Saturday, May 30, 2009

MSI Debug Logs : Trouble shoot the Installer problems

The applications which I am currently working gets installed in the system using MSI Installer. I am getting some problems after i installed and restart the system. I usually create log files to track out any problem that i am getting in my application. But these log files did not help me for figuring out some problem regarding installation. Then I heard from some of my friends that there are MSI logs are available in the system through which we can easily figure out installation related problems.
But for getting that log files we need to enable them before installing the application.
Here is the path to enable that
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer
Reg_SZ: Logging
Value: voicewarmupx
in some operating systems you dont find Installer folder, then you can create by right clicking and selecting new. Once you have above path in your system you can proceed with installing your application. So that OS will log all the errors and actions that are appearing in system while installation.
Once installation is completed you can get MSI log files in %temp% folder of system with starting file name as MSI...

Take logs...track problems

Friday, May 29, 2009

Windows Vista USB Detection problems

I am working on some application that are actually run from USB devices. What happened was when i am using that application in windows vista operating system in VMware, Vista was unable to detect the USB device . I tried so many times by plugging and removing. Then I asked my friend google,he routed me to some pages where i found that vista having some problems in detecting USB devices. We may need to install service packs and some fixes in order to avoid these problems. So i proceeded with installing service packs and fixes. Then it started working fine.
One more excited thing i got in this experiment that is when i created vista using latest VMware version 6.5 then the vista started detecting the USB devices with out installing service packs..
some confusions are here is whether the problem is in vista or VMware. Anyway finally i ended up with some solutions. I am just sharing my experiences here so that if somebody get same problems they can solve as per above two methods....
links that would help for same problems are here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941600

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

VMWare : 64 bit guest in 32 bit host

Hi, I had a requirement where i want to test one application in 64 bit VMware. I tried creating 64 bit VMWare on 32 bit host. After i spending so many hours i came to know that my machine does not support 64 bit VMwares.
For avoiding these situations you can download one EXE from VMWare website which tells you whether your machine supports 64 bit VM OS or not. Once you know the result then you can proceed creating that.

Here is the link http://www.vmware.com/download/server/drivers_tools.html

Simply download for your respective platform and check...
funny programming...

Monday, May 25, 2009

VMWare problems

I am using VMware for testing some of my applications. When i see VMware i really got excited as its allowing us to see OS inside OS. But some times got irritated because its not allowing me to drag a file from base OS to guest OS and internet connection problems.

when you see such problems in VMwares, first thing you need to do is go to VM tab in VMware and click on Install Vmware tools. So that it will install some of the files that will repair most of our problems.I think this option would work for your most of common problems.

Enable Administrator account in windows vista

I came across the need to log in as administrator in windows vista . But vista is not allowing me to do that as by default the administrator account is disabled and we need to manually enable that for logging .
Its very simple to enable that by running a small command. Below is the what i am talking about.
Steps:
  • Open the command prompt through administrator mode by right clicking choosing run as administrator
  • Now type the command below "net user administrator /active:yes" Then say enter.
  • You will be getting message saying that the command completed successfully.
  • Now log off. You could see option to log in as administrator. You can set password as well once you log in first time.

silly troubles..funny solutions...