Bug Vanquisher: Windows Vista

Someone Please Fix ASLR!

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 11:48:17 GMT

Not the feature but what it means. I have heard/read over 3 different expansions for the abbreviation.

ASLR: Address space layout randomization.
ASLR: Address space load randomization.

And some more which I forgot. Its just a mass confusion over what the term actually means while the implementation is simple to explain.

One boot, you get dlls loaded like A B C D E F
Second boot, you get dlls loaded like D E C B A F

And that's it.

Previous Versions

Sat, 03 May 2008 17:18:06 GMT

They don't exist in Windows Vista Enterprise Edition, or do they? For me they do and this is how.

Woes and Worries

Sat, 03 May 2008 12:53:15 GMT

I wonder why people cry of the sucky video drivers pushed out by NVidia. The monsters Intel rolls out for their D946 GZ chipsets must be on par. I have had more GPU resets from them than power failures!

Even new yahoo messenger causes the graphics stack to crash weirdly.

[Update-After five minutes]

Here's the most charming, updated EULA of the driver I downloaded.

This file should be replaced by the current license file when built.

I mean what they are playing at?

Screw Up. Fixed!

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 18:16:29 GMT

Finally, my Windows Vista installation is up and running again. Only two or three programs of my usual set remain to be installed.

Why the reinstall? Well, I managed to install SP1 RC refresh last week and it didn't work anymore.

After the Service Pack

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 18:47:09 GMT

A nice analysis you get after you install Windows Vista SP1. The reason, no debugging symbols available as of right now.

The problem was caused by visiting this page in IE7. FF 3 beta 2 seems to work fine (at least it does not crash each and every time). So, if anyone can help, you are welcome.

0:000> !analyze
*********************************************************
* Exception Analysis *
*********************************************************

Use !analyze -v to get detailed debugging information.

*** ERROR: Symbol file could not be found. Defaulted to export symbols for ieui.dll, ieframe.dll, iexplore.exe, kernel32.dll -
*** OS symbols are WRONG. Please fix symbols to do analysis.

***************************************************************
***    Your debugger is not using the correct symbols                            ***
***    In order for this command to work properly, your symbol path      ***
***    must point to .pdb files that have full type information.                ***
***    Certain .pdb files (such as the public OS symbols) do not             ***
***    contain the required information. Contact the group that              ***
***    provided you with these symbols if you need this command to       ***
***    work.                                                                                       ***
***    Type referenced: ntdll!_PEB                                                        ***
***************************************************************

*** ERROR: Symbol file could not be found. Defaulted to export symbols for ole32.dll -
*** ERROR: Symbol file could not be found. Defaulted to export symbols for rpcrt4.dll -
*** ERROR: Symbol file could not be found. Defaulted to export symbols for msvcrt.dll -
*** ERROR: Symbol file could not be found. Defaulted to export symbols for msidcrl40.dll -
*** ERROR: Symbol file could not be found. Defaulted to export symbols for pdm.dll -
*** ERROR: Symbol file could not be found. Defaulted to export symbols for mshtml.dll -
*** ERROR: Symbol file could not be found. Defaulted to export symbols for winmm.dll -
*** ERROR: Symbol file could not be found. Defaulted to export symbols for wdmaud.drv -
*** ERROR: Symbol file could not be found. Defaulted to export symbols for mswsock.dll -
*** ERROR: Symbol file could not be found. Defaulted to export symbols for ws2_32.dll -
*** ERROR: Symbol file could not be found. Defaulted to export symbols for wininet.dll -
*** ERROR: Symbol file could not be found. Defaulted to export symbols for jscript.dll -

***************************************************************
***    Your debugger is not using the correct symbols                            ***
***    In order for this command to work properly, your symbol path      ***
***    must point to .pdb files that have full type information.                ***
***    Certain .pdb files (such as the public OS symbols) do not             ***
***    contain the required information. Contact the group that              ***
***    provided you with these symbols if you need this command to       ***
***    work.                                                                                       ***
***    Type referenced: kernel32!pNlsUserInfo                                       ***
***************************************************************

Probably caused by : ieui.dll ( ieui!DUserRegisterSuper+a79 )

Followup: MachineOwner
---------

Oh and I almost forgot, the stack trace.

