Have you ever encountered the “The RPC server is unavailable” error message when trying to start Disk Manager? Have you also noticed that Event Viewer and Disk Defragmenter don’t work either? In fact, if you look at the Services window, you’ll notice that many of Window’s necessary services are not running at all, including the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) Service. Try to start this service and (after a while) you’ll see the “Could not start the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) Service. Error 1058″ error message.

After some Googling, you will have discovered this is caused by the DCOM Server Process Launcher will also failing to start. Many other programs and services require this service because they are DCOM objects, or connect to DCOM objects. You will have also found many other people with the same problem and their solutions (e.g., reboot, Malware scan, sfc /scannow, rollback to restore point, reinstall Windows).

However, if you are like me, none of those solutions solved your Windows’ problem. Here’s what happened to me and how I solved it, and I hope it works for you. (If you are too impatient to read my prose, just skip ahead to the The Solution! section.

Read the rest of this entry »

This blog article is an announcement of the unveiling of the new Virtualization technology discussion forum here at TechExams.net. This new forum is for all discussions about virtualization products, information, training, and certification. Also welcome are questions about setting up a virtualization lab, configuring, using and troubleshooting virtualization software, and generally discovering what virtualization is.

Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft has given its customers an early holiday present with the first release candidate (RC1) for Windows XP Service Pack 3. Windows XP SP3 RC1 is a pre-release intended for post-beta testing. It also puts to rest the speculation that Microsoft will or will not release a third service pack for Windows XP.

Windows XP Service Pack 3 is currently scheduled for full release during the first quarter of 2008, at which time its contents will be fully described in Microsoft Knowledge Base article 936929: Release Notes for Windows XP Service Pack 3. Until then, the official description resides in the PDF file Overview of Windows XP Service Pack 3. An excellent alternate source of ongoing SP3 information is Paul Thurrott’s Windows XP Service Pack 3 FAQ.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s getting close to the gift-giving season and you might be thinking about building (or rebuilding) a Windows computer as a present for someone, or possibly even as a gift to yourself. When I rebuild a computer, I like to install a standard set of utilities and tools that are very useful for keeping the computer working well and for fixing any problems that will inevitably occur.

Windows XP and Vista come with a variety of software tools for providing useful services, such as backing up and defragmenting the hard drive and scanning for malicious software. However, not all tools you may need are included with Windows, and certainly not the best tools for every job. And when you start adding up the costs of all the tools you might need, you’ve just added several hundred dollars to the cost of rebuilding that old computer! Doesn’t anybody make good Windows tools that are also free?

In this article, I look at ten categories of computer utilities used to fix, maintain, and provide useful services for Windows computers, and I make recommendations of free tools for you to try. All of the tools listed are freely distributed under a public license and are available from their owner’s Web site, or from the amazing selection of Freeware tools at MajorGeeks.com.

Read the rest of this entry »

Exam objective: 70-536 - Implement .NET Framework interfaces to cause components to comply with standard contracts. (Refer System namespace)

In object oriented programming, an interface is an abstract set of constants and methods used to define a common way to access a specific feature set of an object. Interfaces are abstract types and cannot be instantiated. Instead, they are inherited by classes which provide the implementation for the interface methods. Multiple interfaces may be inherited by a single class.

The .NET 2.0 Framework defines several generic, type-safe interfaces that are used to implement common features found in .NET classes. These interfaces are expected to be present for objects to work with specific features, such as sorting, type conversions, and resource disposal. All of these interfaces are located in the System namespace. The ones to know for the 70-536 exam are:

• System.ICloneable
• System.IComparable
• System.IConvertible
• System.IDisposable
• System.IEquatable
• System.IFormattable

Note: The System.INullableValue interface has been removed from the .NET 2.0 Framework because nullable types are now an intrinsic type in the .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR).

See Also

• .NET Framework Developer Center: Generic Interfaces

Read the rest of this entry »