http://www.itpro.co.uk/623338/microsoft-calls-ie6-spoiled-milk

Don’t drive drunk, don’t shop hungry and don’t install tired. As I said in my last post my main PC is reduced to safe mode only and after a very long and tiring Saturday I vegetated most of Sunday but in a fit of “I must do something” I installed XP on a second disk in my knackered machine.

I meant to fit a new drive and install the old one as a slave but I was too weary and just slipped a removable drive in. I now get a choice of Win 2k or XP now but the 2K won’t boot at all, in safe mode it says the SYSTEM is missing, a R from the old 2k CD didn’t help so it looks like I’ve truly knackered it this time.

Arrg, I have so many apps installed I can’t remember them all, I just wanted a look through all programs - I guess I just have to explore it from XP.

How do I get my favourites though? MS help explains it from IE 7 or 8 - I’m still on 6! I expect firefox can do it.

It took me ages to navigate my way into this blog entry page without them - one reason it’s been so long (did you miss me?).

Then I’ve got to drag all my Outlook express mails across - I seem to remember that is a pain. Do I have to recreate the folder structure by hand?

I do have back ups - just not simple restore the whole system ones. Now that external HD’s are cheap(ish) maybe I should look at something like the Mac time machine - any recommendations?

I’ve managed to bust my Windows installation. Continual reboot time even in safe mode :-(. I tried a fast repair from the install disks but it still kept rebooting. Like a fool I didn’t try safe mode at this point but tried to manually recover a load of files now it’s a blue screen of death BUT I can get safe mode after a fashion. It keeps looking for an install for some package but if I ignore that I’m up and running - in 640×400 16 colours. Please excuse any typos it’s a job to see what I’m typing!!!
I’m looking for the package it thinks I should install, failing that I’ll try and rename the directory the (half?) package is in.
Wish me luck!

I built a snapshot the other day. That is I created separate copy of all the current source code and built it to give a stable image to some testers. It crashed, just didn’t want to run.

OK, I thought, double check the sources are identical to my development area. Yes & it runs.
OK, I normally build a debug version - the snapshot will be a release build. Build a release build in my development area - it runs.
OK, I build with MSVS work bench but the snapshot is built from the command line so build it from the same command but in my development are. It runs.
Compare the binaries - different sizes, different contents… ?
Clean all objects etc and rebuild everything from scratch in both areas - same results one runs one doesn’t. Do it again in case I got it wrong, check the sources are the same (in case I got it wrong). Do it all over, and again. Phone a friend, search the web, bang head on desk, …

Finally I did what any novice would tell me to do. I switched the PC on and off, then cleaned and re-built the snapshot - it runs.

But why would a build from one command line differ from one in another DOS box (both started from the same Visual Studio command)??? And why didn’t I just try a reset earlier?

I had to write a quick utility today - just passing a few options in on the command line.  I used MSVC to create a console app and Robert was my parental sibling. However, when I ran it a MSDOS box popped up and disappeared - a bit messy. So I started a new app as a simple windows app & pasted the code in, but whoops, a windows app doesn’t start from main(argv, argc) it starts from

int APIENTRY WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance,
                     HINSTANCE hPrevInstance,
                     LPSTR     lpCmdLine,
                     int       nCmdShow)

So I spent half the day writing a parser to convert a command line into argv argc - easy enough until you allow for “this is just one param because it’s in quotes” etc.

I finally switched to unicode just so that I could use

    argv = CommandLineToArgvW(GetCommandLineW(), &argc);

but why isn’t there an ascii version? The argv / argc convention has been in use since the dawn of C, it is intrinsic to most C programs, not having it is a right pain.  Yes, I know the project was C++ not C but that is only because good old MSVC doesn’t even have a C project type.

Whilst I hate re-inventing the wheel and coding what has been coded a thousand times before I guess in these hard economic times it’s good to know there will always be work even if in a perfect world it would be pointless.

What is more irritating than young people talking about the “your” old times? Over at http://tech.uk.msn.com/features/gallery.aspx?cp-documentid=147411818

someone seems to be out of there pension zone.

 Actually it’s not too bad an article but monochrome monitors were different to colour monitors and you can’t get them any more. You may get colour monitors that only display in two colours but they aren’t the same thing! The old mono monitors had a separate interface. I know because I used to write  a twin headed DOS application and the only way to do it was using a standard colour monitor and a mono monitor as they used different address spaces. For the mono you wrote ASCII directly into the adaptors memory and it rendered it into a very nice sharp font. The fact you couldn’t get them any more was part of the death of the product.

As for DOS - don’t most of us use a command line windows prompt everyday? OK, maybe not most of us but plenty of us do. And Windows 95 sat on top of DOS, everyone knows that (well quite few people claimed it did).

Is it coincidence that yesterday I was trashing floppies, looking at ZIP drives, using my PDA, typing at a “DOS” prompt and discussing dial up modems with my neighbour?

I expect the author was one of the consultants to Ashes to Ashes - in my 1980’s we didn’t have trendy concealed lighting, bay trees, constatntly visible bra straps, …

That is if you are a user, as an Administrator you can access drive C, and can type commands to “run” from the Start button - ma-ha-ha tomorrow the world etc etc.

So how do you get to be an administrator? The same as any windows system, log in as administrator with Administrator as the password obviously.

But it never shows a login prompt - to get a login prompt you must hold down the shift key as windows loads. After some hours, days weeks, … OK a couple of goes, it occurred to me it seemed to load all the USB devices AFTER windows had booted and this was a USB keyboard (as supplied with the unit). I plug in my old PS2 keyboard and I’m in - tomorrow the world etc.

Once I could see drive C I could copy stuff onto it off a USB key, did I forget to click the little green padlock and “commit” my changes to the flash drive? Of course not (well only the once and that doesn’t really count does it?).

So there we are - one WES Thin Client neatly configured. Pretty soon you’ll be able to spot the administrators, they’ll be the ones walking round with an old keyboard under their arm - and muttering “don’t forget the commit, don’t forget the commit, ….”

I have a an old freeserve email account which is useful as I can pop3 to it and also access it via webmail. It is of course Orange web mail these days & it has only been since it has been Orange that I have intermittent problems logging in. This occurs sometimes with pop3 but mainly with web mail.

I have discovered the cause of the most recent problems, I don’t have “enable all cookies” set in my privacy settings (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/299331). Now I have done this I can access the web mail & delete some of the 1800 spams filtered off for me. Unfortunately as I have not received some mail I was expecting I will have to trawl through at least some of them

So, “enable all cookies” is that a wise option? Am I leave my (increasingly creaky) IE6 vulnerable to some attack I don’t know about?