Q: Can I attach a debugger to the Home Server Console application to test my application?

A: Absolutely!

There are two ways of doing this... locally and remotely.

Locally works by installing a copy of Visual Studio (including Express) and setting it up similar to how we did with the Test Loader to launch the Home Server Console.

As well as this works, it's generally a less preferred option and it means that your testing environment has been contaminated by development tools and other libraries that *can* cause test results to differ from how they how code would perform in a clean environment.

A much less invasive method is remote debugging which involves executing a small debug monitor on the target machine which allows a developer to connect to the PC from their remote development environment, attach to a given process and step in and get a very similar debugging experience to what they have locally (except for Edit and Continue).

Remote debugging is truly ideal when coupled with Windows Home Server running in a Virtual PC so that only what is needed is deployed.

Software Requirements

In order to utilize remote debugging, we are going to need three key things:

• Visual Studio 2005/2008 Standard or higher
• Installed and running copy of Windows Home Server
• Remote Debugging Components

Configuration Notes

All of these instructions can be carried out on your running Home Server that is running on physical hardware or one running in Virtual PC 2007, it is highly suggested that you only do it on your Virtual PC copy in case issues should arise with the WHS environment that you wish to quickly eliminate.

For information on setting up Windows Home Server in Virtual PC, see last weeks tip: WHS Developer Tip #8: Virtual PC.

It is assumed for this post that you have a user account on the Home Server you'll be working with that has the same user name and password as what you are debugging with on your development machine.

Express Editions

Unfortunately the Express Editions of Visual Studio do not support remote debugging and to achieve similar effect to testing/debugging your add-in in the Home Server Console, it's easiest to simply install the Express Edition of your choice to your Home Server (preferably one running in Virtual PC). This too comes with some issues of its own.

I'll go into this in a special post tomorrow.

2005 vs 2008

The following instructions are written using Visual Studio 2005 (as I do not yet have a copy of Visual Studio 2008), however the process in the newer version should be virtually identical.

Remote Debugging Components

The first step in making your Home Server remotely debuggable is the installation of the Remote Debugging Components, a package that is unfortunately not downloadable from Microsoft (as far as I can determine), instead they are automatically installed to your development machine in this location:

Install path\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\Remote Debugger\x86

There is also an installer provided on the Visual Studio installation media. You can find this installer (named rdbgsetup.exe) in the Remote Debugger folder. Do note that because your Home Server runs on the x86 architecture, you'll want to use the x86 specific version of rdbgsetup.exe.

Once you have the Remote Debugging Components, simply copy them to your server either via a network share or a drag-and-drop to the VPC and install them (accepting all defaults) if you are using the rdbgsetup.exe installer.

Personally, I prefer the loose file option as they can be used without using any kind of installer and has a much lower installation footprint (ie none), further reducing the amount of contamination of the testing PC.

Elevating Permissions

While your add-in may not require it, the Windows Home Server Console must be run as Administrator and unfortunately the user account on your development machine does not easily have access to programs being run as the Administrator user on the Home Server Console.

To fix this, it is easiest to simply run the Home Server Console as your user account, but first we need to add it to the Administrators group, to do so:

Note that by adding your user to the Administrators group, you will no longer be able to remotely log into the Home Server via the web with it.

1. Connect to your Windows Home Server via Remote Desktop and login as Administrator
2. Click on the Start button
3. Right click on My Computer and select Manage
4. Expand Local Users and Groups
5. Select Users
6. Double click on your user account
7. Select Member Of tab
8. Click Add button
9. Type Administrators into provided space and click OK
10. Click OK to close your user account's properties
11. Log out of Windows Home Server

Network Share

Because the building and testing of the add-in occur on different machines, its easiest to create a network share which points to where the add-in will need to be to be tested and copy the newly built add-in there each time, to create the network share:

1. Connect to your Windows Home Server via Remote Desktop and login as Administrator
2. Click on Start -> Run
3. Enter the path: C:\Program Files\ and click OK
4. Right click on the folder Windows Home Server and select Sharing and Security...
5. Select Share this folder option
6. Click Permissions button
7. Click Add button
8. Type your user name into the provided area and click the OK button
9. Check under the Allow column, check the box that corresponds to the Full Control permission for your username
10. Click OK button to close the permissions window
11. Click OK button to close the folder properties

Running Remote Debugging Components

Depending on how you have deployed the Remote Debugging Components, you will launch them in different ways.

