About code. Mostly on C++
I recently encountered a problem creating new logins with SQL Server. Something that has worked for years suddenly stopped with the following error: Password validation failed. The password does not meet Windows policy requirements because it is too short. Since SQL Server was using Windows local security policy I went and checked that at Security…
Several CTPs for Visual Studio 2014 have been released so far. The 3rd and 4th CTPs can be actually used with a Windows Azure Virtual Machine. If you have a Windows Azure account you can go ahead and create a VM. If you are an MSDN Subscriber or you have a trial account, you have…
My first Windows Store app (for Window 8.1) is now available in Windows Store. It’s called Your Chemical Name and shows names (and text) using chemical elements symbols in the Breaking Bad style. The application allows to: customize the appearance of text, colors, background customize the position of the text on the background save image…
Windows 8 features a Settings charm to display both application (the top part) and system (the bottom part) settings (you get it from swiping from the side of the screen). The system provides two entry points, Permissions and Rate and Review, the later only for applications installed through the store. You can customize the settings…
This project has been moved to GitHub. New location: https://github.com/mariusbancila/cppconlib Many years ago I published on my blog a helper class for working with the Windows console that was wrapping the Windows console API. Looking back at it I realized it was a pretty naive implementation. So I decided to start a new and make…
Trying to figure out in which process a particular DLL is currently loaded, I have found two solutions (perhaps there are more). Solution 1: tasklist.exe tasklist /m <modulename>.dll Solution 2: listdlls.exe (from sysinternals) listdlls -d <modulename>.dll It might be that listdlls is more reliable than tasklist. I have ran into cases when tasklist failed to…
Microsoft has made available the release candidates for the new Windows and the new Visual Studio tool set. Some of the products have been renamed: Windows Server 2012 is the new name for Windows 8 “Server” Visual Studio 2012 is the new name for Visual Studio 11 MSDN subscribers can download them from their account….
Windows Runtime, or shortly WinRT, is a new runtime (siting on top of the Windows kernel) that allows developers to write Metro style applications for Windows 8, using a variety of languages including C/C++, C#, VB.NET or JavaScript/HTML5. Microsoft has started rolling out information about Windows 8 and the new runtime at BUILD. WinRT is…
Throughout January I have published on codeguru.com a series of articles about developing Silverlight applications for Windows Phone 7. Here is the list of articles: Windows Phone 7 Quick Tutorials: Part 1 – Hello World Windows Phone 7 Quick Tutorials: Part 2 – The Application Bar Windows Phone 7 Quick Tutorials: Part 3 – Page…
In my previous post I wrote about a feature called “god mode” available in Windows 7 and Vista. By creating a folder with a specific name you get one entry point to all the commands available in Control Panel. It was reported that several such shortcuts exits. Below is an image with the 16 folders…