I’m currently using Vista x64 with a nVidia-based videocard with dual monitors and have run into the following issue:

 I work on my machine, then I lock it.  Later I come back and type my password to unlock it and I get to stare at black monitors with only the cursor showing.  Previously I would have shutdown the machine (power button does this gracefully) and then start it back up.

 Yesterday, I found a workaround while trying a bunch of different things, since I had a couple of Visual Studio 2008 instances open among other things:

1. Lock your machine again (Windows Key + L) or (Alt+Ctl+Del, then L).  At this point, you still won’t be able to see anything, but your cursor should technically be in the password box for your login.
2. Now, type your password, hit enter, and your desktop should come back they way it should have when you first unlocked it.

Update 04/04/08 – You may have to repeat these steps a couple of times to get it to work.

Annoying, but at least now I don’t have to restart my computer everytime I get the BSOD (Black Screens of Death).

Well, my brother decided to take the plunge and try the latest Windows XP Service Pack 3 Release Candidate (XP SP3 RC1). After everything was all installed and settled he was trying to right-click on the taskbar, choose toolbars, and then select Address to add the address bar to the taskbar. Alas, Address was not an option. So after much searching it was discovered that this option has been removed from SP3 completely due to “legal restrictions”. The quote from the TechNet posting says “We had to remove the address bar functionality due to legal restrictions. The release notes carries this as a known issue.“, however, I could not find any reference to this in the latest copy of the release notes. Anyways, I hope this helps those of you out there that are searching for the address bar option in XP SP3. We’ll see if we can get John from MuvEnum to come up with a program to add it back for you.

MuvEnum Address Bar is the ultimate replacement for the missing address bar in Windows XP SP3.  It recreates the experience of the original address bar to help you quickly open files, folders, programs, websites, bookmarks, browsing history, web searches, and more from your Windows Taskbar!  Easily activate the toolbar using a global system-wide shortcut.  Includes support for the most popular browsers, keywords, themes, a calculator, and more!

MuvEnum Address Bar (x86 and x64 compatible with Windows XP, Vista, 7, 2000, 2003, and 2008)

Last updated: 07/03/09

Product Home: http://www.muvenum.com/products/muvenumaddressbar/

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Post bug reports and suggestions at: MuvEnum Address Bar UserVoice

Previous to version 11.x.x of cPanel‘s WHM interface there was an option in the SSL/TLS section to either generate a self-signed SSL certificate for the server or to install a real SSL certificate.  However, in 11.x.x (not sure exactly when this changed) this option no longer exists.  Even if you install your SSL certificate through the normal process for installing SSL certificates for domains it won’t work as expected. 

If you have changed the Tweak Settings option “When visiting /cpanel or /whm or /webmail with SSL, you can choose to redirect to:” to Hostname or SSL Certificate and you navigate to a hosted domain at https://www.domain.com/cpanel it will redirect to https://servername.com:2083/, however, it will not be using the SSL certificate that you just installed.  “But why?”, you may ask.  The reason is because you installed the SSL certificate for Apache, but you did not install it for the WHM/cPanel interface.  The installation for the cPanel/WHM SSL certificate has been moved to a different section of WHM. This is because cpsrvd handles SSL requests for WHM/cPanel whereas Apache handles SSL requests for normal domain traffic.

Under the Service Configuration section of the standard WHM theme there is an option for “Manage Service SSL Certificates”.  Navigate to this page and you will see it lists certificates (self-signed) for Exim, Courier, FTP, and surprise… WHM/cPanel!  This is where you need to install your newly purchased SSL certificate. If you click on “Install New Certificate” you will be taken to the standard WHM SSL certificate installation form.  If you have already installed the certificate through the standard domain method then all you have to do is click on “Browse” next to Domain this CRT is for and select the servername from the list.  This will install your previously installed SSL certificate in the correct location. 

If you did not already install the SSL certificate you will have to do so by pasting the necessary information into the form and submitting it. If you haven’t already changed the Tweak Settings option to redirect make sure you don’t forget it. At this point you should be good to go!

I’ll get straight to the point.  I’ve been playing Team Fortress 2 with no significant issues since the beta was published via Steam…until recently.  For some reason I was randomly getting crashes when the map changed on a server.  The specific error is as given in the title of this post.  I could not for the life of me figure out what might have changed that would have caused an issue like this (completely forgetting I had recently reinstalled Vista).  Instead of actively searching out a solution I continued restarting the game each time it crashed.  This seems to be a problem of mine, putting a band-aid on the problem rather than researching the cause to find a true solution.  Well it turns out it was actually a problem caused by Windows Vista itself in the way it handles memory allocation. 

This issue actually affects more than just Team Fortress 2, but my exposure to the problem was limited to this game.  The solution is a patch provided by Microsoft which I had installed on my previous instance of Vista, and was the reason I had not experience crashing prior to my reinstall.  Hopefully if you’re reading this you’ve taken the initiative to research your problem rather than trying to do what I did.  I have been running successfully with no crashes since installing the patch.  With that said, install the patch and get back to the game!

Microsoft KB Article 940105 - Virtual address space usage in Windows game development

Not, Daylight Savings Time (look under Spelling and Grammar). For those of you that lost an hour last night, I apologize. The rest of us will lose it next week. Here’s a little newspaper clipping that should help you not feel so bad.