Archive for category Software
How to fix: error MSB6006: “aspnet_merge.exe” exited with code 1
One of the most annoying Visual Studio errors are the ones that don’t give you any details of what is wrong. This is one of those errors:
error MSB6006: "aspnet_merge.exe" exited with code 1
To fix it open a command line at the root of your project and enter this command:
msbuild /verbosity:detailed > output.txt
Now open output.txt and search for “MSB6006″. You’ll probably see the error right above the error line. This is the error that I usually get:
An error occurred when merging assemblies: ILMerge.Merge: ERROR!!: Duplicate type '<ClassName>' found in assembly 'App_Web_b6it0-k1'.
Usually when I get this error it is because I copied some files to create new pages but forgot to rename the classes. This causes naming conflicts because there are multiple classes with the same name. Just search your code for <ClassName> and you will probably find it defined in multiple places.
Flying Model Simulator (FMS) with Vista x64
I’ve recently tried running the freeware Flying Model Simulator in order to practice flying RC helicopters. It is supposed to be pretty decent for a free app. But one of the problems with the application is that it is difficult to get it to run on Vista. I took me a while but I finally got it running. Here are some tips if you are having problems getting it to work on Vista:
Problem: You get a message saying “D3DRM.DLL cannot be loaded”. This dll is and old file that was removed from Vista. You can download the file from here: http://www.dlldump.com/download-dll-files_new.php/dllfiles/D/d3drm.dll/5.1.2600.0/download.html. I’m always wary about downloading files from strange websites because of potential viruses, but that file has worked fine for me. Download the file and copy it to the directory where you installed FMS: Vista x64 default: C:\Program Files (x86)\FMS Vista 32bit: C:\Program Files\FMS.
Problem: You get a message saying “fms.exe has stopped working”. This is probably because FMS expects you to have a serial port installed on your computer. Modern computers usually don’t come with serial ports anymore. To work around the problem you can create this registry entry: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\HARDWARE\DEVICEMAP\SERIALCOMM and FMS will start working.
Problem: Your controller won’t work correctly. I have a gamepad plus this RC controller: http://www.xheli.com/e4chflsitrki.html. Somehow FMS has a problem with this and I wasn’t able to correctly configure the controller. To solve it go to the Windows start menu and type “Game Controllers”. Click the game controllers icon at the top of the menu. Now click the Advanced button and select the device you want to use. This will make that controller the default in FMS and it will be able to configure it correctly.
Problem: FMS runs but the screen has horrible flicker that makes FMS unusable. This is probably caused by modern nVidia graphics cards. To fix it in FMS go to the Graphics menu and uncheck Textures. The graphics don’t look very nice when you disable textures but at least it works. I’m not aware of any solution to running with textures in this case.
As you can tell FMS has a lot of problems. If you want a simulator that just works I recommend checking out Clearview which is available here: http://rcflightsim.com/. They have a demo you can try and if you like it you can buy it for $40. It actually works and is a better simulator that FMS anyway.
How to debug a Windows bluescreen crash (BSOD)
I use hibernate when I am done using my Windows Vista x64 machine for the day. Usually I would use sleep but for some reason my DFI motherboard doesn’t work with Vista’s sleep feature. Hibernate usually works fine, but maybe once or twice a month the computer will crash with a bluescreen when entering hibernation. Bluescreen errors are really annoying because Windows doesn’t give the user any useful information as to what is causing the error so it is really hard to fix it.
After some trial and error I’ve figured out how to gain some information on figuring out what is causing the bluescreen. The following steps show you how to determine which binary is causing the error. These steps should work on Windows XP, Vista, and Windows Server:
- Go here to download and install the 32 or 64 bit version of the Debugging Tools for Windows: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/DevTools/Debugging/default.mspx.
- Wait until your computer bluescreens.
- Once the computer reboots open a cmd.exe window. On Vista you must use an elevated permissions window.
- Type this command at the prompt to allow debugging symbols to be found: set _NT_SYMBOL_PATH=symsrv*symsrv.dll*f:\localsymbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols
- Go to the location that you installed the debugging tools and type “windbg.exe”.
