individuals and software organizations, just released their list of...
Date: 01/12/2009
New Black Book
Before the holidays, there was a big re-organization of personnel here in Xbox land. As a result, I...
Date: 01/07/2009
MiniDumps and "Bad" Stacks
A fellow reader sent a comment outlining the following problem: I'm using the DMPSTK example from...
Date: 11/10/2008
Upcoming Testing Conferences (1st half of 2009)
Here are the links and dates for some of the testing related conferences which are...
Date: 11/04/2008
New Xbox Experience
This blog has been pretty quiet for a while since we've been busy doing the last push getting the...
Date: 11/03/2008
Off to StarWest
I'm off at StarWest, so the blog will be a bit quieter this week. If you happen to be in Anaheim,...
Date: 09/29/2008
Save My Image File's Metadata
The relatively new "Metadata Working Group" just released their first publication on guidelines for...
Date: 09/25/2008
Running 32bit dependent scripts in a 64bit world
As seen earlier, it can be problematic to run scripts which rely on 32bit COM objects on a 64bit...
Date: 09/18/2008
CreateObject fails with 0x80040154
I've got a handful of stand-alone script files (mostly JavaScript) which I run from cscript.exe or...
Date: 09/17/2008
Testing when "the code is the documentation"
Throughout the course of my testing career, I've often heard this dreaded statement. Despite the...
Date: 09/03/2008
Security Tools: Codenomicon
About three years ago, when the Xbox 360 was getting close to launching, we went through a security...
Date: 08/26/2008
Bad Error Messages: "Operation Failed"
Here is an error message from a Microsoft product that falls into the completely useless category....
Date: 08/26/2008
Developer Tip: Add a blank macro so testers can inject code
While I was working on writing some API tests for a module that was being integrated into the Xbox...
Date: 08/11/2008
Upcoming Testing Conferences (2nd half of 2008)
I was talking with a test manager yesterday about recruiting opportunities, and he was wondering...
Date: 07/30/2008
Leave well enough alone
I was reviewing a check-in the other day, and one of the changes was to fix a line of code which...
Date: 07/17/2008
Digital LEGOs
So I recently ran across the LEGO Digital Designer, which is a free download enabling you to build...
Date: 07/15/2008
Custom "View Source" Application on IE
In the process of setting up a 64bit Server 2008 box, I ran into a little issue trying to convince...
Date: 07/07/2008
Compile First, then Check-In
We've had a recent rash of build breaks, so the team has been getting hardcore about requiring a...
Date: 07/02/2008
Free Security Book: HAC
The Handbook of Applied Cryptography is being offered for free download (for personal use of course)...
Date: 06/30/2008
Know Thine Product's Language
As a technical tester (SDET), you are expected to help find bugs that are written in the programming...
Date: 06/25/2008
Automating Crash Dump Analysis: Some Final Thoughts
For a reference, here are some links to the previous parts in this series: · Prolific Usage of...
Date: 06/23/2008
Showing the Disassembly from a .DMP File (Automating Crash Dump Analysis Part 4)
When investigating a crash, it can often be beneficial to see the assembly leading up too, and even...
Date: 06/17/2008
Getting the Crash Details from a .DMP File (Automating Crash Dump Analysis Part 3)
Aside from a stack trace (the "where"), you probably want to know something about the crash (the...
Date: 06/06/2008
Getting the Stack from a .DMP File (Automating Crash Dump Analysis Part 2)
So now that we have a memory dump file, and know how to open it, we will want to pull some useful...
Date: 06/02/2008
Opening a Crash Dump File (Automating Crash Dump Analysis Part 1)
So let's assume for the moment that you have a collection of crash dump files from your team's...
Date: 05/27/2008
Prolific Usage of MiniDumpWriteDump (Automating Crash Dump Analysis Part 0)
As a precursor to a series on programmatically querying crash dump files, I wanted to first talk...
Date: 05/19/2008
New Old Group
Just a quick note to let you all know that I moved back over to the Xbox platform team today (the...
Date: 05/19/2008
Résumé Tip: Don't turn on revision tracking
At one point, I ran across a résumé (in Word format) which had revision tracking turned on. It...
Date: 05/14/2008
Automating Large Image Conversion with Photoshop
So fairly recently, I've merged my fascination with extremely large images with my fascination of...
Date: 05/12/2008
You Don't Need a Zune to use the Zune Software (aka "yet another free media player")
With the release of version 2.5 of the Zune software, I thought I would point out a fairly obvious,...
Date: 05/06/2008
Colossal Handle Leak
So I was un-installing an application (which I won't name) and just happened to notice a rather...
Date: 05/05/2008