Alexander’s Blog

Microsoft’s Excel application contains a vulnerability that could allow a remote attacker to gain access to a system.

The flaw affects multiple versions of the spreadsheet software, including Excel 2000, 2002 and 2003, as well as versions of Microsoft Office containing those versions. It can also be manipulated in Excel Viewer 2003 and Office 2004 for Mac. Click here for more details.

Dreamweaver 8 was released more than a year before Windows Vista became publicly available and does not officially support this new operating system. However, Dreamweaver 8 runs fine for the majority of users running Windows Vista. The next version of Dreamweaver, expected to be released in Spring 2007, will be certified to run on Vista.

Check out the following TechNotes from Adobe for your particular situation.

- Dreamweaver 8 crashes on some Vista systems while browsing for files (TechNote kb400788)
- Vista help system stops working when Dreamweaver is the default XML editor (TechNote kb400789). Microsoft has also published a KB article on this topic called The Help and Support feature stops working when Dreamweaver is configured as the default XML editor on a Windows Vista-based computer. Click here to read Microsoft’s KB article 937491.
- Control-Alt-Tab keyboard shortcut change in Windows Vista (TechNote 8718ad77)

For more details, check out the TechNote Dreamweaver 8 issues on Windows Vista. For more information on Adobe product support in general for Vista, see the PDF document How Adobe Products Support Vista.

Have you received the following error when you try to run Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Standard or Professional in a terminal server or remote desktop session?

“An error has been detected with a required application library and the product cannot continue. Please reinstall the application.”

If you have, Adobe has posted a TechNote that explains the reason why.

Issue

When you start Adobe Acrobat 7.0 within a Citrix or Windows Terminal Services remote session, you receive the error message “An error has been detected with required application library and the product cannot continue. Please reinstall the application.” Then Acrobat quits.

Details

– You have installed a retail or trial version of Acrobat 7.0 Standard or Professional on the application server that requires activation in order to launch.

– Acrobat launches without error on the application server.

Solution: Purchase a volume license for Acrobat.

In order to use Acrobat 7.0 Standard or Professional on an application server, you must purchase a volume license based on the number of users your environment plans to support. For more information about purchasing a volume license through the Adobe Open Options program, see the Adobe website at www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/openoptions/ .

Background information

The retail and trial versions of Acrobat 7.0 do not allow multiple users to run the application at any given time, such as when they are hosted on an application server running Citrix or Windows Terminal Services remote sessions.

I recently evaluated a product called Fireman 3.0 by Honest Technology. It’s primarily a CD/DVD burner software but it’s like a Swiss army knife that includes several utilities in one package. With Fireman 3.0 you can create data, audio, or video discs. And with all the additional tools, you can do a whole lot more.

The audio burning capabilities include support for creating MP3 or WMA CD/DVDs. You can also import audio from a music CD. I can burn ISO images, which gives me the ability to store all files on a CD/DVD as a single file.

Fireman 3.0 supports creation of video CD (VCD), video super CD (SVCD), and video DVD using the DVD Authoring Studio. The DVD Authoring Studio is a basic utility that allows you to create simple video DVDs to watch on your home DVD player. It’s like a mini version of iDVD that you may have used on your Macintosh. However, this utility is fairly limited and you shouldn’t expect it to do any fancy work for you.

One nice feature of the DVD Authoring Studio is the ability to create photo slideshows on a DVD that you can watch on your home DVD player. You can also add music to the slideshow but the method is not documented and is not very intuitive. You’ll have to call the tech support to find out how.

Fireman 3.0 even includes a backup utility that you can use to backup and restore your important data. There are several additional tools included in the utility area, such as ability to erase re-writable CD/DVD, view Disc information, and make a label or cover for your CD/DVD. If that wasn’t enough, it also includes a Photo Viewer and even a DVD Player. I should point out that the label maker is a full-featured program that is included in the Fireman 3.0 package. Using LightScribe discs, you can create your own custom laser-etched CD/DVD labels using your personal photos, artwork, and text.

Photo Viewer supports magnification levels of 25% to 1000%. You can use the scroll button on your mouse to zoom in and out of magnification level which makes it very convenient. Another nice feature in Photo Viewer is the ability to start a slideshow with just one click.

Areas of Improvement
Windows Vista doesn’t come with a utility to create a copy of a CD or DVD, which comes as a big surprise to Windows Vista users. It includes tools such as Windows DVD Maker and Windows Media Center, neither of which can be used to make a copy of an existing CD or DVD. I was hoping that Fireman 3.0 will fill that gap but it doesn’t support copying of discs either. This is a major deficiency in a product that is meant to burn CD/DVD but it doesn’t include a basic feature such as disc copy.

If there is one area that needs the most help, it’s the Fireman 3.0 Help file. It needs some major work. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate the Help file as 1 – practically non-existent and completely useless. There is no way to search a topic and it lacks descriptions and details. Luckily, the Fireman 3.0 interface is so simple that you don’t really need to go to the Help file much. However, there are always questions about the capabilities of the software and if the Help file included some real documentation it would have been nice.

In addition to not being useful, Fireman 3.0 Help file is also not well-integrated. Depending on what topic you need help with, you have to go to that specific utility for help. For example, the DVD Authoring Studio, the DVD player and the Label Maker all include their own help files which cannot be accessed from the Fireman 3.0. The software developers failed to link all the help files. Hopefully, this bug will be fixed in the next version or with a patch.

One limitation in Fireman 3.0 has to do with the way it creates bootable discs. You can supposedly create bootable CD/DVDs. but this can be deceiving because it is not what you think. You cannot copy the source files of an operating system to a CD or DVD and easily make a bootable disc. With Fireman 3.0 only bootable floppy disks can be used to create bootable image. Most of the computers don’t even come with floppy drives anymore, so obviously this is a limitation in Fireman 3.0.

Summary
Overall, I found Fireman 3.0 to be an excellent utility. It is simple, reliable, intuitive, and works with Windows Vista. It definitely needs some improvement in the documentation area and lacks an important disc copy feature. However, for a reasonable price of $19.99, you will find Fireman 3.0 to be an excellent value for a product that is loaded with several useful tools.

Recently, I was installing Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Beta 2 on Windows Server 2003 running on my Virtual PC. I installed .NET Framework 2.0, Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0, Windows Workflow Foundation Beta 2 and then added the ASP.NET 2.0 service extension in IIS 6.0. When I ran the setup.exe I received the following error “This product requires ASP.Net web service extensions to be enabled in Internet Information Services (IIS). Enable this setting and re-run setup.”

I verified that the ASP.NET 2.0 extension was enabled but still received the same error. The .NET Framework 2.0 didn’t give me the option to repair in Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel (similar to the one that’s available for Workflow Foundation shown below).

I knew that the ASP.NET was not properly registered because the General tab showed that the extension was not used by the ASP.NET v2.0.50727 as expected, instead it showed “unknown”, as shown in the following screen shot.

Rather than reinstalling the .NET Framework, I decided to register ASP.NET by using the following command at the command prompt. I made sure that I was in the folder where aspnet_regiis was located.

aspnet_regiis -i

C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727>aspnet_regiis -i
Start installing ASP.NET (2.0.50727).
……………………………..
Finished installing ASP.NET (2.0.50727).

C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727>

When I ran the SharePoint Server setup it failed again. I ran “aspnet_regiis -i” one more time, restarted the IIS Admin service and noticed that the ASP.NET was now being used by v2.0.50727. I ran the SharePoint Server setup again and it finally worked. If you’ve run into a similar situation, hopefully this will help solve your problem.