This is a repost from Cuball, mainly for my records...my machine was fast after the rebuild, but boy, did this make a difference.

You need a minimum of 256MB of RAM before you make these changes.

Open your favorite registry editor and navigate to the following key:
HKEY LOCAL MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management

Areas to change are as follows

1. DisablePagingExecutive - Double click it and in the decimal value field, put a 1. This will allow XP to keep data in memory instead of paging sections of RAM to the hard drive.
2. LargeSystemCache - Double click it and change the decimal value to 1. This will allow the XP Kernel to Run in memory.
3. Create a new DWORD value and name it IOPageLockLimit - Double click it and set the value in hex to 4000 if you have 128MB of RAM, 10000 if you have 256MB or 40000 if you have more than 512MB of RAM.

I've been off at a client site today, which is why I've been a bit quite. Anyway, I've been working with SQL Reporting Services today, and I was wondering how in the world I could create page breaks between 4 different charts. Much to my amazement, if you just drop a "Rectangle" on the page layout, go to its properties, and check "Insert after Rectangle", you'll get a pagebreak. Easy as pie, a pie chart that is!

Early this morning, Scoble had asked how XP SP2 is working out so far.

Well, I'd like to say that I've made myself happy with XP SP2. As most of you know, there's only the update version, and not a full install CD yet. So, being the geek that I am, I wanted (or needed? - nay, wanted) to rebuild my home PC from scratch. Its' been itching for one since I screwed up a SP2 RC2 installation a month ago.

Okay, so I didn't want to install XP SP1a then install XP SP2 on top, I wanted to just pop in a CD, install XP, and have it with the latest updates. So, most geeks out there are going...just slipstream the installation CD. Right! That's exactly what I did, and as of this morning, I had a bootable XP w/SP2 installation disc. My steps:

1. Make a directory to store the integrated (slipstreamed) OS:
    mkdir <DEST DRIVE>:\XPSP2_Int\Pro

2. Copy my Windows XP w/SP1a to my hard drive:
    xcopy <CD DRIVE>: <DEST DRIVE>:\XPSP2_Int\Pro /E

3. Extract the XP SP2:
    <CD DRIVE>:\xpsp2.exe /X:<DEST DRIVE>:\XPSP2Temp

4. Integrate, or slipstream XP SP2:
    <DEST DRIVE>:\XPSP2Temp\update\update.exe /Integrate:<DEST DRIVE>:\XPSP2_Int\Pro

5. Follow the instructions for making a bootable CD here. Note: You'll need the boot image, which I found off of the same site (Step #2 on linked page).

So, after 4 CDs (I had several bad burns, not sure why)...I had a bootable Integrated Windows XP SP2.

PS: I'm recalling my commands from memory, so if there is a mistake, please let me know.

My constant barrages of updates for WebDeploy has left me releasing yet another version, 1.2.3. Like its predecessor, it is mainly a bug fix version, in the hopes that I'll have a rock solid tool to base my 2.0 distribution off of. This update was aimed at stability of the product, and as such you'll see that reflected in the changelog following this soon.

I do, however, want to take a step back and note this will be the last public release for WebDeploy. I do want to say that the utility is NOT going away, however once it is rebranded after the naming contest ends this Friday, work on version 2.0 will start. The next major release will have a re-written core, user interface, and console version. No major plans have been set for updates, just a system wide cleaning of the code. This means that there will probably not be any breaking changes. More to come on this later.

Anyway, on to the changelog:

• Added ability to have a wild card character of ? to indicate any letter (or none at all) in that spot.
• Added update notes to the notification when a new WebDeploy version is available.
• Fixed exception being thrown when multiple file masks exist but in different cases.
• Fixed problem loading VS.NET project with invalid characters, however those files will be ignored during deployment
• Fixed dialog still being shown when app starts up "minimized". This, unfortunately, allows you to alt-tab to it when "minimized" to the notification area.
• Fixed inability to delete the first file mask in the config section.
• Fixed font size of copied files dialog.

