I was debugging a Windows application that makes use of DirectShow to render media - and for some strange reason, the application would terminate without warning when run under Visual Studio's debugger.

No error message, no exceptions, nothing. The application ran fine outside the debugger. I was able to debug the same code base several weeks ago without incident.

Poking around a bit, I isolated the line of code causing the silent termination: The DirectShow IGraphBuilder interface's Render method. Digging deeper, I find that the ultimate culprit is Ahead Nero 7 Essentials, which had been installed on my development system several weeks before. Apparently, Nero Essentials installs a variety of DirectShow filters on the target system, and, these filters actively prevent running under a debugger. In this case (on my development system), there was absolutely no error message or other indication of why - just a silent termination.

After I isolated the problem, I was able to determine that there is supposed to be a "Nero Protection Error" message box presented to the user, but it never appeared on my system, nor did the system event log contain any useful information. Feh.

This gets my vote as one of the dumbest stunts I've ever seen. I am pretty sure there's nothing all that special about Nero's DirectShow filters, and, if someone really wants to reverse engineer them or break the protection/licensing, they will. This lame attempt does nothing more than encourage (force?) legitimate users to remove the Nero filters from their machines. Nice going. Did the developers or marketing geniuses stop to think about this use case?

Ahead Nero 7 Essentials just cost me an hour or more of productive time. Then there's the aggravation.

Lame. Stupid. Did I mention lame? And I used to *like* Nero software.

ImgBurn - Freeware, and it works!

Update: I've tried ImgBurn, a freeware CD/DVD image read/write utility, and so far, it looks good. UI is slightly wonky but it's a very good piece of free software - and, best of all, you can install it without Administrator rights. Give it a try!

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 »

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 »

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 »

Windows XP Troubleshooting

When you encounter a Dynamic-Link Library error (DLL error) or related Windows XP error, what can you do about it? How can you track down the source of the problem and, one hopes, fix a Windows XP problem?

With a little bit of Windows XP troubleshooting skills one can usually find the problem and fix it. If a Windows error of this type is troubling you, it can be fixed in most cases with some effort.read more »

I catch myself chuckling under my breath when Microsoft Developer Studio 2003 asks me this question:

My mental response every single time: "Oh, yes, very much so. Can I please stop now?"

Version 0.0.9.2.b (Beta) of the Windows shell tray scan utility is now available. This command-line utility provides a list of programs that have placed icons in the Windows shell tray, including the path to the executable file.read more »

Related topic: System Tray Scan Utility - identify programs that have icons in the tray.

I don't know about you, but I am saddened whenever I use a non-techie friend's computer and see more than two or three active tray icons in the Windows taskbar "system tray"*. (Usually I see six, seven, eight or even a few dozen!)

Why does it bother me? Because, most of the time, the computer owner has no idea what those icons are for, or how they got there.

It means that third-party installers (or worse, computer integrators or 'manufacturers' like Dell) have hooked more stuff into the auto start chain, which also means: more memory used, longer startup times, another prime opportunity to break the user's system with even more bloated, buggy software.read more »

What programs are running your system tray?

This command-line utility for Windows XP or Server 2003 will tell you which programs have inserted themselves into your "system tray"*.

It generates a list of PIDs, the program's location, and the number of visible and hidden icons for each program that has inserted itself into your system tray. read more »