Starting a couple of days ago I was suddenly unable to sign into Windows Live Messenger. The signin graphic would just spin endlessly, or I’d get a “service not available” message.
In case you have also run into this (many have), Microsoft did a bad thing (supposedly now fixed), and the effect is that bad data may have been cached on your PC, which prevents you from being able to log in.
Here’s some info on the problem.
The solution if you are using Windows Live Messenger 8.0.x is to delete the registry key HKCU\Software\Microsoft\MSNMessenger\Policies. As always, don’t attempt this if you are not comfortable editing the Windows registry.
Another related issue they describe is specific to ZoneAlarm firewall users, and that one is pending a fix as of this writing. They suggest dropping back to an older version of Messenger until that fix is available, so hopefully the registry key will fix it for you.
SQL Server 2005 is arguably the most important release of SQL Server in Microsoft’s history. It has been through numerous public test releases in addition to extensive internal testing.
Yesterday I had a chance to install the RTM version and start poking around through the final client apps. Unfortunately, I found a repeatable way to crash one of them, the Database Engine Tuning Advisor, within the first hour!
Here are the steps, which assume you’re executing them locally on a SQL 2005 machine:
- Start the Database Engine Tuning Advisor
- Drop down the “Server name” listbox and choose “Browse for more…”
- Click the Network Servers tab
- Immediately click back to the Local Servers tab, double-click Database Engine, click your server name and the OK button
- Drop down the Authentication listbox
- Wait a few seconds … until the application crashes!
This was discovered and repeated on Windows Server 2003 SP1 and SQL 2005 RTM.
Just a guess, but I’m thinking they start a server discovery thread when you go into Network Servers, and if you don’t wait for it to finish and go back to another place in the UI, the discovery thread does something bad when it finishes. The joys of multithreading.