Jun 02 2011

How to install VC++ update KB2455033

Head to the Visual C++ Team’s blog entry entitled “MS11-025 Visual C++ Update Issue“, scroll down to the section entitled “Visual Studio 2010 RTM with Windows SDK”, and follow the instructions there.  For completeness sake, here they are:

If you have Visual Studio 2010 RTM and Windows SDK 7.1 installed on an x64 machine, then the Visual Studio 2010 update (KB2455033) fails to install on your machine.

Workaround

The workaround for this issue:

  1. Go to Add/Remove Programs and uninstall the package “Microsoft Visual C++ compilers 2010 Standard x64″
  2. Try installing KB2455033 again.

Feb 21 2011

Windows Phone 7 Version Information

I was working with the updated version of the Windows Phone 7 (WP7) emulator and was curious to find out what software versions were running on it.  Here is the output I got:

(Sorry, this picture was lost. ?)

For those of you who search for this kind of information, the plain text:

OS Platform: WinCE
OS Version: 7.0.7389
Silverlight Version: 3.7.10302.0

And here is the code used to generate that dialog box:

Note that when I ran this on the phone itself (without the update), it reported the following:

OS Platform: WinCE
OS Version: 7.0.7004
Silverlight Version: 3.7.10218.0

Feb 17 2011

If Windows Azure Cmdlets v1.3 Won’t Install

I downloaded the latest Windows Azure Cmdlets to manage my cloud storage at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/azurecmdlets.  However, it could find my installed Azure SDK v1.3.

If running the “C:\WASMCmdlets\startHere.cmd” fails to find the “Windows Azure Software Development Kit 1.3” on the “Detecting Required Software” screen, it is because it is looking for version 1.3.11122.0038 of the SDK. However, my installed version is 1.3.20121.1237. So, I opened the “C:\WASMCmdlets\setup\scripts\dependencies\check\CheckAzureSDK.ps1” file and changed the two “1.3.11122.0038” values to “1.3.20121.1237” and re-ran startHere.cmd.

To find out what version of the Azure SDK you have installed, look in your registry at “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Windows Azure SDK\DisplayVersion”.

Note: After writing this, I discovered that Nick Harris had also posted a solution on his blog: http://www.nickharris.net/2011/02/windows-azure-service-management-cmdlets-and-azure-sdk-refresh-feb

Feb 12 2011

When Microsoft Word Won’t Start

If you try to run Microsoft Word and it crashes before it even opens, look for a normal.dot or normal.dotx file in your user profile and rename it to normal.dotm.old.  Then try restarting Word.

On Windows XP this file can usually be found in:

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates

On Windows Vista and Windows 7 this file can usually be found in:

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates

I’m amazed at how often this fixes the problem.

Oct 06 2010

C++ Casting Operators

  • By in C++
  • 2 mins to read

I often get confused about the different types of C++ casts:

  • dynamic_cast can be used for “upcasting” or “downcasting”
  • static_cast
    • static_cast conversions are not as safe as dynamic_cast conversions, because static_cast does no run-time type check, while dynamic_cast does.
    • A dynamic_cast to an ambiguous pointer will fail, while a static_cast returns as if nothing were wrong; this can be dangerous.
    • Although dynamic_cast conversions are safer, dynamic_cast only works on pointers or references, and the run-time type check is an overhead. (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/5f6c9f8h%28v=VS.100%29.aspx)
  • reinterpret_cast

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