1. you have some software/component that inserts partial HTML into page using JavaScript element.innerHTML function;
2. you can insert any HTML tags including <script>;
3. you can not call any JS function (software/component does not have such functionality), and inserted script using innerHTML is not executed automatically.

After some lost time trying to come up with the solution, I found the following trick using image tag and onload attribute. Again if you try to use script tag, it will not work:
<script type="text/javascript">alert('testing')</script>
However code with image trick will execute JavaScript automatically:
<img src="/images/1x1-transparent.png" onload="alert('testing');this.parentNode.removeChild(this);" />

Note that removeChild, will remove just inserted image, so your HTML code stays unaffected.

Sources:

• Smuggle arbitrary JavaScript into the existing document (http://24ways.org).
• Can scripts be inserted with innerHTML? (Stackoverflow)

The bug. Create folder on the Desktop.

Right click on Desktop

New folder

New folder appears and cursor blinks allowing to change the name for the folder.

Cursor at the end

Place cursor at the end of folder name, and enter dot (.) character.

Dot at the end

After pressing Enter key the folder disappears.

Folder disappears

But do not worry, it will come back after reboot, or after refresh (F5 key).

After refresh

Appears that this bug/behavior… that only Windows 7 is affected. Other Windows versions I tested does not have this bug, even Windows XP and upcoming Windows 8 behaves correctly (see screenshots at the end of the post).

A side note. By “correctly” in this case I mean, that folder does not disappear, however perhaps, there is another bug. The dot “.” character disappears in all Windows versions. This of course depends on interpretation, for example, I also tested this on Ubuntu 10, and Ubuntu (and probably most nixes) allows dot (.) at the end of filename.

Why this happens? Every filename consists of two parts: filename and extension. These two parts are separated by dot (.) character. Windows Shell hides this dot from you, and when you enter “filename.”, it thinks, that this must be a filename without extension, so it stores only filename. In theory you should be able to trick shell by adding more dots, like “filename…”, but Windows 7 Shell reduces them to no dot. Of course you can create file or folder with one or more dots at the end, but for this you will need a normal file manager, like Far Manager (which is open source). Also, keep in mind, that you will not be able to delete this file or folder from desktop using Windows Shell, you will need to switch to file manager again.

Note 1. Windows Server 2008 R2 is based on the same codebase, so it has the same bug.
Note 2. Operating Systems used in the test:

• Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
• Windows Vista Enterprise
• Windows Server 2008 Enterprise
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter
• Windows Server 2003 Enterprise
• Windows 8 Consumer preview
• Windows XP
• Ubuntu 10

It was real pain to find why this happened. There are numerous threads in the Internet about failed Windows update, and it is very hard to find the right answer. Luckily, I found a post in CNET forum from Jim Sheehy from Sequel Data Systems. He supports more than 800 desktops and he is writing about three possible causes of Windows update failure:

1. The Windows Update Temporary folder is corrupted. (%windir%\SoftwareDistribution)
2. Update Agent 3.0 is not installed properly. (Download latest Update Agent)
3. Installer 3.1 is corrupted. (Reinstall Windows Installer 3.1 or …)

Read more at CNET forum: Help! My Windows automatic updates suddenly stopped working.

• 000d3a-fa6109
• 000d3a-fa6207
• 000d3a-fa6209
• 000d3a-fa6107
• 000d3a-fa6203
• 000d3a-fa6103
• 000d3a-fa6212
• 000d3a-fa6112
• 000d3a-fa610f
• 000d3a-fa620f

It turns out, that this time these MAC addresses appeared because someone in our LAN clicked on See full map under Control Panel – Network and Sharing Center.

Microsoft documentation about Link Layer Topology Discovery (LLTD) Protocol states that:

This protocol defines a range of special MAC addresses that applications can use when they conduct network topology tests. This range is 0x000D3AD7F140 through 0x000D3AFFFFFF. These MAC addresses do not conflict with actual MAC addresses because the range is built from an assigned Organizationally Unique Identifier (OUI)…

Read more here:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/connect/rally/lltd-spec.mspx
http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/f/7/af7777e5-7dcd-4800-8a0a-b18336565f5b/LLTD-spec.doc

CXX0058: Error: overloaded operator not found

The workaround for the STL vector is to use:
myVector._Myfirst[5]
instead of
myVector[5]

Found this solution in StackOverflow.

