I have just sat thru a very good webcast called “Road Map for BizTalk Server: Business Automation and Integration Server”, presented by Sudhir Hasbe. For those who have seen the presentation concerning the road ahead for BizTalk at from PDF09 there was really only one important addition; they will upgrade the Trading Partner Management (TPM), but it must be in early beta because nothing specific was said about it.

Also he talked a lot about bringing in WF and still supporting XLANG.

After the presentation at PDF09, a community friend looked for some information about the new mapper and support for WF in the next version (2009R2). These were strong points at the PDC presentation. The thing is that he found the information but from a much earlier PDC (06?). There has also been a video on Channel 9 for ages demonstrating a new mapper.

So this time Sudhir played a video demonstrating the new mapper. My reaction was the same as always; I must have it! Give it to me! I you want to see it, look at the PDC presentation. It is about 25 minutes in.

So with the history of teasing and wetting our appetite I asked if we would actually get it this time and the answer was "*laughter* it's already in the product. It's in the TAP version".

Whohoo!

I for one cannot wait.

This is quite old, however very useful so I thought I would share it. Also I need to “get on the ball” and post something on my blog.

So, you try to delete a dll-file and get the error “could not delete the file because it is used by another process”. Often that process is Visual Studio so a simple restart does the trick. However, sometimes that does not cut it. So how to find the process:

1. Open a command tool (as admin)
2. Type tasklist /m nameofthelockedfile.dll
3. View list.

For more help about tasklist, type tasklist /? for help.

Now that you have the image name, kill the process and go about your marry way.

Windows Virtual PC (no not Microsoft Virtual PC) and I met up about the same time I installed Windows7 and also realized that the company laptop had support hardware assisted virtualization. Then I spent some time developing an image for BizTalk developers. After a while we all started noticing a “degradation in performance” or to put it bluntly; the performance was sh*t.

The problem was finding the solution since a Google search on “virtual pc bad performance” or “virtual pc slow mouse” turns up a lot of posts from people who simply needs a better computer. So I thought I would write a post that would turn up on Google when you search for the things I searched for. If you are a human reading this, you can skip to the solution at the end of the post.

When I started any image with the same settings and giving it as much resources as my laptop could spare (2,5 gb of memory), at first performance was good, but after about 10 minutes things started to slide downwards. Programs reacted slowly, graphics update was slow and things was generally miserable. At the worst point there was a clear delay for about 5 seconds from when I clicked the mouse button to when the interface responded. Of course I checked all the usual things like program priority and limiting SQL-server memory use.

These were the visible symptoms: slow interface and slow mouse.

The “invisible” was: High level CPU usage. Reaching 100% at the slightest provocation.

The solution finally turned up in this blog post. There are other posts pointing out the same thing but this post was the only one I could find that gave an explanation. Not even Virtual PC Guy’s blog said why. The solution is really simple:

1. Turn of your virtual machine.
2. Use Run and type “appdata”.
3. Navigate to the Virtual PC settings file: “Local\Microsoft\Windows Virtual PC” (on Win7 using Microsoft VPC) or "Roaming\Microsoft\Virtual PC" (on Vista using Windows VPC) and open Option.xml
4. Add this to the file after the last <virtual_network>-tag.
   <virtual_machines>
      <enable_idle_thread type="boolean">true</enable_idle_thread> 
   </virtual_machines>
5. Save and reopen your virtual machine.

Personally I found an options-file in %appdata%\Roaming\Microsoft\Virtual PC as well and added the tag there to just to be safe. I don’t think you have to but better safe than sorry.

I used this in on Windows Virtual PC but I think it will work on Microsoft Virtual PC.

The explanation for the behaviour is the power management on the laptop. When you start your virtual machine, and start using it, the host OS thinks that it’s not very busy and turns off power to the processor to save energy (stupid I know). The host processor powers down and the guest processor gets even less time and so the guest processor is easily overloaded. The tag makes Windows Virtual PC use the host machine’s system idle thread therefore picking up the slack on the host machine processor.

Let’s hope “they” solve this in the next release.

Sometimes I think there is a grand conspiracy on my part. Somewhere deep within the windows core code there is a line like

if ( Instance.RegisteredUser = "Mikael Sand" )

    GenerallyFThingsUp();

And then I just remember that it probably is my own fault.

There is a strange BUG when you install BizTalk in a single server environment on a virtual machine. Strange being the operative word here. You get this error

Failed to generate and backup the master secret to file: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Enterprise Single Sign-On\SSO0FAB.bak (SSO) Additional Information (0x80070005) Access is Denied.

So what happens is that the SSO Administrators group is never created during install (note that all other groups are created). No SSO Admin group = Unsuccessful authentication = Access is Denied.

The solution is simple though:

1. Unconfigure BizTalk and delete the SSODB and BusinessRulesDB. The wizard does not delete them.
2. Now create the SSO Administrators group manually and add the install account and the BizTalk Service Account to it.
3. Log out and log back in. Restart the installation.

I have been battling the ESB Toolkit installation for a while now, hence the lack of posts. However I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. More stuff to follow.

