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Archive for the vista tag

• ClickOnce Installation Problem on Vista

  We have a Winforms application published via ClickOnce, and I came up against a problem with the ClickOnce installation mechanism on my machine (Vista). Linking to the deploy manifest (the .application file) should launch the runtime to download and install the application. On my machine, this was triggering a dialog that prompted me to install the .NET framework (already available), and then proceeded to download the Winfx 3.0 Beta 2 runtime components.

  The problem was that the wrong application had become associated with the .application extension – in my case, notepad2. To resolve, click Start > Default Programs > Associate a file type or protocol with a program, then find the .application extension. The current default handler should be set to ‘Application Deployment Support Library’.

  In my case making this change then caused the correct behavior when clicking on a link to a .application file. I’m not sure quite how the default changed so easily, but think this was opening the deploy manifest in notepad2, and leaving the checkbox checked to use this application as the default.

  Posted:

  August 7, 2007 @ 10:12

  Categories:

  Personal

  Tags:

  .net, clickonce, deployment, vista, winforms

  Comments:

  No comments so far

• TFS client not caching credentials

  We recently had a problem on a couple of Vista machines where the TFS client would not cache the credentials used to connect. Typically you would get a challenge the first time you attempt to connect, and the credentials would then go into the standard windows credential store.

  I’m not certain why the bevahiour changed, but the resolution was fairly simple. Go to Control Panel > User Accounts > Manage Your Network Passwords, then manually add in an entry for the remote machine, specifying the user account to use when authenticating. Any future TFS commands issued will pick up this entry and won’t challenge you to authenticate.

  Our devbuild script issues a tf get command via an msbuild task, and this was failing as it was attempting to prompt the user to authenticate. After manually adding the entry as described, the devbuild runs as it should.

  Posted:

  June 26, 2007 @ 8:50

  Categories:

  Development

  Tags:

  authentication, tfs, troubleshooting, vista

  Comments:

  No comments so far

• Scripted Configuration of IIS7 on Vista with MSBuild

  I have an application that has an automated build script using msbuild which carries out all steps necessary to get the application configured and running on a local machine. Part of this process relates to configuration of IIS.

  I’ve just installed Vista, and initially ran into a few problems getting the build script to run sucessfully. IIS7 isn’t installed by default in Vista, so you need to go to Programs and Features manually and choose to install. When you do this, make sure you expand the IIS node in the treeview and check all of the features you require. By default the web server will install with a very limited range of features. The important one here is under II6 Management Compatability > IIS Metabase and II6 configuration compatibility.

  If you’re using the SBF task library for msbuild, the tasks for configuration of IIS use the WMI interface for configuring the webserver. This will continue to work so long as the previous configuration is checked when installing IIS7.

  The next problem you’ll face is to do with elevated permissions. When you carry out IIS configuration via the user interface, you’ll be prompted to elevate to admin permissions (the annoying dialog that pops up frequently). If you’re running a scripted build, this doesn’t occur so you’ll get an Access Denied exception when msbuild calls the IIS configuration tasks. Set up a shortcut for the command prompt (or use the VS.NET command prompt shortcut), right click on it, and choose “Run as Administrator”. This means that tasks which require administrative priveleges (but can’t ask for them via the UI) will complete successfully.

  IIS7 comes with a command line utility which allows you to do things like create websites or virtual directories. Long term it may be simpler if the msbuild tasks shell out to this utility rather than using WMI, but for the time being they would need to be able to configure IIS6 and 7, so WMI is the best approach.

  Posted:

  December 9, 2006 @ 14:18

  Categories:

  Development

  Tags:

  automation, build, iis, msbuild, vista

  Comments:

  No comments so far