Monthly Archives: September 2014

Case of the XP Service Pack 3 Upgrade Fail

Posted on September 21, 2014 by chentiangemalc

Over the weekend the drummer in my band “The Brushed Keys” ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU-U7SBPF5Y&list=PLQA4w1oo2uGQGxKTzvzcJaPcNSj8SL8pp ) had finally taken the plunge and attempted the Windows XP Service Pack 3 upgrade, only about 6 years late. However it all went wrong when the … Continue reading →

Posted in Windows XP | Tagged | Leave a comment

Case of the IE Hangs-Citrix HDX Flash Redirection

Posted on September 19, 2014 by chentiangemalc

To start with I wanted to capture IE hangs properly. In modern versions of Internet before you capture hang dumps you ideally want to set the TabProcGrowth value to 0 under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main This will force IE to put all … Continue reading →

Posted in Citrix, Internet Explorer, WinDbg | Tagged | Leave a comment

Patching a PAC File To Improve Performance

Posted on September 18, 2014 by chentiangemalc

Having taken the trouble to write a PAC file debugger ( https://chentiangemalc.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/pacdbg-custom-proxy-browser-set-proxy-cmd-line-tool/ ) I have to say I’ve seen some pretty horrendous PAC files, where attempts have been made to put the entire network design in this little JavaScript file. … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiddler, Internet Explorer | Tagged | 7 Comments

Case of the DllHost.exe Crash

Posted on September 17, 2014 by chentiangemalc

A problem case had been going on for sometime about DllHost.exe crashing, aka COM Surrogate Host across many Citrix Servers. There were about 1200 crashes a week. We set up a server setup to capture dmp files on application crash. … Continue reading →

Posted in Citrix, ProcExp, WinDbg | Tagged | Leave a comment

Case of the System.Net.WebClient (407) Proxy Authentication Required

Posted on September 15, 2014 by chentiangemalc

When attempting to launch DebugDiag Analysis Engine ( http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=42933 ) I received the error message Error Running TaskOne or more errors occurred. System.Net.WebException: The remote server returned an error: (407) Proxy Authentication Required.    at System.Net.WebClient.OpenRead(Uri address)    at DebugDiag.Analysis.AutoUpdate.GetWebContent(String … Continue reading →

Posted in .NET, Fiddler, WinDbg | Tagged | Leave a comment

Case of the 30 minute Windows 7 Logon

Posted on September 13, 2014 by chentiangemalc

After following a similar approach as below: https://chentiangemalc.wordpress.com/2014/09/12/case-of-the-8-minute-windows-8-1-first-logon/ I still hadn’t found any obvious cause of slow logon, except that it was in Win Logon Init phase. CPU, Storage, Memory, and Disk usage are all low: Expanding Generic Events, looking … Continue reading →

Posted in Active Directory, Group Policy, Windows 7, Windows Performance Recorder, Windows Performance Toolkit | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Case of the Windows 8.1 Audio Glitches

Posted on September 12, 2014 by chentiangemalc

In this scenario a Windows 8.1 device, despite well spec’d hardware wise, would get buzzing/clicking audio glitches during audio playback, typically when playing web content. In addition DRM’d web content like Amazon Prime stuttered completely, however it ran fine in … Continue reading →

Posted in Windows 8.1, Windows Performance Recorder | Tagged | Leave a comment

Case of the 8 Minute Windows 8.1 First Logon

Posted on September 12, 2014 by chentiangemalc

In this case Windows 8.1 was slow to logon, only for the first logon. But it was slow…. Typically for slow logons / startups on Windows machines my go-to tools are 1) The Windows Event logs. Besides the System / … Continue reading →

Posted in Windows 8.1, Windows Performance Toolkit | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Generate HTML/PDF Summary of App Crash/Hangs via PowerShell

Posted on September 11, 2014 by chentiangemalc

This script can be pointed at a list of servers in a text file, and the Event logs are scanned for application hang/crash events. The Windows Application hang event only occurs when an app hangs and user terminates the program. … Continue reading →

Posted in .NET, Debugging, PowerShell | Tagged | Leave a comment

Case of the .NET 4.5.2 Setup Can’t Run In Compatibility Mode

Posted on September 3, 2014 by chentiangemalc

When downloading http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/confirmation.aspx?id=42643 on Windows 8.1, the installer failed Well the most obvious thing, is the installer for some reason is set into compatibility mode. Clicking EXE and looking at properties shows this is not the case: First I tried … Continue reading →

Posted in .NET, API Monitor, Application Compatibility, Debugging, Reverse Engineering, Windows 8.1 | Tagged | 4 Comments