Dirk.Net

While MS has to be commended for releasing version 1.0 the AJAX Extensions for ASP.NET on time and free of charge, the upgrade will not work for web sites which were upgraded from VS.NET 2003 and still have the <xhtmlConformance mode=”Legacy”/> tag in their web.config file. This will disable the AJAX functionality with no warning or error message whatsoever, prompting users to check and re-check the prescribed web.config updates and trying other fixes, wasting precious time. This issue has just appeared in the RTM version, still there is NOT A WORD about it in the migration guides, even though Scott Guthrie had blogged about this over a month ago. How many developer hours were wasted again by Microsoft sloppiness? How many will be pushed over the cliff into RoR land?

Having bought a new SD card for my Pocket PC I discovered it came pre-formatted with the FAT (FAT 16) file system of yore. This file system has a volume size limit of 2 GB and some drawback regarding cluster size and fragmetation. So wouldn’t it be preferable to use the newer FAT 32 file system? It turns out that due to technical reasons detailed here classic FAT is actually better and delivers better performance in most cases. It seems like the old dog still has some bark in him.

There are several replacement choices for the aging Notepad, which is still it’s simplistic old self even in Vista. One great choice is EditpadLite (free) and the more expensive EditpadPro by fellow Thailand expat Jan Goyvaerts. If you want to edit Ruby with syntax highlighting, go for Notepad2 with Ruby. However, simply removing the old and renaming notepad2.exe to notepad.exe (located in your %systemroot%, usually C:\Windows\) won’t cut it, and XP SP2 and the latest security updates for Windows Server 2003 make it even harder.
Follow these steps for a successful replace:

Extract the downloaded Notepad2 files to your %systemroot% (usually C:\Windows or C:\WINNT).

Create a text file in the same directory and rename it to sth. like replacenotepad.bat.

Paste the following script:

@echo Replacing NOTEPAD.EXE with notepad2.EXE …
REM
REM 1. Prevent the protected file system from doing its thing.
attrib -r -h -s %systemroot%\ServicePackFiles\i386
ren systemroot%\ServicePackFiles\i386\notepad.exe notepad.exe.bak
attrib +r +h +s %systemroot%\ServicePackFiles\i386
attrib -r -h -s %systemroot%\system32\dllcache
ren %systemroot%\system32\dllcache\notepad.exe notepad.exe.bak
attrib +r +h +s %systemroot%\system32\dllcache
REM
REM 2. Make backup copies of Notepad in the Windows, System32 and i386 folders.
copy %systemroot%\ServicePackFiles\i386\notepad.exe %systemroot%\ServicePackFiles\i386\notepad.bak.exe
copy %systemroot%\system32\notepad.exe %systemroot%\system32\notepad.bak.exe
copy %systemroot%\notepad.exe %systemroot%\notepad.bak.exe
REM
REM 3. Copy notepad2 to Notepad in the Windows, System32 and i386 folders.
copy notepad2.exe ServicePackFiles\i386\notepad.exe
copy notepad2.exe %systemroot%\system32\dllcache\notepad.exe
copy notepad2.exe %systemroot%\system32\notepad.exe
copy notepad2.exe %systemroot%\notepad.exe
REM
@echo Succeeded.
@echo
@echo NOTE: When the Windows file protection message pops up,
@echo click Cancel, then click Yes to confirm your intentions.

REM END OF SCRIPT

Then run the Command Prompt (Run>cmd), change to your %systemroot% (cd %systemroot%) and simply enter replacenotepad.bat (or whatever you called the file).

That should do it. Thanks to Blue Lander for the tip. Happy New Year 2007!