Neil Rees's Blog

You might not need this information at the moment, but if Vista ships before another release of Virtual Server (if Vista ever ships...) you may be glad of it.

First off, the Virtual Server install expects to be able to fiddle with IIS during it's install process and has a fright when it finds IIS7 installed.  You can install enough parts of IIS6 to make the install work however by issueing the following monster command:

start /w pkgmgr /l:log.etw /iu:IIS-WebServerRole;IIS-WebServer;IIS-CommonHttpFeatures;IIS-StaticContent;IIS-DefaultDocument;IIS-DirectoryBrowsing;IIS-HttpErrors;IIS-HttpRedirect;IIS-ApplicationDevelopment;IIS-ASPNET;IIS-NetFxExtensibility;IIS-ASP;IIS-CGI;IIS-ISAPIExtensions;IIS-ISAPIFilter;IIS-ServerSideIncludes;IIS-HealthAndDiagnostics;IIS-HttpLogging;IIS-LoggingLibraries;IIS-RequestMonitor;IIS-HttpTracing;IIS-CustomLogging;IIS-ODBCLogging;IIS-Security;IIS-BasicAuthentication;IIS-WindowsAuthentication;IIS-DigestAuthentication;IIS-ClientCertificateMappingAuthentication;IIS-IISCertificateMappingAuthentication;IIS-URLAuthorization;IIS-RequestFiltering;IIS-IPSecurity;IIS-Performance;IIS-HttpCompressionStatic;IIS-HttpCompressionDynamic;IIS-WebServerManagementTools;IIS-ManagementConsole;IIS-ManagementScriptingTools;IIS-ManagementService;IIS-IIS6ManagementCompatibility;IIS-Metabase;IIS-WMICompatibility;IIS-LegacyScripts;IIS-LegacySnapIn;IIS-FTPPublishingService;IIS-FTPServer;IIS-FTPManagement;WAS-WindowsActivationService;WAS-ProcessModel;WAS-NetFxEnvironment;WAS-ConfigurationAPI

Twenty minutes later when that's finished you can run the Virtual Server install and it will work fine.  Now I've installed VS on Vista twice - the first time it just worked fine but the second time I couldn't administer it, the web interface just kept saying access denied when trying to connect to the Virtual Server service.  I also got this tell tale error message in the system eventlog from DCOM:

The application-specific permission settings do not grant Local Launch permission for the COM Server application with CLSID {DA3111BC-1BD7-4884-A535-8470D36028F7} to the user IMETA\Neil Rees SID (S-1-5-x-x-x-x-x)  from address LocalHost (Using LRPC). This security permission can be modified using the Component Services administrative tool.

Now there are many blogs on how to fix this, it the same as another bug that came up with WinXP SP2 and Win2003 SP1.  The "documented" fix is:

01. Open Component Services from the Administrative Tools folder of the Start menu.
02. Expand Component Services.
03. Expand Computers.
04. Expand My Computer.
05. Expand DCOM Config.
06. Right-click Virtual Server and press Properties.
07. Select the Security tab.
08. Press Customize in the Launch and Activation Permissions area.
09. Press Edit.
10. In the Group or user names list, press Authenticated Users.
11. Select the Allow box for Launch Permission in the Permissions for Authenticated Users list and press OK.
12. Press Customize in the Access Permissions area.
13. Press Edit.
14. In the Group or user names list, press Authenticated Users.
15. Select the Allow box for Access Permission in the Permissions for Authenticated Users list and press OK.
16. Press Apply.
17. Press OK.
18. Close Component Services.

Now this may work for you, however.... didn't work for me!

For me, the fix was to select "Use Default" for Launch Permissions and Access Permissions - and then REBOOT!!  It doesn't take effect otherwise.

Now it works.  Credit to numerous blogs for the material for this one!

Due to popular demand, metaEdit has a new feature for converting Visual Studio 2003/2005 escaped XML back into valid, usable XML - or in metaEdit terminology : GREEN XML.

Visual Studio escapes the quotes arround attributes so your XML looks like:

<xml test=\"true\" />

Choosing "Edit" ->  "Layout Visual Studio XML" or pressing CTRL+F12 restores it to its former glory.

After receiving a good suggestion for a blog, I think there's some mileage in this!  I'll stick up a few posts in the not too distant future that will show some of the lesser known goodness that's in metaEdit waiting to be exploited.

Things I'll blog on:

• Sourcesafe integration
• Workgroup collaboration
• Tips and tricks
• XML Parser versions

For a starter - if you've ever had a complicated XSL transform loaded and had all your windows laid out just the way you want them, you can save the state that metaEdit is in by choosing File -> Save Workspace.  This will create a .mew file ("metaEdit Workspace") which contains a description of which files you have open and where they are positioned and what the settings are on each window is (including XSL params!).  It'll even store documents that haven't been saved yet (Document 1 etc...).