If you used the installer from Visual Studio 2005:

• Select Start -> All Programs -> Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 -> Visual Studio Tools -> Visual Studio 2005 Remote Debugger

If you used the installer from Visual Studio 2008:

• Select Start -> All Programs -> Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 -> Visual Studio Tools -> Visual Studio 2008 Remote Debugger

If you copied the directory containing the files:

• Navigate to the directory where you copied the debugging tools and execute msvsmon.exe

When first launched the Visual Studio Remote Debugging Monitor (if run directly from the copied folder) will prompt you as to what exclusions to the firewall do you want to add, select Unblock remote Debugging from computers on the local network (subnet) if you know your test Home Server is on the same subnet, otherwise select Unblock remote debugging from any computer and click OK.

When launched you'll be greeted with a new window like this which you can minimize, first though note the message that is displayed:

You will need to use the server name specified again later in the next section.

Configuring Visual Studio

Now that your Home Server is configured for remote debugging,

1. Launch Visual Studio 2005
2. Open desired project
3. Right click on Project in Solution Explorer and select Properties
4. Select Build Events tab
5. Enter the following for the Pre-build command line

   taskkill /S servername /FI "IMAGENAME eq HomeServerConsole.exe"

6. Enter the following for the Post-build event command line

   copy "$(TargetDir)$(TargetName).*" \\servername\Windows Home Server\

   In both cases you will need to replace servername with the name of the Home Server you will be debugging.

7. Select Debug tab
8. Check Use remote machine option and enter server name that was noted when running the Visual Studio Remote Debugging Monitor on the server (based on username@servername format)
9. Check Start external program and enter the following path:

   c:\Program Files\Windows Home Server\HomeServerConsole.exe

10. Specify the following for the Working directory:

    c:\Program Files\Windows Home Server\

In the end you should have a couple of pages that look something like this:

Build Events:

Debug:

Firewall

In order to make one of our Visual Studio changes actually work, we either need to poke a hole in our Home Server's firewall or disable it all together, hopefully we are doing this work in a VPC so lets just disable it, to do so:

1. Select Start -> Control Panel -> Windows Firewall
2. Check Off option and click OK button

What we have done

The Visual Studio project has now been configured to kill the Home Server Console every time your the project is built, copy the updated assembly and debug database (pdb) to the Home Server if the build succeeds, and if you do elect, launch the Home Server Console again on the Home Server and attach the debugger.

Using it

At this point, 4 options exist for testing our add-in that has been deployed to our test Home Server on every successful build:

1. Manual running of the Home Server Console - At any time you are free to double click on the Windows Home Server Console icon on your test machine's desktop to load the Console normally.

2. Launching from Visual Studio - By pressing the Control+F5 keystroke or using the Debug -> Start Without Debugging menu option to rebuild your project and launch the Home Server Console without debugging.

3. Immediate debugging from Visual Studio - Using the F5 keystroke, the Debug -> Start Debugging menu option, or everyone's favorite green triangle, the project will be rebuilt, launch the Home Server Console and attach to it, allowing you to step through code and examine the running state of the add-in.

One problem that is not uncommon using this method is unhanded exceptions like this one which often occurs for me when opening the Settings dialog:

Ordinarily we might tell Visual Studio to not break when this kind of exception occurs... instead we should try to use the debugger as a more limited tool... only when we need it, which is what we do in option #4:

4. Delayed debugging - Rather than immediately debugging our add-in, we can use option #2 to launch it and get things running normally... and then when we want to attach the debugger to check something, we can use the Debug -> Attach to Process menu option or the Control+Shift+P keystroke to display the Attach to Process dialog:

From here, you'll need to change the Qualifier to the Debug Monitor server session on your test Home Server, which should be available in the drop down list because of your specifying it when configuring Visual Studio.

Once the proper process list is selected, simply double click on the HomeServerConsole.exe (or single click and click Attach button) to attach the debugger.

Now... simply wait for break points you've already set to be reached... or set new ones.

Conclusion

When coupled with Virtual PC, Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 can easily attach to the Windows Home Server Console running on a remote machine, allowing a developer to examine the inner workings of their running add-in to better troubleshoot it.

Next Time

Tomorrow I will post about how you can install a copy of Visual Studio Express on your Home Server (running in a Virtual PC) to do local debugging.

