Vishnu Varadaraj's Blog

Mounting iso images in Windows XP Download the undocumented tool for Windows XP from Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel for Windows XP to mount .iso, .img files. Vista installation tips: You can use the above tool to install Vista Beta 1 on Virtual PC 2004 since the VPC will fail to recognize the DVD image if you try to mount it directly. Create a new partition and reboot to continue installation of Vista beta1. Install VPC additions to add the video driver.

Kernel debugging on one machine using Virtual PC 2004 SP1 & Windows XP You no longer need to buy another machine or a copy of SoftIce to do full kernel debugging using two machines. This is a good setup for learning & hobby projects. Setup target VM Go to My Computer -> Properties -> Advanced -> Settings (Startup and Recovery) -> Edit Add '/DEBUG /DEBUGPORT=COM1' to the end of the settings in the boot file. Setup host machine. Edit settings for VM, configure COM1 to use a named pipe. Eg. "bkslash-bkslash-dot-\pipe\debug" Start KD by running "kd -y SRV*c:\websymbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols -k com:pipe,port=\\.\pipe\debug,resets=0,reconnect" or equivalent command. Restart target VM, you should see a message in KD saying "Connected to Windows XP..." Reference: http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2005/10/20/482413.aspx

.NET Decompiler aka Disassembler aka Reflector This is the best .NET decompiler around and it is free. http://www.aisto.com/roeder/dotnet/ This will decompile .NET bytecode(including the base class library) into more than one language(C#, VB, J# etc).

Deadlock in CLR involving GC & OS Loader lock. When the Microsoft .NET Framework Execution Engine has to perform garbage collection (GC), the .NET Framework Execution Engine must first suspend all managed threads. In most circumstances, a managed thread must set itself so that it can be suspended before leaving its managed state to run unmanaged code. This thread state is named GC PreEmptable. The GC PreEmptable thread state must be entered by the managed thread before leaving the managed state.In this particular deadlock condition, three different threads are involved as follows: •Thread 1: This thread is waiting for the Windows NT Loader Lock to complete its task. •Thread 2: This thread is the owner of the Windows NT Loader Lock. This thread has been suspended by the garbage collection thread. This thread will not release the Windows NT Loader Lock until this thread is restarted by the .NET Framework Execution Engine after the garbage collection is completed. In this case, becaus...

Eclipse for Java Getting the right free plugins for Eclipse is important: 1. To develop J2EE programs, Tomcat web applications, browse and query database contents, edit Html, Xml, schema files etc. - http://www.eclipse.org/webtools/ The ' Getting Started ' site has installation information. Please note that this is still in beta but quite usable. This gives you pretty much everything for web development. 2. To develop Hibernate applications, edit mapping files & running queries. - http://www.jboss.com/products/overview/jbosside Here are the ' Download Instructions '. 3. The Spring IDE - http://www.springframework.org/spring-ide/eclipse/

XmlSerializer in .NET easier way to access xml than DOM. maps xsd types to CLR types. can only support datastructures that can be expressed in xsd. can be executed in unsafe environments. additionally support SOAP section-5 encoding used by ASP.NET webservices. generates and compiles code on the fly to do serialization and deserialization. uses code dom compilation which requires use of temporary files on disk. hence the process should have read/write permissions on the folder. use ' Filemon ' to diagnose issues.

Enabling JIT debugging for managed code. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ .NETFramework\DbgJIT\ DebugLaunchSetting =2 (=1 to disable)

Debugging service/process startup. Please refer to the excellent article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/824344 Also, in Visual Studio set the 'Debugger' key to point to the VS solution as in "devenv.exe my.sln /run" Note that you can change the SCM timeout for the service startup in milliseconds at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control, ServicesPipeTimeout DWORD

Setting breakpoints in .NET webservice Put the following in a .ini file which has the same name as the assembly & run iisreset. [.NET Framework Debugging Control] GenerateTrackingInfo=1 AllowOptimize=0

Debugging XMLSerializer usage in .NET webservice. You can add a switch to the machine.config to keep compiler generated files: [system.diagnostics] [switches] [add name="XmlSerialization.Compilation" value="4"] [/switches] [/system.diagnostics] After this, the temp directory would have the generated files.

Running out of user ports under stress This is generally useful if you are creating and closing a lot of connections: \HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters MaxUserPort REG_DWORD 0xfffe \HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters TcpTimedWaitDelay REG_DWORD 0x2

Checking if client and server are the same machine. bool IsClientAndServerSame(HttpRequest request) { String remoteAddress = request.UserHostAddress; if (remoteAddress == null remoteAddress.Length == 0) return false; if (remoteAddress == "127.0.0.1" remoteAddress == "::1") return true; if (remoteAddress == request.LocalAddress) return true; return false; }

Dynamically loading .NET assemblies. It is not possible to unload a single assembly, so usually you have to load such assemblies in a separate appdomain to ensure proper cleanup. http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/clr/AppdomainFAQ.aspx#_Toc514058497 has additional information on how to load an assembly in another appdomain.

Debugging .NET assembly load failures Run fuslogvw.exe, set [HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Fusion\ForceLog] DWORD value to 1. For ASP.NET, select the “Custom” option, and in regedit, set [HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Fusion\LogPath] to some directory other than root.

Interlocked exchange operation on 64bit. CMPXCHG8B instruction with the lock prefix can be used on x86, but you should first verify the presence of the instruction using IsProcessorFeaturePresent(PF_COMPARE_EXCHANGE_DOUBLE)

Memory Barriers Memory barrier ensures that all reads/writes before the barrier have completed on the local processor thus separating accesses following the barrier from those before it. .NET Memory barrier is a no-op in x86, but is required in ia64, RISC platforms etc.