Just in case anyone needs this, I thought I'd list this here. I needed to restore the standard include directories for Visual Studio .Net 2003. So, without further ado, here they are:

$(VCInstallDir)Include
$(VCInstallDir)atlmfc\include
$(VCInstallDir)PlatformSDK\include\prerelease
$(VCInstallDir)PlatformSDK\include
$(FrameworkSDK)include

Why Reboot?

WhyReboot is a small (~100KB) Windows application that helps you decide whether to reboot your computer after running an installer. It does this by displaying a list of "pending file operations" (rename, delete, etc) that will occur after rebooting your computer. Quite often, no reboot is really needed.

You can download the utility by clicking the file attachment link at the end of this article.

December 18, 2006 news flash: Version 1.0.1.537 now available. See our news release for more information.

Ministry of Silly Prompts

"Would you like to restart your computer now?" Arguably the most aggravating prompt displayed by your Windows-based computer.

You know, when I woke up this morning, I said to myself, "I think I'd like to reboot my computer several dozen times today."

Why should you have to reboot your Windows-based computer so many times when installing software? Why do Microsoft Windows installers create such a mess? read more »

I had the 'honor' of rescuing yet another victim of a pre-installed software nightmare. A new co-worker was working with his notebook (a Hewlett-Packard, recent vintage, less than a year old with Vista Home Basic installed).

The complaint? Minimum five (yes, FIVE) minute boot time from power-on to desktop interaction.

After a cursory examination, I found that it wasn't a hardware problem, nor was it due to memory limitations: the system had 512MB RAM, Vista was using just over 300MB with no other applications running (yes, that's a lot, but this is Vista, after all).read more »

You can remove items from (or add items to) the Vista Welcome Center. If your Windows Vista machine came bundled with a bunch of pre-loaded software and trialware (as do most consumer machines) you are likely to see promotional entries in the welcome center that may be more annoying than useful - for example, if you uninstall the cure-worse-than-the-disease anti virus software or some of the other disk-filler trialware, you will probably still see lingering but non-functional items in the Welcome Center long after you uninstalled the related programs. read more »

In the news: another SNAFU related to malfunctioning anti-virus software. See: Symantec breaks Chinese XP systems due to a false positive.read more »

[ed. note: this was originally posted on 6/30/2006 09:21:00 AM]
There were stories going around about Microsoft having the ability to 'pull the plug' on XP installations if Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) is not installed on a user's machine:

• Is Microsoft about to release a Windows "kill switch"?
• Are you having Windows Genuine Advantage problems?

Now, this may turn out to be FUD and disinformation, but if this is even partly true... very bad move on Microsoft's part. Even if it's totally untrue -- Microsoft ought to expect that their actions with Microsoft's Product Activation (WPA) and WGA expose them to broad suspicion about their motives.read more »

D-Link DWL-650 Info and Drivers

Interesting article regarding an external
antenna for this card:

http://c0rtex.com/~will/antenna/
(older version archived here) http://www.guerrilla.net/reference/80211_mod/dwl-650_ext_antenna/

Alternative drivers for D-Link DWL-650 wireless network card may be located
at D-Link's UK site:
ftp://ftp.dlink.co.uk/pub/wireless/dwl-650/read more »

If you are running Windows XP SP2 (including Media Center and Tablet Edition), and you have applied the Microsoft updates 925902 (MS07-017) and security update 928843 (MS07-008), and you are using Realtek audio components on your system, you may receive this error message when trying to use ElsterFormular, Realtek HD Audio Control Panel, TUGZip, and CD-Tag.

{application name} - Illegal System DLL Relocation

The system DLL user32.dll was relocated in memory. The application will not run properly. The relocation occurred because the DLL C:\Windows\System32\Hhctrl.ocx occupied an address range reserved for Windows system DLLs. The vendor supplying the DLL should be contacted for a new DLL.read more »

It looks as if Windows XP's number is up. According to various reports, Microsoft will be pulling the rug out from under Windows XP by forcing manufacturers to stop selling machines with XP by the end of 2008.read more »

A friend had me check out his ailing Windows XP Home notebook computer last night. Every time he booted the computer, it would display an endless stream of error messages about wuauclt.exe having caused an access violation. This message would reappear every 30 seconds or so.

Microsoft has a hotfix (see 'related links', below) that is supposed to address this problem, but I was unable to install the hotfix - the system would display an error message saying that it could not verify the system configuration, and therefore could not install the hotfix.

As it turns out, the computer in question had suffered a series of hard disk failures - the system event log showed a series of disk bad block errors dating back over a month. So, I expect that critical files on the hard disk have been corrupted - including, perhaps, the Extensible Storage Engine (ESE) database or related files used by esent.dll.read more »