Logitech dinovo edge pairing?

I tried to pair a Logitech dinovo edge with a Dell axim x51v with no luck. In fact, they paired correctly but nothing that I type in gets to the x51. That's pretty sad since the x51v is discontinued, it will never work. If anyone got both to work together, please contact me.

I got it to work with my lenovo T60, I had a hard time though. It seems like you have to type the numbers and press enter FAST, otherwise you won't hear the congratulation beep.
The included dongle works well too. It's just not as useful for portable devices. :)

The upper right Windows key starts Winamp, that's nice. :) The missing "application" (or if you prefer "context menu") key is really bothersome.

[Update 2007-07-26] To pair with the WIDCOMM Bluetooth stack, I had to update to version 5.1.0.3600 (For my W2K3 x64). Before the upgrade, I entered the keypass and nothing happened. On Vista, I installed the 6.0.1.5100 driver and I had no problem. To update the stack, you have to have a device that the manufacturer paid for support. That's pretty sad, given the poor support you have with Windows.

Hint: To backup your driver, look in your %TEMP% directory for a directory created at the moment your started the updater, during installation. Copy it in a safe place just in case and/or for analysis.

Free build

For people that wants to build VS2005 projects, Microsoft gave an alternative. It's the Microsoft Windows SDK for Vista. It installs on Windows XP too. You simply start the CMD Shell and type vcbuild to build the solution. It almost works all the time!

Update (2007-07-19): I didn't realize that Microsoft released the Windows SDK Update for Windows Vista which now includes the VS2005 SP1 compiler!

That's great (old) news.

HowTo recompress SD800 videos

MJPEG is overkill. It's no doubt. PCM 8 bit 11khz sound is too large too (even if it just sounds bad). So let's recode it.

After lot of trial and failure (no, I don't want to rip my DVDs, only transcode my legal stuff...), I found a good setup:

Using MediaCoder
Use this configuration file. It use xvid for video at 90% quality setting, in AVI container, and reduces noise with a "High quality 3D" noise filter. Well, from what I've looked at, it works. The sound is converted to MP3 so my dvd player will be able to the file (it plays xvid files).

Keywords: 8bit sd600 sd700 Canon transcode transcoding

Myth: Elevated process only create elevated child processes on Vista

I don't know why, but it seems like many developers thinks that an elevated process can only create an elevated child process. So here's how: (1)

#include <sddl.h>

void CreateLowProcess()
{
BOOL bRet;
HANDLE hToken;
HANDLE hNewToken;

// Notepad is used as an example
WCHAR wszProcessName[MAX_PATH] = L"C:\\Windows\\Notepad.exe";

// Low integrity SID: 0x1000 = 4096. To use Medium integrity, use 0x2000 = 8192
WCHAR wszIntegritySid[20] = L"S-1-16-4096";
PSID pIntegritySid = NULL;

TOKEN_MANDATORY_LABEL TIL = {0};
PROCESS_INFORMATION ProcInfo = {0};
STARTUPINFO StartupInfo = {0};
ULONG ExitCode = 0;

if (OpenProcessToken(GetCurrentProcess(), MAXIMUM_ALLOWED, &hToken))
{
if (DuplicateTokenEx(hToken, MAXIMUM_ALLOWED, NULL, SecurityImpersonation, TokenPrimary, &hNewToken))
{
if (ConvertStringSidToSid(wszIntegritySid, &pIntegritySid))
{
TIL.Label.Attributes = SE_GROUP_INTEGRITY;
TIL.Label.Sid = pIntegritySid;

// Set the process integrity level
if (SetTokenInformation(hNewToken, TokenIntegrityLevel, &TIL, sizeof(TOKEN_MANDATORY_LABEL) + GetLengthSid(pIntegritySid)))
{
// Create the new process at Low integrity
bRet = CreateProcessAsUser(hNewToken, NULL, wszProcessName, NULL, NULL, FALSE, 0, NULL, NULL, &StartupInfo, &ProcInfo);
}

LocalFree(pIntegritySid);
}
CloseHandle(hNewToken);
}
CloseHandle(hToken);
}
}


---

The code that duplicate the token can easily be skipped on pre-Vista computer.

References
#1 Understanding and Working in Protected Mode Internet Explorer
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/ietechcol/dnwebgen/protectedmode.asp

Random Rant about Canon (again)

I wanted to scan some documents in MP Navigator 3.0 and generate a PDF. I typed a longer than usual name for the file name. Here's the message box I received:

---------------------------
MP Navigator
---------------------------
Le nom de fichier est trop long.La longueur maximale est de 32 caractères d’un octet.
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------

It roughly means: « The file name is too long. The maximum length is 32 characters of one byte. » (!?!)

Hummm welcome in 2007!

And I still haven't talked about my problem with the intelligent chipset on the color inkjet cartridge that stops working and that force you to buy a new cartridge even if yours is still almost full!

And forget about Canon's support. I tried. The only thing I received from them is *2* surveys to know if I'd buy Canon branded hardware again.

How to make MP Navigator 3.0 work with a MP800 on a x64 OS

Well, sometime it worked, sometime not. I found the solution on a forum. (sorry no reference) The fix is really simple. Add « C:\WINDOWS\twain_32\MP800 » to your %PATH% environment variable. That fixed the problem for MP Navigator 2 and 3 instantantly.

Keywords: W2K3, XP, Windows Server 2003, Vista

ALPC

It means "Advanced Local Procedure Call". It seems like a light-weight RPC or if you prefer a heavy-weight LPC.

You won't find a lot of documentation on this one. Mark quickly refered to it in Inside the Windows Vista Kernel: Part 3. Microsoft has been granted a patent which infers to look for UMDF documentation. (I have to admit I still haven't read it) But the WDK is silent about this subject. It seems to be implemented in msrpc.sys (and not in the kernel like LPC). Microsoft documented references to ALPC for Event Tracing and for their new Wait Chain Traversal (which seems great).

More on this later.