TypelibBuilder.exe Crashes & Javascript Intellisense

Edited: Read an update on getting a resolution to this issue at: http://jberke.blogspot.com/2008/10/typelibbuilderexe-crashes.html.

Edited: Read the final update on this issue:
http://jberke.blogspot.com/2008/10/typelibbuilderexe-crashes_21.html



I've been fairly happy with VS 2008; however, one feature which has never worked right for me is javascript intellisense. It seemed that no matter what I did, as soon as I dropped a ScriptManager on a page, or added an external reference, I'd get a windows error dialog popup telling me TypelibBuilder has crashed.

After searching around and trying some of the suggested solutions which were all from the beta version of VS. I still had the error. I filled an issue on Microsoft Connect, and after some time, was contact by a Microsoft Developer. By the way this developer gave me some of the best support I've ever had from a third party so hats of to you :-).

The underlying issue appears to be a conflict between the biometric software called DigitalPersona and TypeLibBuilder. Nothing has been confirmed but if your having the same issue, and you have a process called DPAgent.exe. Kill the process and your javascript intellisense will probally start working again.

There is no patch available yet; however, I will update this post once one is available. Hopefuly this post will help save you the months of annoyance and frustration. If it did leave a comment, I'm interested to know how many people might be impacted by this.

Enjoy
-Josh

Changing registration information in Windows Vista

I recently aquired a new HP laptop which I am fairly happy with. One thing that has been annoying me is the registered organization is for some reason set to HP. This is a minor annoyance but it has been nagging at me for over a month. So I set out to find where this is stored.

This setting is stored in the registry at the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion

The value is stored in the RegisteredOwner & RegisteredOrganization settings (See the screenshot above). You can double click on these to edit the information.

Enjoy!

Josh

Fragmentation Analysis Report in Vista

For those who have been using windows for a while, are probally use to the old defragmentation tool which provided feedback about the current fragmentation of your drives via a graphical UI, and via a report which provided a gauge as to how fragmented your system is.

Microsoft made some good improvements to the disk defragmenter in Vista. First they have setup a schedule by default for the disk defragmentation to run. This weekly defragmentation is a huge step in keeping our disks nice and tidy.

Because it is now automated by defaulted, they also gutted the interface making it very simple. Gone are the color graphs and if you really want those graphs I suggest finding a third party tool which might have them. They also removed the option to get the fragmentation analysis report.

Not trusting Microsoft to properly implement something, I went looking for the analysis report to see how effective they have been defraging my drives (particulary since I am using a laptop which I usually power off).

What I found was that the command line tool defrag was still around and can provide the analysis report. In order to get it run the following command from a command prompt:

defrag c: -a -v

This will spit out a simillar analysis report. The only difference seems to be it doesn't list the most fragmented files.

From what I can tell Microsoft got this feature right. Without me doing anything my disk is has a 1% file fragmentation which considering my disks back on XP would sit around 9% after defraging the drive is a preety good thing.

Happy Defraging!

Josh