Scott Hanselman

UPDATE: Looks like this bug has been fixed in Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1). I've upgraded and I've not seen this issue again.

I give Microsoft a lot of credit for the work all their bloggers do to increase the transparency of their business. Specifically the developers and folks in the developer division (devdiv) do a great job of letting us know what's up, especially when things are wrong.

However, when I have a problem, and I Google and Google...

(and sometimes find myself - that's always disheartening when you Google for a problem, find yourself, then at that moment realize that not only have you had this problem before, but you're still screwed.)

and find a huge number of folks "suffering" on blogs, on Usenet, in Forums with some similar problem, and nary a Microsoft blogger or MVP in sight.

Try Googling for any subset of these words "MSMPENG.EXE, TrustedInstaller.exe and SLSVC.EXE at 100% CPU on Vista Machines" and you'll discover a mass of pained and screaming Vista users, yearning for a HotFix.

When I see things like this, I think "If I worked for Microsoft, fixing this problem could be a HUGE opportunity." This isn't a small problem, if Google has anything to say about it, but rather something is really sick somewhere.

I've had a pretty decent Vista experience, recognizing that I'm an Early Adopter. Early Betas hurt me, and an RC1 or two destroyed a machine or two, but after release (RTM) including installation and day to day use, my experience has been nice. My wife, my mom, and myself all run Vista. I also got OneCare for the whole family, having had nice experiences as a Beta Tester.

Now, in the last month, on EVERY Vista Machine I have, from a slow AMD K5 my wife runs, to a Toshiba m200 Tablet, an IBM T60, and a home-built monster, has suffered with these issues. All of them, every machine and every issue:

• MSMPENG.EXE - Some say this is Windows Defender, others say it's the OneCare AntiVirus. SysInternals ProcMon says it's constantly going over totally innocuous files over and over again. Note that I've turned off both OneCare and Defender on these machines. (Not sure why there's two apps?) This process just won't stop sucking the life from my machines. Things are SO slow, especially when the process hits a 4 gig ISO or 12 gig VM Disk Image.
• TrustedInstaller.exe - This application has such a suspicious name I immediately started Googling around thinking I was infected with some evil Trojan. I mean, "TrustedInstaller.exe"? Seriously, like I'm going to see this in Taskman and say to myself, "oh, as long as it's TRUSTED." This process starts up seemingly randomly, even when I'm not installing things. It runs for 10 minutes or so, then disappears. I fear it. I fear iTunes on Vista more, but this one is pretty bad also.
• SLSVC.EXE - The Software Licensing Service. I guess it licenses software, or hands out licenses, but there's no telling when it'll pop up, churn for an hour, then leave.
• SearchIndexer.exe and friends - These guys just won't stop. There's usually 3 or 4 of them going all at once, but I still have to wait for a count of one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand, four-one-thousand before Search Results come back.

I don't like having to run my Operating System with Taskman constantly open because I no longer trust background processes. I'd like someone at Microsoft who works on one of these apps, help me understand what crazy edge case I've hit on every machine I own and how I can make it stop. I mean this not as a troll, and if you read my blog, you know I never blog bile, but I'm really interested in figuring out what's up.

What process is currently sucking up YOUR CPU? (Mac and Linux folks are welcome to join in, as I run TOP in a Terminal constantly on my Macs also.)

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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My sixty-fifth podcast is up, recorded on the floor RailsConf2007 here in Portland, Oregon. In this episode I sit down with Martin Fowler of Thoughtworks and David Heinemeier Hansson of 37signals and talk about beauty, making developers happy, the death (or life) of HTML, the future of Microsoft, and I ask if we should care about Rich Internet Applications. DHH is the creator of the Ruby on Rails framework, and Martin Fowler is the Chief Scientist at ThoughtWorks, well-known systems architect and Extreme Programming expert.

• Subscribe:
• Download: MP3 Full Show
• ACTION: Please vote for us on Podcast Alley! Digg us at Digg Podcasts!

This episode is chock full of goodness and good guests, so it's double the ordinary length, clocking in at over 40 minutes, so forgive me, as all three of us tried not to waste the listener's time.

If you have trouble downloading, or your download is slow, do try the torrent with µtorrent or another BitTorrent Downloader.