- Select File –> Open Crash Dump.
- Select c:\Windows\MEMORY.DMP.
- Type in the windbg window: !analyze -v
- Windbg will show you information about the crash. I look at IMAGE_NAME to determine what binary is causing the problem.
Usually I will see a binary that starts with “nv” which means nVidia. My graphics card drivers are usually the ones that are causing the problem. If you don’t recognize the binary then try searching for it online and you’ll probably be able to figure out what it is.
If you can figure out what it is then you can try installing a newer version of the program or driver to see if that helps.
Google Chrome error: The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000005)
Update: I have confirmed that Rizal’s suggestion in the comments fixes the problem. Add a “--no-sandbox” argument to the Chrome shortcut and Chrome should start working. To do this right click on the Chrome desktop icon. In the Target box add “--no-sandbox” without the quotes to the very end of the box.
Update2: Chrome’s sandbox is an additional security feature that restricts each browser process from accessing anything on the system that it is running on. So disabling it is usually not a good idea. But in this case the browser is so new that people are mostly using it as a test and to verify website compatibility so I think most people are ok with disabling it. As far as I know using the “no sandbox” argument is no worse than browsing with the current version of Firefox or Internet Explorer. Google or Symantec will fix the problem in a future release and you can re-enable the sandbox at that time.
Original post:
I installed the new Google’s new Chrome browser within minutes of being released. It installed ok but it wouldn’t run at all. As soon as it started up I would get this error:
The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000005). Click ok to terminate the application.
This appears to be caused by Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP). Unfortunately I am running this on a corporate machine and there is no way for me to disable or configure the Symantec software.
Uninstalling SEP is always an option to get Chrome to work. Another less drastic method that was posted online:
I was able to go into SEP – Change Settings – Centralized Exceptions,
click Configure Settings, and add c:\documents and settings\<username>
\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe
to the list. However I had to reboot the machine to be able to open up chrome w/out the error message.
For more information read this thread: http://groups.google.com/group/google-chrome-help-troubleshooting/browse_thread/thread/41ef35857180e154/.
Exact Audio Copy (EAC) with Vista x64 and WMA Lossless
Recently I tried setting up Exact Audio Copy (EAC) in Vista Ultimate x64. With disk space being so cheap nowadays I also wanted to use WMA Lossless encoding. With lossless encoding no audio fidelity is lost and I can always convert back to the original WAV files if I want to in the future.
The first thing I did was go to the Windows Media Encoder website so that I could download the encoder. Since I’m running Vista x64 I grabbed the x64 version of the encoder. Unfortunetly this is a bad idea. What they don’t say on the site is that if you use the 64 bit encoder then all your other software must also be 64bit. Since EAC is only 32 bit I never was able to get it to work with the x64 encoder.
Finally I gave up, uninstalled the 64bit encoder and reinstalled the 32bit encoder. After I did that EAC worked fine. The Configuration Wizard in EAC detected and set up the encoder perfectly.
The annoying thing about EAC is that when using an external encoder it pops up a new command window after every track is extracted. This makes the computer practically unusable because new windows keep popping up all the time. I looked around and found under File –> EAC Options –> Tools there is an option called “Do not open external compressor window”. This sounded like exactly what I needed so I checked it. Unfortunately this completely broke the external compression. The resulting WMA files would be corrupted after being encoded. I’m not sure if this option works on other OSes, but if you are using Vista x64 don’t select it!
Here is the solution I found to the popup window problem:
- Hit Ctrl-Q to bring up the Compression Queue Control Center.
- Check the “Make all compression tasks sleep” option.
- Close the dialog.
- Hit F9, then go to the Tools tab.
- Check the “On extraction, start external compressors queued in the background” option.
- Optional: Set the number of simultaneous external threads equal to the number of CPUs that you have.
Now when you extract a CD all of the tracks will go into the compression queue. When you are done extracting all your CDs, go back to the Compression Queue Control Center and uncheck the sleep option. This will make all encoding tasks start (then go eat dinner or something else that takes a while).