So, until 2.0...here's your link.

Alright, hopefully someone will have an answer for this, or just explain it to me...

I'm working on WebDeploy, specifically a single bug I identified while trying to use WebDeploy to deploy Community Server :: Forums last week. The problem is that the VS.NET project file that is used, has a few File elements that contain ampersands within an attribute. Now I realize that you can have ampersands, but they must be in the format of "&amp;", whereas these are just straight "&" in the attribute values.

My initial problem was that the Xml Document I was loading the project file into, would throw a FormatException, and ultimately not allow me to process that file. So, I bypassed this by using an XmlTextReader. I am now able to get the data I want, but the problem of the ampersands still exist. Whenever I hit those nodes, whammo! exception.

My questions to MS or the blogosphere:

1. How in the world did those ampersands get into the project file without being converted so that the project file is valid?
2. How in the world does VS.NET successfully open these projects without complaining to the user?

As of right now, I'm putting in a bugfix for WebDeploy that will not hault deployment if it comes across such a problem, however it will skip over the invalid files. Maybe someone can answer my questions and give me a good solution so that those files with the ampersand will get deployed along with everything else.

Also, because of this issue, I also had to create a recursive call to make sure that it doesn't bomb out on the reading, the following code is how I bypassed this:

private bool ReadReader(XmlTextReader reader)
{
    bool read = false;
    try
    {
        read = reader.Read();
    }
    catch
    {
        read = ReadReader(reader);
    }
    return read;
}

...crappy online support. Case in point, I updated my and my girlfriends machines to XP SP2, and afterwhich our not so legal McAfee 7 crashes constantly. Okay, okay, yes I know its wrong so I was actually going to go purchase McAfee VirusScan 8. I go to their site, see it and go, hmm, I wonder if McAfee 8 will work with XP SP2...I better check with customer service before plopping 60 bucks down for it.

So off I go to Customer Service...and since a picture paints a thousand words...

Err, you gotta be kidding me...okay, so off I go to Technical Support...

Now...I'm no computer programmer, oh wait I am, scratch that thought. So like, how the heck am I supposed to get:

• My question answered from Customer Service?
• My question answered from Technical Support?

Riddle me this, McAfee...maybe I'll go buy Norton, unless someone in the blogosphere can answer me this simple question, does McAfee VirusScan 8 work with Windows XP SP2?

I think this is by far the best test for any tool or control, thanks Shannon!

"I had my girlfriend sit down and run "the girlfriend test" on your datepicker.  She'd never seen the calendar at all before; I just put her on your demo page and told her to enter her birthday in the box.

The longest pause was about 2 seconds or so when she realized she didn't want to "previous month" through 30 years and looked for what to do instead.  

Total time was under 15 seconds.  She never asked a question or grew frustrated.  

That's a sure sign of success for you control, I think."

I wonder if my girlfriend can pass the test...

Update: About 20 seconds here...another success story.

So far the naming contest for WebDeploy is going great. Thanks to all who are submitting, they truly are some great pieces of work. There is one addendum to the requirements that I must state:

• If someone submits a duplicate name, and that name is chosen, only the first person who submitted the name will be elected as the winner.

Other than that, I'd also like to state that its pointless to submit the same name multiple times, 1 email will suffice. So, if you've not come up with a name yet...start cracking, you've got 1 week left!

For anyone using Firefox, make sure you grab 0.9.3 here. There isn't that much changes, but its always good to have the latest & greatest.

Update: I've successfully migrated to Community Server :: Forums 2.0. However, roles were not brought over successfully, so if you were apart of my beta testers, please let me know. I've also just sent out a mass email to everyone that had signed up (great interface for that, I must say), alerting you of the upgrade and beta testers issues.

I'm currently working on upgrading my forums from ASP.NET Forums 1.0 to Community Server :: Forums 2.0

I was able to successfully export all my data and import it on my local machine. Currently the forums are missing because I'm upgrading. I'll keep you posted.