Better text console for C#
Console.MoveBufferArea turned out to be dead slow under heavy logging output. So I went to the Win32 console API and built a faster text console for C# — with source and benchmarks.
17 articles in the notebook
Windows.
Optimizing RDP for casual use
A revisit of my 2011 RDP guide, updated for RDP 8.x: what to tweak on client and server for less bandwidth, higher throughput and adaptive transfers — the short story and the dirty details.
Windows 2012 Storage Spaces not mounting after reinstall
After reinstalling Windows Server 2012 R2 your Storage Spaces don't show up — not even in Computer Management. The fix: authorize the server for read-write and re-attach the virtual disks, via GUI or PowerShell.
Setting up OwnCloud on Windows: Your personal Dropbox
OwnCloud is a free personal Dropbox alternative where your server sets the storage limit. It didn't work perfectly out of the box on Windows, so here is the full setup guide with the fixes I needed.
Apache WebDAV setup compatible with Windows
Windows can mount WebDAV shares as drives, but refuses basic auth by default — and getting Apache to serve digest auth that Windows accepts took some troubleshooting. The working setup, documented.
IE favorites, NTFS symbolic links and Dropbox
NTFS symlinks are well-known to *nix users and unknown to most Windows users. Combine them with Dropbox and your IE favorites (or any folder) silently sync between machines.
Optimizing RDP for casual use (Windows 7 SP1, RemoteFX)
I have worked over RDP since around 2000, and bandwidth is usually the bottleneck. Concrete tweaks for RDP on Windows 7 SP1 with RemoteFX to squeeze a smoother desktop out of a slow line.
Should I defrag my SSD?
"Yes!" and "No, never!" — both answers are right. SSDs don't care about fragmented reads, but NTFS does interesting things when free space gets fragmented. What actually matters, and what to do about it.
Disable Windows 7 Sound Card Jack Sensing
Windows kept detecting my X-Fi's plugs in and out at random, so the speakers did too. The fix is a registry key: EnableDynamicDevices = 0. Took me days to find, hope it saves you the trouble.
Ah! THERE’s your problem!
Ah! THERE's your problem! A screenshot that speaks for itself.
Enabling Windows Firewall on Windows 2003 Active Directory Domain Controller
Active Directory lets NTDS, NTFrs and NetLogon pick random ports, which makes firewalling a domain controller a pain. Here is how to pin them to fixed ports and finally enable the firewall.
BitLocker startup error 0x26000070
BitLocker kept demanding the recovery key at boot — first because the docking station snuck new devices into the BIOS boot order, then error 0x26000070 after I tampered with the BCD. Both fixes documented here.
A question you don’t expect an operating system to ask you in 2010
A screenshot of a question no operating system should be asking in 2010.
Optimizing virtual machines
We run a development VM per customer at work, so making them fast matters. A long list of concrete tweaks for Virtual PC, VirtualBox and VMware — from disk layout to services worth disabling.
Antivirus performance test
A good comparative performance test of antivirus products — some make a simple file copy take twice as long. Maybe disabling the antivirus now and then isn't such a bad idea.
Windows Browser Election 2010
Screenshots of the EU-mandated browser choice screen rolling out on Windows.
OpenSim in Visual Studio on Win64
OpenSim's native dependencies (SQLite, ODE, OpenJpeg) don't do 64-bit, and OpenSim.32BitLaunch.exe only helps from the command line. Here is the workaround to get full Visual Studio debugging on 64-bit Windows.