I do not know what it is about the words “known issue” that ticks me off. Maybe it has to do with the fact that “known” aught to be replaced by “corrected”, or maybe it is the fact that I wasted an hour searching for a solution until I figured out that I could just Google it… Maybe it is both.

Anyway, this MSDN page explains that if you have VS 2008 + BT 2009 installed and then install Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio, you cannot create a new BizTalk project…

The error you get from Visual Studio is “Creating project ‘BizTalk project name’… project creation failed.”. Note that it is displayed in the status bar. A colleague of mine totally missed and just said that “nothing” happened.

The solution is to enable btproj as an extension in Visual Studio, using RegEdit. See MSDN link for more details.

Today I just had to solve a problem I have had for a while. When upgrading to Windows 7, I installed Daemon tools lite and everything was working fine. That is until last week or so when I started to get this strange error: This program requires at least Windows 2000 with SPTD 1.51 or higher. Kernel debugger must be deactivated. (Text in picture in Swedish).

It seemed that I was not the only one having this problem. A quick search on Google and the Daemon Tools forums revealed a barrage of bad language and people using the word “plz” a lot. This daemon tools forum post, is a good example. There were a lot of solutions but no one that worked on my box. Apparently Microsoft issued a patch that has wreaked havoc for many users, including me. One solution from Daemon tools was to uninstall this patch.

Since I am not a fan of uninstalling patches I tried other solutions and I found one that works for me: Turn off “DeepGuard” in F-Secure (currently using the Technology Preview for Windows 7). Do not turn it off all together(!), just during Daemon tools start-up. Allow Daemon to start and then you can turn it on again. Also note that I had to do this even though the program is marked as safe in F-Secure.

This is not a permanent solution and you cannot use the auto start option in Daemon tools, personally I never did anyway.

[Edit 09-09-09]
It is the stangest thing! Once I disabled F-secure DeepGuard and started Daemon tools, everything is working well, even with DeepGuard turned on. The auto-start option even works.

[Edit 09-11-01]
A commenter named Allan solved the problem by turning off the Windows Firewall. Now this is something I would not recommend, however I might work like it did for me and F-secure. Turn off the firewall, start Daemon, turn on the firewall.

[Edit 09-11-10]
My Dameon Tools installation told me a couple of days ago that there was a new version available. This has full Windows 7 support and uses version 1.62 of SPTD. So, the troubles might be over. Get it at: http://www.disk-tools.com/download/daemon

[Edit 09-12-14]
Since people seem to still have some issues I must ask you to verify that you are using the same version as I, since after installing that I do not have any issues about the product. I am using DAEMON Tools Lite v4.35.5 (with SPTD 1.62), which is the version you get if you download from here. Also note that the good people at Daemon Tools have a forum.

Last Friday I finished a book on WCF (I know everything there is to know now, right?) and so I have gone all trough the weekend and Monday without anything to read! Enter my colleague Johan, who came to the rescue and donated a book on BAM in BizTalk 2009. I should make for an interesting read. “Everyone” is always on about BAM being a total gem in BizTalk and that it can be really helpful. Also, it is usually mentioned as a big selling-point to execs with wonderful graphs and cubes and … stuff. I have yet to see BAM being used to it’s full extent. I would like to change that.

My views on the book will be published here when I am done reading.

Pro Business Activity Monitoring in BizTalk 2009

by: Jeff Sanders and Geoff Snowman

Update. Richard Seroter has sent his famous 4 questions to Jeff Sanders. Read the insightful result here.

(Note: this works on Vista 64-bit just as well)

I have studied a big old fat book on WCF for a long time now and yesterday I ran into a problem that was about the MSDTC and WS-AT (Atomic Transactions). More specifically I wanted to enable WS-AT on my laptop.

WS-AT is a standard for supporting transactional behaviour in distributed systems that cannot rely on MSDTC because of interoperability issues.

The book pointed me to this page. To be able to run WS-AT you have to be able to configure it. Microsoft has included a command-line tool called WsatConfig but since I have a tendency to like UI better I tried to configure that.

Luckily there is an option to extend the current MMC-snapin for MSDTC with another tab about WS-AT. This is really the first time I have come across this. Adding UI content to an existing Windows feature, using the command line. The article states that you have to register the codebase using regasm.exe using the following command line from VS Command Prompt: regasm.exe /codebase %PROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0\Bin\WsatUI.dll.

Guess what, that did not work. There are still only three tabs and to add to my troubles there was no error when running regasm.

Can you guess what when wrong? Well it is the old 32/64-bit problem which I have come to know and love since I installed Windows 7. When you run VS Command Prompt, you are launching the 32-bit version and so you are executing the 32-bit version of regasm. To resolve this you have to start the 64-bit version of regasm.exe and also point to the 64-bit version of the WsatUI.dll file. So the correct thing to do is this:

1. Open a regular command window.

2. Navigate to %PROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0\Bin\x64.

3. Execute this line "%WINDOWS%\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727\regasm.exe" /codebase WsatUI.dll

4. Open the MMC for MSDTC by clicking the start button and do a search for dcomcnfg.exe.

5. Navigate to My Computer\Distributed Transaction Coordinator\Local DTC, right-click and choose properties.

Hey look! I got a new tab called WS-AT. Click it to get the following view.