Note: The information in this post is based on undocumented and at times deduced information on Windows Home Server and is not officially supported or endorsed by Microsoft and could very easily be wrong or subject to change in future, so please take it and everything else said on this blog with a grain of salt and use with caution.

A week ago I was getting this...

Now when viewing a backup of my desktop I get this towards the end:

Which is quickly followed by this:

And these errors in the server's event log:

Unexpected error 0x5aa from ReadFile on D:\folders\{00008086-058D-4C89-AB57-A7F909A47AB4}\Data.4096.0.dat: Insufficient system resources exist to complete the requested service.

and

Client Backup server failed at d:\qhsv1_rtm_qfe\qhs\src\backup\util\diskfile.cpp(383)

Now the question… (given this isn't the first time I've achieved this state) if I wipe out all of my backups today… can I make this fail again in the same way in 2 weeks (the time since the last backup wipe out)?

Thanks though to a little bit of hackery:

made possible with a test add-in:

I know which drive is currently suspect for the next time I get into this state. Now to expand the add-in further while I wait for the next failure.

After owning the name domain for more than four and a half years... at last, there is now actual, useful, honest to goodness content!

And no... there are no links related to the cobuyitaphobia wars (in which I was victorious).

Despite the frequency of Windows Home Server related postings on this blog, it can be far too difficult to navigate through the strange political and social rants, calling attention to the enemies of free speech, porn and strange photo shows.

With that I've now just finished the Brendan's WHS Dev Site which is hosted on BrendanGrant.com and currently simply links back to posts here and organizes things far better than I could have here.

Over time I will endeavor to expand it into a more general WHS Development page, hosting and linking to content elsewhere... so long as other folks get into the Home Server development blogging.

Q: Can I use Virtual PC to make my testing and development job easier?

A: Yes you can... and if you haven't already added Virtual PC to your development process, now is the time to do so!

With it, you can create a custom test environment that can be rebuilt at any time, easily restored to previous states without going through a full installation... all of which requires no additional hardware or software than what you have today.

Background

For those who haven't heard of Virtual PC before, it's free virtual machine software from Microsoft that allows you to install an operating system and applications into a virtual (emulated) computer (complete with BIOS and hardware configuration options) that is isolated from your actual PC and any changes made to the virtual PC affect only it.

The upshot of this is that you are able to more easily deploy and test your software in a clean environment, and once done either wipe out that environment or just wipe out the changes you made to it, perfect for testing your add-in on a clean Windows Home Server.

Terminology

Before going into how we can use Virtual PC 2007 to make our testing and development job easier, you should be familiar with the following terms:
 

• Virtual PC - The Virtual PC 2007 application
• Virtual machine - Generic term for a virtual PC/environment or a specific configured and installed virtual PC to be run in Virtual PC 2007
• VPC - A specific virtual machine
• Host PC/OS - The computer/operating system on which Virtual PC 2007 is running
• Guest PC/OS - The computer/operating system running within Virtual PC 2007
• Virtual Machine Additions - Software that runs on the guest PC that enables it to take better advantage of the underlying system and interact more seamlessly with the user such as dragging files back and forth between the host PC and the guest PC

Special keys

While Windows Home Server requires you to use the Control+Alt+Delete keystroke to login, Virtual PC requires you to use the keystroke Right Alt+Delete.

Until you have installed the Virtual Machine Additions (discussed later), whenever you click your mouse inside of the VPC window, it will be trapped there... until you press the Right Alt key to release it back to the host environment.

You may also make the VPC full screen by using the right Alt+Enter key combination, as well as bring it out of full screen mode with the same combination. Note that you should not attempt to full screen the VPC until after you have installed the Virtual Machine Additions and after you have logged in to the guest PC.

Requirements

In order to take advantage of Virtual PC you'll need three things:

1. A beefy PC*
2. An installed copy of Virtual PC 2007
3. A licensed copy of Windows Home Server (full or evaluation version)

*Caution: Running any modern operating system in a virtual machine requires significant system resources (hard drive, ram and CPU) and will likely reduce the performance of both the host PC and the guest PC while in use.

Support

It must be mentioned that running Windows Home Server in a virtual machine is completely unsupported by Microsoft and if you have any problems with it, Microsoft support will likely not be willing or able to assist you.