Changing desired access rights to KEY_ALL_ACCESS solves the problem. Currently I do not know why, but it works in my case.

There were no any signs of errors. Ajax controls just were not functioning. Digging deeper, we found, that JavaScript is throwing exceptions:
SCRIPT5022: AjaxControlToolkit requires ASP.NET Ajax 4.0 scripts. Ensure the correct version of the scripts are referenced. If you are using an ASP.NET ScriptManager, switch to the ToolkitScriptManager in AjaxControlToolkit.dll.

This is the most common error with AJAX Control Toolkit — you need to use ToolkitScriptManager instead of ScriptManager. Read more here.

But in our case we was already using ToolkitScriptManager in the all places in our source code.

Digging deeper we found that there is a bug in Script Manager, that is trying to load all DLLs in the project’s bin folder. Script Manager is trying to load DLL files even if they are not used in the project. [I know, that it is not best practice, to keep files not used by project on the production server, but that's another story.]

The solution was plain and simple: remove all unused DLLs from production machine’s bin folder.

More info about bug and the same problem in different product:

• Custom Attribute Load Failure in GetAjaxFrameworkAssemblyAttribute from MS Connect
• Compatibility issue using ASP.Net 4.0, Extensions and ScriptManager from WebSync @ Google Groups

Below are details from Wikipedia:

Forward-declaring enums is also possible in C++11. Previously, enum types could not be forward-declared because the size of the enumeration depends on the definition of its members. As long as the size of the enumeration is specified either implicitly or explicitly, it can be forward-declared:

enum Enum1; // Illegal in C++03 and C++11; the underlying type cannot be determined.
enum Enum2 : unsigned int; // Legal in C++11, the underlying type is explicitly specified.
enum class Enum3; // Legal in C++11, the underlying type is int.
enum class Enum4 : unsigned int; // Legal C++11.
enum Enum2 : unsigned short; // Illegal in C++11, because Enum2 was previously declared with a different underlying type.

How to repeat this bug in C# .NET 2.0.

Open Visual Studio and create New Project – Windows Forms Project.

Create a new .NET 2.0 project

Add one TextBox and two Buttons to the project.

Form with 2 Buttons and TextBox

Add click handlers for two buttons and one helper function. Here is a code.

      private void button1k_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
      {
         textBox.Text = GenerateString(1000);
      }
 
      private void button10k_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
      {
         textBox.Text = GenerateString(10000);
      }
 
      private string GenerateString(int lenght)
      {
         string text = "";
         for (int i = 0; i < lenght; ++i)
            text += Convert.ToChar('0' + i % 10);
         return text;
      }

Now run the code! Clicking on the first button, TextBox shows some random numbers as expected.

Correct result, text is shown

Now click on the second button. Text disappears, and only blinking cursor is shown. Also note, that TextBox is functioning -- you can still delete / add characters, select all, use copy / paste, you just do not see the results on the screen.

Incorrect result, only cursor blinks

Workarounds? Currently none. Submitted this bug to Connect: .NET 2.0 TextBox fails to display long texts.

Tested on Windows 7 Pro 64-bit and Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit with latest updates on 12/2/2011. Compiled with latest Visual Studio 2010 Pro 10.0.40219.1 SP1Rel w/ Microsoft .NET Framework Version 4.0.30319 SP1Rel.

P.S. One similar bug is reported on Microsoft Connect, however it seems like separate issue: Vanishing text bug.

P.S.S. My source code can be downloaded from MS Connect.

VS Pro w/o code analysis tool

This however will change with upcoming Visual Studio 11. See the SDL blog: Code Analysis for All.

This is the first time that Code Analysis has been made available in an Express edition of Visual Studio…