Links from the Show

Martin Fowler's Bliki (p5p)
RailsConf 2007 • May 17, 2007 - May 20, 2007 • Portland, Oregon (p5r)
Ruby on Rails (p5t)
Loud Thinking by David Heinemeier Hansson (p5q)
Jesse James Garrett's Information architecture resources (p5s)
Tree Surgeon for .NET (p5u)

Do also remember the complete archives are always up and they have PDF Transcripts, a little known feature that show up a few weeks after each show.

Telerik is our sponsor for this show.

Check out their UI Suite of controls for ASP.NET. It's very hardcore stuff. One of the things I appreciate about Telerik is their commitment to completeness. For example, they have a page about their Right-to-Left support while some vendors have zero support, or don't bother testing. They also are committed to XHTML compliance and publish their roadmap. It's nice when your controls vendor is very transparent.

As I've said before this show comes to you with the audio expertise and stewardship of Carl Franklin. The name comes from Travis Illig, but the goal of the show is simple. Avoid wasting the listener's time. (and make the commute less boring)

Enjoy. Who knows what'll happen in the next show?

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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If you are headed to TechEd 2007 in Orlando, make sure you make the time to go to Party with Palermo. Jeff throws an unmatched geek party and you don't want to miss it.

It's free, and I can attest, it's great. You'll meet lots of cool folks, many bloggers, wonks and other geeks. I went to the last one in Seattle and had a blast.

Sadly this year, a very large combination of events, both business and personal, meant that I have had to bow out of TechEd, so I won't be there to join you. It's only the second time ever I've canceled a speaking gig, and I'm bummed, but it was the right thing to do at this point.

But for you who are going, go over to the Party with Palermo Website and RSVP by leaving a comment right now!

It's June 3rd, 2007 @ 7PM - 11PM at Glo Lounge:  http://www.gloloungeorlando.com/
8967 International Dr, Orlando, FL
(407) 351-0361

Enjoy. My giant head may appear via Skype Video Conferencing at some point during the evening. ;)

Jeff's also been kind enough to add Team Hanselman and our Diabetes Walk 2007 as honorary community sponsors of the event, so drink lots of beer and click for a Tax-Deductible Donation.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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I was at Fresh Thyme Soup earlier this week (fantastic place, seriously, go there, it's all made from scratch) and there was a guy surfing with their free wireless whose desktop looked basically like this (this is mine, for illustration.) He was actually running Ubuntu and running what looked like AbiWord, but that's not the point.

Why is a guy who's _______ (insert adjective here...perhaps "savvy?") enough to run Ubuntu reading a document with the window sized like this?

Seems like I'm forever doing this series of keystrokes in Word: Alt-V, then Z, then T, then Enter, to return Word to the Text Width Zoom level. Then I use Alt-V, then U, for Full Screen mode, especially when I'm forced to present a Word document via projector.

Is this the fundamental issue with a Windowing interface that lets you size things willy-nilly.

I've been using a MacBook Pro for two weeks now and I'm still, even now, never sure what I'm going to get when I press the little Green dot that I think of as "Maximize." Sometimes a window gets really tall, other times really wide. With the Finder, it's a roll of the dice.

Same thing with Windows, and Ubuntu. I'm FOREVER forced to rearrange things. There's got to be a middle place between Full-Screen/Maximized and Minimized that "knows" what I need. The fact that the "middle place" is currently "size it however you like" is starting to wear on me.

I'm not sure if the infinite possibilities of window resizing is more sad than the fact that anyone who has a 15" or larger screen wouldn't take the time to maximize their window for readability.

If you've got an LCD, for goodness sake:

• If you've got bad eyes, make the icons large and the fonts large. Really. Don't run your monitor at 1024x768 if it supports 1900x1600. You're doing yourself and your a disservice. Turn on ClearType.

If I had a nickel for every time I went into an Executives office and had this conversation, I'd like like 65 cents. At least.

• "Hm, you're running your laptop at non-native resolution..."
• "I am?"
• "Yes..." click, click, right-click, enter, boom.
• "Oh, wow, that is clearer. But the icons are small now"
• "Ok. One sec" click, click, Large Icons, boom.
• "Ah, that's nice. That text is kind of jagged."
• "Ok. One sec" click, click, ClearType, boom.
• "Wow, that's like getting new glasses."
• "Yes. Yes, it is."