Initial Setup

In order to install Windows Home Server to a VPC (Virtual PC), you first need to create it with the built in wizard, however to save time I've provided an empty VPC here which is simply configured to use 512 megs of ram, 3 virtual hard drives and use undo disks... otherwise you can build it yourself, just make sure that the Virtual PC you create meets the WHS minimum system requirements.

In order to use the empty VPC, simply download it and extract the archive to a hard drive (preferably non-network) with plenty of disk space (at least 10 GB).

Installation

To begin installing Windows Home Server to your new VPC...

1. Insert Windows Home Server Installation DVD into DVD drive of your host PC

1a. Close any AutoPlay or AutoRun dialog that is displayed

2. Launch the VPC by either:

2a. Launch Virtual PC 2007, select the desired virtual machine from the list and press the Start button

2b. Double click on the 'Windows Home Server' file from the empty VPC you've previously downloaded

3. From the CD menu of the new window, select "Use Physical Drive X:" where X is the drive on your host PC where the install DVD has been inserted

3a. If the virtual machine booted faster than you could carry out step 3, after you have done so, use the Action -> Reset option to restart the virtual machine

4. Proceed through the normal setup process

5. When prompted for a CD key, enter your own (but do not activate later when prompted) or simply click Next and accept warning that you will have to enter one within 30 days

6. Specify a name for your Home Server like vmserver or servervm, something that is different (but similar) than any you already have so as to avoid naming conflicts but will make going back and forth between real and virtual easier

7. Grab yourself a sandwich, watch a movie and maybe consider taking a nap as installing Windows Home Server to a virtual environment will take a significant amount of time

Virtual PC Features

While you wait ~3+ hours for Windows Home Server to install, let's discuss some of what Virtual PC does for us.

Aside from being an extra Home Server environment to test with, the virtual hard disks allow you to save only when you want to, this is enabled through the optional use of undo disks.

When enabled, any changes made inside of the guest operating environment (files changed, applications installed/removed, events written to logs, etc) are written to an undo disk instead of the main virtual hard disk where things are mostly read from.

When it comes time to shut down (or forcefully close) the virtual machine you have a choice, do you want to save the state in the undo disk back to the virtual hard disks, thus making the changes permanent, keep the changes in the undo disk so you can keep working in that temporary change set, or throw out the undo disk completely.

Virtual PC will ask you what you want to do whenever you're virtual machine has undo disks enabled (which is the case of the one I've built for you) and the virtual machine is either closed due to it being shut down internally (Start -> Shutdown) or you click the big red x of the Virtual PC window, these options are:
 

• Save state and save changes - Puts the current virtual machine into a state of suspended animation, enabling you to start up the virtual machine again in the exact state it was in in at the time of the state save.
• Shut down Windows Server 2003 and save changes - Gracefully shuts down the guest PC and saves changes to the undo disk and is equivalent to pressing the power button on the front of a real PC.
• Turn off and save changes - Immediately turns of the virtual machine and keeps any changes made since the last start up to the undo disk and is equivalent of yanking the power cable from a real PC.
• Turn off and delete changes - Immediately turns off the virtual machine and throws out any changes stored in the undo disk and is equivalent to yanking the power cable from a real PC and formatting the hard drive and reloading it with a previous disk image.
• Commit changes to the virtual hard disk - Writes any and all changes in the undo disk to the virtual hard disk.

Choose the operation with care because in many cases once done, it cannot be undone. Personally I tend to stick with Turn off and delete changes after most testing so that I never have to deal with a modified test environment until I really want to, in which case Save state and save changes or Shut down Windows Server 2003 and save changes let me keep those changes so long as I want.

Post-installation configuration

Before using a new guest PC for testing, it's a good idea to configure it just how you want with user accounts (ideally with the same usernames and passwords that you use on your real Home Server and will be working/testing with) and run Windows Update to install all updates you'll want, as well as install the Virtual Machine Additions, to install them:

1. From the Action menu of the parent window, select Install or Update Virtual Machine Additions

2. Read dialog and press Continue button

3. Wait for the installer to launch

If the installer doesn't launch, run x:\Windows\setup.exe where X is the CD/DVD drive within the VPC.

4. Click Next to begin installing and press the Finish button once complete

5. Press the Yes button to restart virtual machine

Once fully updated and configured, shutdown the Virtual PC using Start -> Shutdown and when prompted, Commit the changes to the virtual hard disk.