Now you can start configuring you WS-AT support. Just follow the instruction on this page.

My thanks to the Microsoft Forums user PeterMAnderson that answered his own post and provided the solution to the problem.

Why, little old me have now had the pleasure of getting “hit” over 1000 times! That is 1000 more than I hoped for. I really hope that I have helped at least someone out there.

A quick perusal of the hit distribution shows that if I want to keep up I should write more about Windows 7, so I will.

Ok, so I have to admit I am “one of those”. I hardly ever incorporate testing, however I strongly advocate it (don’t do as I do, do as I say). That is about to change, because I finally found a webcast that spoke to me in a way that I understand. Actually there are two and they are located here. Scroll down and you will find two webcast by Mike Stephenson, called ALM Part 1 and 2. These are informative and really gives you reasons as to why you should test told in a way that does not only convince me but he people who float the bill as well.

BizTalk is now finally "testable” in a way that can be implemented in a good way. So now I am reformed and will adhere to the gospel of testing, hallelujah.

Thanks Mike.

His blog is really good and you should give it a read.

First about the anti-virus thing. This is mostly meant for those who work at the same company as I do (i.e. Logica) and have had the audacity to install Windows 7. There is a way to get the old, familiar, feeling and join a CTP at F-secure, thus gaining access to the program and a subscription. The program seems to work just fine and looks really nice as well.

The other thing, I discovered today that there is a feature missing from VS 2008 when compared to 2005; the “Generate New GUID” option from the Tools-menu. Well here is how you get it back:

Open the Tools-menu and choose External Tools..

Configure it by clicking the Add-button and give it a title of your choice.

Click the button next to the Command-textbox and navigate to %Program Files%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\Bin\x64\Uuidgen.exe (or %Program Files%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\Bin\Uuidgen.exe for those of you stuck at 32-bits).

Tick the box to “Use Output Window” and then click OK.

Done! You now have the option directly on the tools menu:

If you use it, VS will generate a new GUID and display it in the Output Window:

To quote one of the great philosophers of our time: “Wohoo!”.

Just one short thing today that I found during a study break. There are three boxing match-style movies about WCF vs … well they don’t say but I think it has something to do with coffee. Watch them at http://www.microsoft.com/net/wcf/champ/. If you can watch all three, you are either a bit bored or … I don’t know, but you are nerdy as hell.

I watched them, of course.

(Updated 2009-09-08: Content edited to make post more readable and distinct)

(Updated 2009-12-18: Updated content after different solution was given by commenters)

(Updated 2010-02-20: Stop asking me for activation keys (codes). There is no way I will give you any.)

Well I have now installed Windows 7 on my laptop at work and oh my gosh it is fast. Installing it was really a breeze as you probably have read in all the other techie-blogs whose writers want to show off their tech edge (much like me).

I had just one problem and that was down to my own shortcomings. When I tried to activate Windows it gave me a strange error saying “Error Code 0xC004F074”:

The "More Information"-link does not provide much info. The thing is that when you install Windows 7 Enterprise you never really enter and product key and therefore Windows cannot be activated, since the key is moot.

What you have to do is change the product key by clicking the correct link in the activation window. The activation window is found in the Control Panel.

Now enter your proper key and click next and you are done my friend.

Date and Time Zone Settings
Commenter jmbosse89 pointed out that you will also get this error "if your Date and maybe Time Zone/Regional Settings are not matching" and commenter tomko has verified it. Personally I have not had the chance to verify it but have not reason not to believe it works.

One of the many things I like about WCF is that it’s error messages are usually correct and even helpful, giving you pointers, most of the time. Therefore I have come to a point of not really questioning them. With that in mind I got this error message yesterday when doing a lab from my WCF book: The HTTP request is unauthorized with client authentication scheme 'Digest'. The authentication header received from the server was 'Digest qop="auth", realm="MapPoint”.

I was configuring a client to connect to the Bing Maps web services. Note that since this is a Microsoft Lab, everything was in plain text and I verified all the settings concerning security time after time.

<security mode="TransportCredentialOnly">
   <transport clientCredentialType="Digest" proxyCredentialType="None" realm="" />
   <message clientCredentialType="UserName" algorithmSuite="Default" />
</security>

So what do you think the problem was? Well turns out that I had the wrong username for the service. Not exactly clear as day is it? You get the same error if you use the wrong password as well. That was two hours I will never get back!

In other news: I got of Twitter that Windows7 RTM will be to MSDN at 7pm (19:00) CET today. Time to test that new 10 mBit internet wire subscription I have got at home. Maybe I can finally bid farewell to Vista…

Found this on Twitter today and I can only say: Hooray!

Not that I do not like IE nor did I dislike IE6 at the time. However there are a lot of companies out there that use IE6 still. These include an old client of mine (30 000+ employees world wide) and a “native” car manufacturer.

The site has some wonderful code samples, ready to just paste into your web apps.