Make your pixels work for you, Dear Reader.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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USA Today just published their 25 years of 'eureka' moments...their list of the 25 gadgets that changed people's lives. To be clear, these are gadgets, so we're not touting the creation of the MRI here, or the LifeStraw.

There was an article in PCWorld a while back called "The 50 Greatest Gadgets of the Past 50 Years," after reading that article I realized that I might be an early adopter.

For me there's three four devices that have changed my day to day life experience. I could live without cell phones and blackberries, as addictive as they are, but these devices all did one thing and did it well. They ultimately gave me time - the one thing we're all running out of. They say Real Estate is a good investment because "they're not making any more land" (Unless you live in Dubai, where they are actually making more land) but anything that gives me more time, or makes the time I have more useful and enjoyable is a good thing.

In no particular order:

GPS - Handheld Global Positioning Systems

I love my Garmin Nuvi 350 GPS. Love it. We use it all the time and have mounts in both cars and switch it between them. Even though I've lived in this city for 34 years, I don't know every nook and cranny - certainly not in the suburbs. Now, I never get lost. The Nuvi included one free Map Update so I was able to get 2006 v8 Maps for free via a download and automatic update. It has a slot for Add-On Maps (like Europe, or the US if you're in Europe) via SD Card. It speaks the street names, it's a photo viewer, MP3 player and Audible book reader. It even knows when I'm walking, notices, and suggests better routes on foot. All this and it's the size of a deck of cards. My wife loves it as well. All these devices have a high WAF. Even better that good GPS's are in almost all decent cell phones, including the Blackberry Pearl.

MP3 Players (iPod)

Seriously, hasn't your MP3 Player changed your life? While audiophiles with vacuum tubes (and Carl Franklin) are lamenting the death of the Hi-Fi and berating us for buying lossy-compresses "damaged" music I'm enjoying America's Next Top Model on a Video iPod at 30,000 feet. Try that with your RCA Victor. My entire CD collection - every CD I've ever owned - is inside my 80gig iPod, lovingly ripped by RipDigital.com (What? You rip CDs yourself? ;) That's so 2005.). An MP3 player is worth the cost of entry just for the Audiobooks.

Digital Video Recorders (DVR, ReplayTV, Tivo)

When is House on TV? I seriously don't know. It's on whenever I like at my house because I've got the "House Channel." Same with Grey's Anatomy, The Office and Heroes (Heroes Spoiler: Why didn't Peter just fly away himself? It would have saved Nathan the trouble).

Aside: Did you know you can watch FULL Hi-Res episodes of Heroes online for free, as well as download them in even Higher-Res with the Viiv Universal Player? Even MORE amazing, they've got Full Video Cast Commentary in a secondary window for each episode. Brilliant.

I watch them on my time. Sometimes I skip commercials, sometimes not. Sometimes I turn on the captions and watch them in double- or quadruple-speed. We've got the whole season of Signing Time (DVD's just remastered and rereleased and Rachel has a blog also) so my son can do American Sign Language anytime. We always watch the news, even though dinner is at a different time each day. DVRs fundamentally change how we watch TV (if you can get over the "Psychic Weight" of a full DVR and a whole season of Dexter to catch up on.)

Insulin Pump and Continuous Glucose Meter

I got the results of my blood tests yesterday. Diabetics should have their blood checked for a 3-month indicator of their blood sugar. Pricking your finger tells you your blood sugar at an instant, but the hA1C blood test gives you an idea of how the last three-months have been. You can kind of think of it (simplistically) as a measurement of a percentage of blood cells that are coated in sugar. My value was 5.8% which is at non-diabetic levels. You, Dear Reader, as a likely non-diabetic have an hA1C between 4 and 6. My value is now "high-normal" but still normal. To be clear, I'm VERY diabetic, but I'm managing it so closely that my blood test indicates I'm more or less successfully emulating my damaged pancreas with the insulin pump and continuous meter. I'd be lost without these devices. They've made my life better and allowed me to more easily travel the world.

What's your top four list look like?

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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