What you can do

When fully up and running, the experience of testing with Windows Home Server in a virtual machine is very similar to using Remote Desktop to connect to a real Home Server, the key difference (aside from the whole state saving/deleting bits) is that instead of having to configure network shares to easily move files back and forth, a user can simply drag and drop files between the host PC and the guest PC.

30 days later

Unless you activate the copy of Windows Home Server that is running in Virtual PC (which would be bad if you only have a single licenses and already activated the same copy on physical hardware), the server will enter reduced functionality mode which will keep you from doing any additional testing.

When this happens, the best thing to do is delete the VPC files from the host PC, and then extract the empty VPC from the previously downloaded archive and go through this whole process again.

Conclusion

With Virtual PC 2007 and Windows Home Server you can easily test out your new add-in or other software that targets WHS in a pristine test environment that you control every aspect of and quickly and easily create and restore for testing almost anything.

Next week

Next week I will show how you can use Virtual PC and Visual Studio to automatically deploy, test and even debug your add-in with every build without any dragging and dropping, making testing even faster which gives you even more time to write killer add-ins.

Note: The information in this post is based on undocumented and at times deduced information on Windows Home Server and is not officially supported or endorsed by Microsoft and could very easily be wrong or subject to change in future, so please take it and everything else said on this blog with a grain of salt and use with caution.

Aside from giving me a good bit of motivation, there is another up shot it seems of having a homemade Home Server that likes to screw up on me from time to time... it helps me find errors like this one that ideally very very few people ever see:

What's even more odd... is that the link takes the user here. Not really a place that is of much use in such a condition.

This issue has now been submitted as a suggestion/bug over on Connect.

In addition to the earlier update of Web Folders 4 WHS, Tab Reorderer has also now been updated to provide the inclusion of the actual tab icons and offers a way to to both remove given tabs from the list (adding them to the Ignored list), but also move them back to the visible list.

Visible List:

Ignored List:

This new build includes a whopping 5 buttons whose functions have changed slightly, they are now:

• Move up: Moves tab up in tab order
• Ignore: Add’s tab to Ignored list, recommended for Microsoft/OEM tabs
  Move Down: Moves tab down in tab order
• Delete: Deletes the tab from the Visible list (but not from the application if present) and from the underlying configuration file. This button is intended for removing add-ins from the list that have been uninstalled but still show up in this list due to earlier reordering.
• Restore: Moves tab from Ignored list to Visible list

This will likely be the last release of a stand alone Tab Reorderer add-in as I'm seeing a future for it's inclusion, along with Tab Scroller and a couple of other back burner ideas into a Tab Management add-in.

Download: Tab Reorderer

If I were a smart man... I'd stop using my Windows Home Server.

The PC I've built to act as my WHS is one monster of a frankenpc.

Inside it is an old Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard that was retired from normal use a few years back after it was no longer stable enough to run certain 3d games despite a great deal of driver work.

The CPU for some reason (when plugged into this board (despite large amounts of tweaking) insists on running at only 1.1 Ghz, despite being clocked by the factory for 2.2 Ghz.

The SATA controller was the cheapest I could find whose drivers I later found officially only support 2000 and XP and with some jury rigging seem to work in 2003/WHS.

Not the best combination... but it seems to work, mostly.

If I were a smart (and rich) man I'd buy some better supported hardware, or even an official Windows Home Server box.

This evening I my Home Server greeted me with this warning:

Believe it or not, this is something I've seen before and is usually the precursor to the drive extender blowing up on me and eventually leading to data loss.

As yet I've been unable to diagnose exactly why this happens or what piece of hardware or software (likely driver) is to blame.

That ends.

So much of what I've done with Windows Home Server has been about making tools that work well for me, that make it an even better product for me, and if other people have benefit of my add-ins, so much the better.

This latest volume error has lead me to sit down and start work on yet another tool, in the hopes of better diagnosing this kind of error. Not just informing the user that an issue exists, but helping them identify which disk drive, connected to which controller, something that is of vital importance to people like me with multiple identical drives:

Sure, the Console says one is failing, but IDiskInfo.Status doesn't.

If I were a smart man, I'd just quit working with Windows Home Server, quit writing code that hurts my hands, quit investing so much time and energy into itty bitty cases that Windows Home Server can encounter, cases that Microsoft didn't deem important enough (or have sufficient time) to include in a v1 product, things that while possible to do manually require a fair bit of behind the scenes work and knowledge, functionality that should be a single button in the Home Server Console.</rant>

... if I were a smart man.

