Programming

If you are getting error 1053 starting “Web Deployment Agent Service” (part of Microsoft Web Deploy or MSDEPLOY), below is a possible fix.

This is the error I got when trying to start Web Deployment Agent Service: “Web Deployment Agent Service” on some of my servers. The exact error message is: “Windows could not start the Web Deployment Agent Service service on Local Computer. Error 1053: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.”

In the System Events Log, there are these generic service start-up error messages:

• The Web Deployment Agent Service service failed to start due to the following error: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.”
• A timeout was reached (30000 milliseconds) while waiting for the Web Deployment Agent Service service to connect.

The fix for me was to uninstall any previous version of Web Deploy, then re-install the latest version (Microsoft Web Deploy 3.5), and choosing “Complete” at the “Choose Setup Type” page.

My environment: Windows Server 2008 64-bit SP2.

I was looking for the most efficient way to remove excess white space from a string and wrote the following benchmark. Guess which algorithm is faster?

const int iterations = 200000;
const string expr = " Hello    world! Why    are so    many spaces?  Testing One   two three    four    five.";

// Remove excess space using Regex
var doRegex = new Action(() =>
{
    for (int i = 0; i < iterations; i++)
    {
        var newStr = Regex.Replace(expr, @"\s{2,}", " ");
    }
});


// Remove excess space using Split/Join
var doSplit = new Action(() =>
{
    for (int i = 0; i < iterations; i++)
    {
        var newStr = String.Join(" ", expr.Split(new[] { ' ' }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries));
    }
});

var benchMark = new Func<string, Action, long>((name, a) => {
    var sw = Stopwatch.StartNew();
    a();
    sw.Stop();
    Console.WriteLine(name + ": " + sw.ElapsedMilliseconds);
    return sw.ElapsedMilliseconds;
});

// Warming up
Console.WriteLine("Warming up.");
doRegex();
doSplit();

// Run benchmark
long regexElapsed = benchMark("Regex", doRegex);
long splitElapsed = benchMark("Split", doSplit);

On my PC, the Split method is about 7.5 times faster than Regex.

Version 1.2 of Transactional File Manager is now available on CodePlex.

Here’s the release notes:

Release Notes

This is a minor bug-fix/minor refactor release.
Fixes:

• Copy now uses the overwrite parameter correctly.
• Fixes crashing problem on some machines due to use of GetsequentialGuid.
• CreateDirectory now supports rolling back nested directories.
• RollbackFile Rollback() may throw exception when original directory has been deleted.
• Security issue when writing to event logs.

Enhancements:

• Upgrade solution/project files to Visual Studio 2010
• Use NUnit instead of VSTS framework
• Changes to support Visual Studio Express

Thanks to karbuke and dorong for their contributions.

From my code snippets, here’s a function that will return the starting day of the week for any date:

/// <summary>
/// Gets the start of the week that contains the specified date.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="date">The date.</param>
/// <param name="weekStartsOn">The day that each week starts on.</param>
/// <returns>The start date of the week.</returns>
public static DateTime GetStartOfWeek(DateTime date, DayOfWeek weekStartsOn)
{
    int days = date.DayOfWeek - weekStartsOn;
    DateTime startOfWeek = days>=0 ? date.AddDays(-days) : date.AddDays(-7 - days);
    return startOfWeek;
}

It’s my first open source project! I’ve gone open source with my Transactional File Manager. Check out the CodePlex link here.

Use any file system as a transactional file system! Transactional File Manager is a .NET API that supports including file system operations such as file copy, move, delete in a transaction. It’s an implementation of System.Transaction.IEnlistmentNotification (works with System.Transactions.TransactionScope).

More on Transactional File Manager in my original blog post on it. If you are interested in contributing to the project, let me know.

Your house is haunted. You can’t stand living with the ghosts anymore and decide to call in the professional, a ghost hunter. The ghost hunter comes, nicely equipped with all kinds of shiny ghost hunting equipment, and proceeds to immediately pass out and fall to to the floor with a loud thud at first sight of the ghosts.

Well, in a nutshell, that is the story of the new Event Viewer in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. The new Event Viewer looks very nice and all. Trouble is, it now won’t work when there is a syntax error in machine.config or other .NET Framework problems. Apparently, in Windows Vista and Windows 2008, someone at Microsoft decided to rewrite the Event Viewer utility (a perfectly usable and solid utility in previous versions of Windows) in .NET.

So, the lesson I learned from this is: don’t hire ghost hunters who are afraid of ghosts. Or, don’t write a utility designed to view monitoring and troubleshooting messages that can fail due to unnecessary dependencies. A critical system troubleshooting utility such as Event Viewer should be the last thing that fails.

What to do when you cannot run Event Viewer in Windows Vista/Windows Server 2008/or Windows 7?

If you get the following error:

MMC could not create the snap-in. The snap-in might now have been installed correctly. Name: Event Viewer. CLSID: FX:{b05566ad-fe9c-4363-be05-7a4cbb7cb510}

Try the following:

• Fix any syntax errors in machine.config. Restore to a previously known working copy.
• Rename EventVwr.exe.config in %WINDIR%\System32.