Jason's Space

After installing the Zune Software version 4.2 on Windows 7, I started receiving the following error in the log file generated by my weekly Windows Backup job.  Zune software 4.2 creates a Podcasts Library on Windows 7, and Windows Backup appears to be looking for a folder named Podcasts in the system profile. 

Backup encountered a problem while backing up file C:\Windows\System32\config\systemprofile\Podcasts. Error:(The system cannot find the file specified. (0x80070002))

The workaround/fix is to browse to the C:\Windows\System32\config\systemprofile\ folder with Windows Explorer, and then create a new folder named “Podcasts” there.  I’m not sure why Windows Backup is trying to backup a non-existent folder in the systemprofile.  I suspect it’s just a bug.

This one has flown under the radar.  This is a Windows Vista/Windows 7 Sidebar Gadget that displays your What’s New feed from Windows Live Home. 

http://gallery.live.com/liveItemDetail.aspx?li=3081b131-f87e-46e1-b35a-c50ba01c5100

The possibilities of the Window Live Home http://home.live.com site are just mind blowing.  Makes it possible to efficiently follow your friends social activities, and update all of your friends on your activities.  Web Activities are like the glue that will tie all of the social sites together.

Yesterday Microsoft announced one of the exciting new Window Live services that they’ve been toiling away at the last couple years. Live Mesh is a consumer focused web, and web service-based, platform that will allow you to collaborate and share with anyone, and access your data from anywhere, on any device. Yes, eventually, even on a Mac.

Your files will synchronize automatically between your computers in the mesh, and anyone that you share those files with. It also integrates with Remote Desktop to allow remote control of your own PCs.

They are also providing a rich web service based API to allow developers to build services on top of the platform, and integrate with other Windows Live services.

Check out this video -

http://www.on10.net/blogs/nic/Hands-on-with-Live-Mesh/

http://www.mesh.com

I bought the Zune Car Pack/FM Transmitter for my Zune last week.  While the transmitter has an auto-tuning/best frequency finder, it's also helpful to know where the unused FM frequencies are in your area.  The radio-locator web site is awesome for this, and for finding FM stations in general.  You can also see which  stations broadcast stream over the inter-web.

Rock on!

  I love Eddie Izzard, and this Lego video adaptation of his Deathstar Canteen bit is awesome!

Quote

Death Star Canteeen - Eddie Izzard

    
Video: Death Star Canteeen - Eddie Izzard

Looking for a (free) GUI editor to write and debug your Windows PowerShell scripts?  I thought so.

PowerGUI - Administrative Powershell Console :

At home I run Windows Vista on a PC that I built several years ago.  This PC runs an Abit NF7 motherboard with an Athlon XP 2600+. The onboard audio of this motherboard is quite good, the nVidia SoundStorm Dolby Digital 5.1 encoder, and also standard 6 channel audio outputs.  This was a popular motherboard and a very popular chipset in general.  Everything worked perfectly on Windows XP.

However, I was never really happy with the Vista's built-in nVidia nForce Audio Codec Interface drivers, because they did not support the standard 6 channel audio output, nor all of the correct inputs, or the digital output.  The nice audio features were crippled on Vista because of bum drivers.

Anyhow, in February I noticed that the Realtek AC'97 Audio Codec driver was showing up as an optional download in Windows Update, so I did a little research and found that this drive *is* in fact compatible with the nVidia nForce 2 chipset audio codec.  I let Windows Update do its thing, and now I have full support for the audio features of the nVidia nForce 2 and SoundStorm.  Rock on!

I repeat - If you have an nForce 2 motherboard, then install the Realtek AC'97 Audio Codec from Windows Update on Vista.  You're in for a pleasant audio surprise. 

Here's some info about the supported devices - Driver Detective | Realtek AC'97 Audio Codec Driver Download

Get the RTW of the new Microsoft FTP Service for Windows Server 2008.  I wonder if it will run on Vista...

Robert McMurray's Blog [MSFT] : FTP7 for Windows Server 2008 RTM is released!

If you installed Vista SP1 over the last week (or you run Windows Server 2008) and more importantly you run IIS 7.0, then you'll be glad to know that Microsoft finally squared away the experience of assigning file permissions to allow anonymous access to a virtual directory.  The new low privilege IUSR account makes this easier.

Remember: Network Service still needs Read permission so the IIS worker process can access the files.

If I had a dollar for every time I've seen Everyone:Read, or worse...

IIS.NET - Article - Understanding the Built-In User and Group Accounts in IIS7

This comes in handy when you create a service account for SQL Server, a least privileged user account for testing, or some otherwise incognito activity for example.  If you don't want your welcome screen displaying extra user accounts, just be sneaky and hide them.  Works on Vista also.

Bonus points to you if you know how to pull up the Win2k style logon prompt to login old skool without the nifty display pictures, but if you don't know, this page has that info also.

Hide a User from the Welcome Screen in Windows XP