Category Archives: OS

Operating Systems

Did you know that IP addresses (IPv4) can be written in shorter representations?

Posted on January 9, 2013 by Maris

Did you know that IPv4 addresses can be written in shorter representations, like IPv6 addresses? Everyone have seen form of IPv6 represented as “shorter form”: Example from IPv6: 2001::7334 ::1 :: You can use our free tool ipv6-literal.com to convert … Continue reading →

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PowerShell in Unicode, Windows 8 RP and Windows Server 2012 RC

Posted on August 2, 2012 by Maris

I was testing our software with latest version of Microsoft Windows — Windows 8 Release Preview and Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate (Windows Server 2012 RC Datacenter). There was some changed behavior in very specific cases for some rarely used … Continue reading →

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Your program is returning ErrorLevel 128 (exit code)

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Maris

Here is a scenario: You have written a program; You run it; First line of the program never gets executed; ErrorLevel (exit code) 128 is returned. You search Google for solution, but nothing useful is found. This happened to me. … Continue reading →

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Disappearing folder – bug in Windows 7

Posted on April 7, 2012 by Maris

In process of testing one of our automation software I hit interesting Windows 7 bug. First I found it in our software, and right away tested this scenario on Windows 7, and bug was there. The bug. Create folder on … Continue reading →

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When Windows automatic update suddenly stops updating Windows automatically

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Maris

Recently we noticed that some of our test and dev servers were not updating automatically through Windows or Microsoft update. It was real pain to find why this happened. There are numerous threads in the Internet about failed Windows update, … Continue reading →

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Strange MAC addresses in your network (00:0D:3A:D7:F1:40 – 00:0D:3A:FF:FF:FF)

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Maris

Today I noticed many strange MAC addresses in our LAN. The addresses looked very similar – only few bits were changing. Sometime this happens, when Ethernet cable is damaged or due to network card malfunction. Here are some sample MAC … Continue reading →

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RegCopyTree fails with Access denied error (5) on Windows 7

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Maris

MSDN documentation for RegCopyTree states that ‘The calling process must have KEY_CREATE_SUB_KEY access to the destination key’, however call fails on some keys with Access denied error (5) on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. Changing desired access rights to KEY_ALL_ACCESS solves … Continue reading →

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COM, BSTR or _bstr_t is leaking memory

Posted on November 8, 2011 by Maris

COM, BSTR or _bstr_t is leaking memory. That was my first thought when I saw increasing number in Task Manager under memory colon for the process I am developing. Searching Google for quick answer I found famous Microsoft employee and … Continue reading →

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2011 links no. 3

Posted on October 15, 2011 by Maris

Interview With Sacha Barber in The Code Project. The ABA problem occurs during synchronization, when a location is read twice, has the same value for both reads, and “value is the same” is used to indicate “nothing has changed”. However, … Continue reading →

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.NET Framework 2.0 is not installed on Windows 8 Developer Preview by default

Posted on September 15, 2011 by Maris

.NET Framework 2.0 is not installed on Windows 8 Developer Preview by default. To install it, go to Control Panel – Programs – Turn Windows features on or off – Check ‘Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5.1′ – OK. Note, that .NET … Continue reading →

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