WARNING: Stack unwind information not available. Following frames may be wrong.
001fe630 7777ff75 001fe5e4 001fe658 00000000 ntdll!KiFastSystemCallRet
001fe684 73486071 00000030 001fe6b8 ffffffff user32!GetWindowRect+0x16c
001fe6a4 73486353 000004ff ffffffff 00000000 ieui!DUserRegisterSuper+0xa79
001fe6cc 734862f9 000004ff 00000000 6f1137ba ieui!WaitMessageEx+0x8b
001fe708 6f0af412 003a1788 001fe738 6f09305b ieui!WaitMessageEx+0x31
001fe714 6f09305b 00000000 00000000 00353df0 ieframe!Ordinal101+0x1a727
001fe738 6f095b28 1c70000a 00353df0 00000000 ieframe!Ordinal160+0x1281
001ff7a8 6f094e2a 00353df0 00000001 77055f59 ieframe!Ordinal101+0xe3d
001ff9d8 01333036 00322490 0000000a 01340070 ieframe!Ordinal101+0x13f
001ffe1c 01332eca 01330000 00000000 00321a00 iexplore+0x3036
001ffeb0 77181cc2 7ffdc000 001ffefc 77b087d5 iexplore+0x2eca
001ffebc 77b087d5 7ffdc000 77efc35d 00000000 kernel32!BaseThreadInitThunk+0x12
001ffefc 77b087a8 01332d4d 7ffdc000 00000000 ntdll!RtlInitializeExceptionChain+0x64
001fff14 00000000 01332d4d 7ffdc000 00000000 ntdll!RtlInitializeExceptionChain+0x37

The Bug in the Bug

Tue, 25 Dec 2007 16:21:57 GMT

Yesterday, I installed Windows Vista SP1 on my box. Everything works fine, except three!

Network icon is very shy of showing the actual connectivity of my computer on the internet. It takes two minutes to update from to . Not remotely amusing. Thank God, I have my modem sitting right in front of me to have a look at those five LEDs. Such a time saver.

It is possible to boot the system from cold faster than it is able to resume from sleep from cold. The wonders of sleep optimizations.

And this leads to the last issue. It is not possible to submit this report to Microsoft, because the tool included in SP1 is for beta releases of Windows Vista. It fails to update itself, always downloads a copy of the program when run again, saves reports in a format it cannot itself read, is never able to establish a connection to Microsoft servers for report submission, the error it shows in this case redirects to a page which keeps refreshing itself without ever showing anything, shows Longhorn in its UI instead of Vista.

[The other tags which should have been here, had it been the fact that Windows Live Spaces supported tagging a post with multiple categories are: Bugz and Rant vs Vent/]

Real News

Sat, 08 Dec 2007 14:19:48 GMT

Guess what! I kept wondering why Windows XP suddenly started displaying all windows with AERO borders. :)

Out of the Fire, into the Frying Pan

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 17:30:30 GMT

There is a very nice proverb in Urdu that truly explains what happened to me.
آسمان سے گرا، کھجور میں اٹکا
I installed this update (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938979). Everything seemed to work fine until... I decided that I could no longer ignore the constant prompts of Windows Update service to restart the computer. Then, I left to take a look at winky. When I came back I saw the first ever blue screen on a Windows Vista system. The offending file was CI.dll and I don't remember the exception codes. This was certainly the result of that 'Reliability Improving Update' that I had installed. When I looked at the properties of the offending dll, it was deemed Code Integrity Module.

After resetting the power switch, I went to find if any diagnostics were recorded anywhere in the system. Eventlog didn't have anything to say on the subject. Additionally, there was no memory dump at %systemroot% and to cap it all Problem Reports and Solutions has no memory of the event.

Therefore, I guess by removing any records of something bad happened, you definitely improve the reliability of your product.

Finally someone tells me!

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 09:12:10 GMT

I never knew why my Windows Vista Enterprise edition ever showed anything in restore previous version tab. Now, I know why.

Windows Search in Windows Vista

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 12:33:15 GMT

Where to begin? Searching in Windows has always been a laugh. When tired of working, press Win + F and see that abomination of an animation, the dog. Failing to find results; continuing search even after pressing Stop; window not closing instantly; slow performance. The list goes on and on. Then, there was another beauty hidden behind the scenes. The indexing service [aka. cisvc/cidaemon]. Though it performed very well when uninterrupted and indexed whatever you threw at it. It had one major problem. Index rebuilds. Whenever power failed, on the next startup, indexing service threw away everything and started from scratch. Before I installed a UPS at home, I would have manually searched for a document rather than rely on indexing service/built-in search to do the job.

Windows Desktop Search tried to address most of these issues. It found everything and much more, performance was really fast, really reading from an index instead of going to every file and folder. No more behind the scene searches. But it had this big problem, not supporting full query language like indexing service did. You had to restrict yourself to just one boolean operator at a time. There was no way to compose another search out of some preexisting ones. Another big issue is if you lose power, you lose the index sometimes. It starts building from scratch upon next boot.

