WishMesh – Page 23 – Real men don't make backups

Microsoft’s PowerShell hangs when output is captured using Windows API

I was debugging a program that uses Windows API (Creating a Child Process with Redirected Input and Output) to capture stdout of Microsoft’s Windows PowerShell.

Script passed to PowerShell (-File switch) didn’t execute and PowerShell just hanged until killed by Task Manager.

It turns out that you need to use undocumented parameter “-InputFormat none”:
C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -InputFormat none -File file.ps1

This is discussed in MS Connect site: PowerShell.exe can hang if STDIN is redirected.

Similar issue at StackOverflow: Silently executing a PowerShell script from WiX Hangs PowerShell.

2011 links no. 2

Stack Overflow profiler open sourced: Profiling your website like a true Ninja.

Smaller is Faster (and Safer Too). Chrome team have just started using a new compression algorithm called Courgette to make Google Chrome updates small. Read more.

Ask Amir Taaki About Bitcoin. From Slashdot.

The Four Stages of NTFS File Growth from Windows Server Core Team.

Some articles from CodeProject:

Effective Exception Handling in Visual C++ by zexspectrum.
Moving CodeProject.com to a new host by Chris Maunder, Vince Yonemitsu.
HTML5 Web Socket in Essence by Wayne Ye.
Delivering Software to a Global Audience. Chad Z. Hower aka Kudzu shares his experience in challenging field – software localization.
Detecting Manipulations in Data with Benford’s Law By Kerry Cakebread.
HTMLImage – Generating Dynamic Image using Plain JavaScript By darkoman.

Rosa Golijan writes about what happens on the Internet every 60 seconds.

The Biggest Changes in C++11 (and Why You Should Care) by Danny Kalev.

Are You Too Good For Code Reviews? Articles and discussion in Slashdot.

Google’s Swiffy converts Flash SWF files to HTML5.

Have you wondered whether WordPress can handle high-volume traffic? High Traffic Tips For WordPress.

The most detailed story about Stuxnet: How Digital Detectives Deciphered Stuxnet, the Most Menacing Malware in History.

How to build your own 135TB RAID6 storage pod for $7,384 from extremetech.com.

Investigation: Is Your SSD More Reliable Than A Hard Drive? from tomshardware.com.

pdf.js is a technology demonstrator prototype to explore whether the HTML5 platform is complete enough to faithfully and efficiently render the ISO 32000-1:2008 Portable Document Format (PDF) without native code assistance. From Dr. Andreas Gal.

Urih.com has online resource viewer for executable files

One of very interesting online tool we launched in urih.com is online resource viewer for executable files. We call it – Portable executable online viewer.

This new (online) tool can be used like any old (offline) tool to view images embedded into executable (PE format) file.

Also, many properties of executable file are shown, like Date compiled – date when exe is build (not same as file date/time), minimum OS version, application manifest XML file, and more.

Here is an example of how it looks like for calc.exe file from Windows 7.