Creating an image from an ISO file

If you have been an MSDN, TechNet, or Action Pack subscriber in the past, you probably remember the binders full of discs that Microsoft used to ship. Read more »

Creating a PowerShell script that can install itself as module

Powershell advanced functions are a lightweight, yet pretty powerful way to extend the set of commands available in a Powershell sessions. Advanced functions look and feel almost exactly like proper cmdlets, but they are written in Powershell and therefore quick to develop.

By default, advanced functions are ephemeral though: If you run a script containing an advanced function, that function is going to be available for the rest of the Powershell session – after that, it is gone. To make an advanced function available permanently – like a cmdlet – you have to wrap it in a Powershell module, and install that module.

Windows Hotpatching: A Walkthrough

As discussed in the last post, Windows 2003 SP1 introduced a technology known as Hotpatching. An integral part of this technology is Hotpatching, which refers to the process of applying an updated on the fly by using runtime code modification techniques. Although Hotpatching has caught a bit of attention, suprisingly little information has been published about its inner workings. As the technology is patented, however, there is quite a bit of information that can be obtained by reading the patent description. Read more »

Windows Hotpatching

Several years ago, with Windows Server 2003 SP1, Microsoft introduced a technology and infrastructure called Hotpatching. The basic intent of this infrastructure is to provide a means to apply hotfixes on the fly, i.e. without having to reboot the system – even if the hotfix contains changes on critical system components such as the kernel iteself, important drivers, or user mode libraries such as shell32.dll. Trying to applying hotfixes on the fly introduces a variety of problems – the most important being: Read more »

What a weirdo: How the /analyze switch changes its behavior depending on its environment

In Visual Studio 2005 Team System (VSTS), the “ultimate” SKU of Visual Studio 2005, Microsoft introduced the /analyze compiler switch. When the /analyze switch is used, the cl compiler not only does its regular checks, but performs a much more thorough static code analysis. While /analyze is very useful indeed, it was only available in the top SKU – the Standard and Professional versions of Visual Studio lacked support for this compiler switch (this has changed by now, Professional now also supports this feature). Read more »

LTCG issues with the WIN7/amd64 environment of WDK 7600

Now that Windows 7 is out, we all sooner or later have to upgrade to WDK 7600. I am still reluctant to move away from WDK 6000⁄6001 because of the dropped W2K support, but this is a different issue. However, as one cfix user who has obviously already adopted WDK 7600 kindly pointed out to me, linking a kernel mode unit test against cfix using WDK 7600 and the WIN7/amd64 environment fails reproducibly with the following error message: Read more »

Overview on Designing High-Performance Windows Applications

Back in 2008, the Windows Server Performance Team Blog, which I came across recently, ran a series of posts on Designing Applications for High Performance: Designing Applications for High Performance - Part I Designing Applications for High Performance - Part II Designing Applications for High Performance - Part III If you are interested in developing server side applications for Windows, these articles are definitely worth reading. Read more »

More Context Menu Handlers for Everyday Use

Although Windows Explorer may actually not be the brightest spot of Windows, it is still, for most users, among the most often used pograms. Customizing it to speed up certain tasks is thus a natural desire. A while ago, I wrote about how to extend the context menu by new commands that allow MSI packages to be installed/uninstalled with logfiles being created. The registry entries I used were: Windows Registry Editor Version 5. Read more »

Effective Leak Detection with the Debug CRT and Application Verifier

Programming memory leaks in C or C++ is easy. Even careful programming often cannot avoid the little mistakes that finally end up in your program having a memory leak. Thankfully, however, there are plenty of helpful tools that assist in finding leaks as early as possible. One especially helpful tool for leak detection is the debug CRT. Although the leak detection facilities provided by the debug CRT are not as far-reaching as those of, say, UMDH, using the debug CRT is probably the most friction-less way of identifying leaks. Read more »

AuxKlibGetImageExportDirectory and forwarders

One of the newer additions to the DDK is the aux_klib library, which, among others, offers the routine AuxKlibGetImageExportDirectory. As its name suggests, AuxKlibGetImageExportDirectory offers a handy way to obtain a pointer to the export directory of a kernel module. There is, however, one issue that – at least in my opinion – renders AuxKlibGetImageExportDirectory pretty much useless in most scenarios: Dealing with forwaders. The primary motivation to call AuxKlibGetImageExportDirectory is to either enumerate the exports of a module or to find a specific export. Read more »