Windows Search in Windows Vista seems to finally overcome this final obstacle, although it does not integrate that well with general file types. Most thoroughly supported files are from Office 2007 suite. You can do things like query composition, apply any number of boolean operators in a query, save a search, do post query filtering by many attributes like name, type, size, author, categories, tags, created/modified dates etc.

Windows Search still has some missing functionality, the result of dropping out of WinFS from Windows Vista. It cannot relate user data yet. Support for attaching arbitrary meta-data to any file or folder is missing. That's where Office 2007 suite shines most because it natively supports meta-data properties like author, title, subject, comments, categories, tags etc. You can also use most of these with pictures but that's it.

Until WinFS ships at whatever stage of my life, I will gladly embrace it. I am way too much addicted to searching on meta-data, attaching arbitrary properties, setting authors, keywords, categories, tags on documents.

As a work around I am working on something.

The problem with Thumbnails in Windows Vista

Wed, 07 Feb 2007 05:08:26 GMT

[Update: 7th April 2007. When viewing blog statistics, I noted that this particular post was getting many hits in relation to some problem with thumbnail images in Windows Vista. If there is some problem with them, let me know. This article is about Thumbnail API provided by DWM.]

If you remember my past post of "Let's mourn Windows Vista", in the last paragraph I wrote about thumbnail freezing to the last image when a window is minimized. I got a link to really nice blog of a DWM guy (Greg Schechter), very informative about all the how's and why's of DWM.

Now, I have an official response to that problem and, ahem..., it has as usual a "by design" explanation! No offense to Greg.

The message I wrote yesterday follows:

"I have read your blog back-to-front over the last couple of days. You seemed quite involved with DWM so I thought I should bring this issue into your notice.
The thumbnails which are displayed when mouse pauses over a tab in taskbar are dynamic while the window is not minimized. As soon as the window is minimized, the last image is displayed even if the window itself is updated many times a second.
A very good example is the Performance tab in Task Manager. When it is not minimized, processor usage and memory consumption graphs advance in the thumbnail in sync with the actual window. But when you minimize it, they are frozen to the last image they would have displayed.
The version I am using in Windows Vista Enterprise Edition. These details may help further restricting the scope. My system is dual core Pentium D, 2.8 GHz, 1GB DDR2 RAM and D945GZIS motherboard (AERO capable).
Time won't permit it to be fixed as I only realised it two days ago and Windows Vista has RTMed already. I haven't check the thumbnail displayed with ALT+TAB combination but as you said they are same thing at different locations, I expect them to exhibit same behavior."

</message>

And the expected reply:

<reply>

Yes, you're correct, and that's By Design. This is because applications, when minimized, actually do have the region they paint to minimized as well and receive Window messages telling them that they're minimized and they stop drawing. The DWM retains the last good bitmap, and displays this.

</reply>

Update to my mourning

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 10:28:34 GMT

I managed to find an explanation to the behavior I was seeing in internet explorer while loading a page. The problem lies entirely with internet explorer and has nothing to do with DWM.

Read further in: http://blogs.msdn.com/kamvedbrat/archive/2007/01/26/back-on-channel-9.aspx Pay special attention to paragraphs eight and nine. According to that post, the application should redraw with the default, which in this case is the AppWorkspace. However, that drawing isn't happening smoothly.

Let's mourn Windows Vista

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 12:46:38 GMT

I don't know where to start, the list of bugs I have already found and will find in future is quite long. This story will be told in multiple parts. I managed to get my hands on Windows Vista Enterprise Edition a few days ago, which I'll be upgrading to Ultimate Edition again in a few days time.

Now, it is time to start listing the bugs I have found.

The first one was discovered when I was checking the magnifying capabilities of dwm. Carefully watch the thumbnail image shown. Those card holding rectangles should never leave the vicinity of menu no matter how much the application's height and width are increased. But in this case, they are far away.
The next one is also related to dwm and shows what Microsoft promised us for three years hasn't been done like what we were told. See the area filled with window background. That glitch-free painting through dwm is a far cry. And how the status bar is shown in two places. No wonder, it might be because the web page took so long to load, but then, the problem is with Internet explorer.
Thumbnail API is also flawed. It does not show any of the child windows in the thumbnail.
And for added fun, if a window is minimized, no matter what you do and how dynamically rendered that window may be, its thumbnail will just be a static image with no live preview and updates.