For the last 2 hours my ISP has been having some wonderful DNS related problems which kept me from accessing ~95% of the Internet that I care about, a rather important thing for uploading a new build of Web Folders 4 WHS and related documentation, but now those issues are corrected it seems.

Yippie!

Today I am making available the latest build of Web Folders 4 WHS (version 0.6.2) which is largely a cosmetic upgrade from the previous version (version 0.6.0) and includes some new eye candy for more easily identifying folders and whether they are web enabled or not:

In addition, an updated Instructions document has been created with removal guidance as well as some information on how to manually remove everything configured by the add-in in the unlikely event (something that has not been encountered yet) that the add-in and it's configuration cannot be removed using the suggested method.

The Dreaded Warning

After being greeted with this warning in the previous version:

some became worried about the stability of my add-in and what it could do to their system.

I want to make clear that as yet I have received no reports of data loss, reduction of system stability or performance, famine, flood or death as a result of the use of this add-in. Despite that, this add-in still relies on a number of unsupported Windows Home Server sub-systems (but supported portions of the Windows Small Business Server which serves as the basis for WHS) and simply exists as a warning of that.

At a later date I will replace the current warning with a less intrusive one.

Upgrading from Previous Version

Any users using the initial release of this add-in are advised to uninstall the previous version, download the new one and install it.

You are NOT required to remove the previous configuration prior to this upgrade.

Without further delay, the files:

• WebFolders4WHS.msi
• Instructions (optional)
• Manual Removal Instructions (more optional)
• ChangeLog (very optional)

Note that Software Update for Web Folders (KB907306) is still required on client machines if not already installed.

In response to a recent blog comment/question on if it is possible to resize the Home Server Console... the answer is yes... but it's almost worthless.

With a little bit of hackery (ie not through the normal interface) it is possible to resize the Home Server Console form to a smaller size, say 800x600, only it becomes clear that the form most of the add-ins out there were never written to do so:

The above picture is the Console running on the server itself, if you actually run it from the client you can easily resize the console, but not the parent window with out some hacking on both the client and server where you end up with this:

So still no real benefit.

Some add-ins (like Web Folders 4 WHS) actually do resizing, however they are rare, largely because such functionality is basically worthless at this time because the larger application doesn't support it.

So to answer your question Ryan... it is possible, however there is no advantage to doing it today, maybe in V2.

At long last we heard something from the Mayo Clinic about the problem 8 or so MD's I'd already seen in 3 states couldn't figure out.

They agreed with one quack who I saw (and later fired) for far longer than I should of who thought that my problems were likely of type of somatoform disorder. Translation: mostly in my head.

His only suggestion was to perhaps see a doctor out in Boston (because an airplane ticket is so affordable when you are on the verge of bankruptcy due to 9+ months of being unemployed) who happens to specializes in somatoform disorder.

Oddly enough, this the same one it seems that was suggested by HD#4, but for different reasons.

Given the time it took to even get this from the Mayo, as well as approval from my insurance company for a trip (which now seems extremely unlikely), any suck trip to Boston would be 100% out of pocket as it is more than likely that by the time I would be able to get there, it'd be after January 1st.

What's so special about that day? Because of the cost of my initial surgery and a few other expensive tests (EMG, spinal MRI, and bone scan), my out of pocket costs for my insurance has been met... for this year, so come January 1st it all becomes out of pocket again.

Damn it.

If you'll excuse me, I need to go buy some lottery tickets as that now seems to be my one remaining hope.

If you can believe it, with all of the weight I've lost (~165lbs so far) over the last year and a half I've actually encountered more problems then benefits (something I really need to blog about) and one of those problems is that I no longer fit well in my car seat due to my previous size bending and shaping it in ways that the factory never intended.

For the last year or so I've been hunting for a replacement that matched my interior and was in as good, if not better condition than my old one and at last I found one at Johns Auto Parts, a wee little place in the DPRM that had not one, but two seats to choose from, something my local bone yard which is ~4x larger didn't have, but wanted even 4x as much to ship one in that was in even worse condition than what I had (upholstery wise).

Christmas came early for me this year, thanks dad!

To give you an idea of just how bad the old seat with ~125,000 miles on it:

Midway through I realized that I should have done this when I had a shop vac around to clean a bit:

And when all done, a new (to me) seat with *only* 80,000 miles:

No longer will my back hurt or have the seat frame tear through the fabric and cause damage to belts and shirts.

Huzzah!

One little problem has already been discovered (aside from this new seat needing a visit with a shop vac) is that I forgot another reason why my seat had been so horribly altered over the 4 years and 106,000 miles I've had it... I'm tall enough that I've either got to lean back in the seat or crank it up to a good position for my lower back and slouch.

Do you use a lot of Home Server add-ins?

Do you have so many Home Server Console tabs that you hand begins to hurt as you click through them all?

Do you wish that the list was scrollable?

Well now it is!

As hinted at yesterday...

Description

Tab Scroller hooks into some of the undocumented bowels of the Home Server Console to allow you to scroll through your tab list (when selected) with your mouse wheel and even removes itself from view moments after being loaded so as to stay out of the way.

Download Here

Intended Audience

Any Windows Home Server user with 7 or more Home Server Console tabs.

Note: This add-in can be installed on machines with less than 7, however on such systems it can cause some visual artifacts (non-functional scrolling buttons, an empty space where this add-in used to be) only so long as the add-in is installed and there are less than 7 tabs.

Installation

1. Download the installer
2. Copy installer to your \\servername\Software\Add-ins\ directory
3. Install through the Home Server Console Settings dialog
4. Re-launch the Home Server Console

Usage

After launching the Home Server Console, use the mouse wheel to scroll up or down through the list.

If nothing happens, click on one of the tabs (so as to give the container holding them focus) and try scrolling again.

Background

This add-in came about yesterday due to the frustration that I expect many add-in developers and users have experienced, of having to manually scroll through a long list to find just the one they are looking for, and despite the tab list in the Settings dialog being scrollable, the one on the main form is not, so I decided to change that.

A while back I wrote an experimental add-in named Form Hacker which used reflection to navigate through the relationships between the Home Server Console forms and the controls they contained, through which I learned enough to be dangerous and pull things off like this and my as yet unblogged about add-in Tab Reorderer.

Final Word

It must be said that this add-in uses numerous bits of undocumented functionality of the Windows Home Server Console and can be rendered non-functional at any time with a future Home Server update.

As much as I love Windows Home Server, I find myself hating it at times when I keep running into issues which prevent me from so fully exploiting it as easily as I would like and wouldn't you know... today was one of those days.

Today I finally had enough of a... tax I have to deal with almost every time I test changes in an add-in (currently Web Folders 4 WHS) and decided to write yet another add-in to solve my problem... only problem was that what I was trying to do isn't exactly supported (surprise surprise)... hence the following boredom and angry inspired relief:

Stop back tomorrow for the link to this add-in where the following will be said by various groups:

• Average WHS User - "Eh? What's the point?"
• WHS Developers - "How the hell did you do that?"
• Microsoft - "We need to stop this guy, consider what he's trying to do in V2, or hire him."

Late last week I broke the story about the willful violation of Google's policies with their spamming of Google's index with worthless doorway pages, I've since uncovered even more domain they use for this purpose:

• www.dozierinternet-law.com
• www.dozierinternetlaw.net
• www.internet-law-dozier.com
• www.dozierinternet-law.org
• www.infringementlawyer.com

That's right, in addition to the previously discussed 8433 words of Google spamming fun, these new 5 domain names add another 9962 words to the mix.

Believe it or not... the news doesn't end here. Oh no, Dozier Internet Law gives us yet another reason to respect and think highly of them.

Not only is Dozier risking penalization or delisting by Google... they are also associating with some of the lowest scum of the web... domain squatters and those who register domains with the sole purpose of serving up ads.

After just a few minutes with Google and only searching for "Dozier Internet Law" I was easily able to find these spam listings, all appearing to be sponsored by Dozier or one of their agents:

Google View #1:

Spam Page #1:

Google Page #2:

Spam Page #2:

Google Page #3:

Spam Page #3:

Google Page #4:

Spam Page #4:

Google Page #5:

Spam Page #5:

Like my previous post, all links to sites owned or run by Dozier Internet Law links contain the rel="nofollow" tag so as to keep this post from benefiting them in anyway.

Don't forget about the Google Report A Spam Result page.