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  • USB Hub vs. Dockinstation USB vs. Laptop USB

    - by Will
    I recently had thougts about my current setup in my office, especially about the UBS ports distribution. Here's my setup: I have a Lenovo T410 docked to a Lenovo Dockingstation Series 3, that providey me with 6 USB ports, which I use all (3 ext. drives, mouse, keyboard, USB Hub of monitor). The USB hub on my ext. monitor (most probably powered by the ext. monitor's power supply) provides me with 2 USB ports, where I use one for my webcam and another for USB sticks. On my T410 itself I have 4 USB slots, that are usually not used, as don't want to mess with USB plugs when undocking my laptop, now and then I plug my printer on one of these, just because I don't have any UBS ports left. Now I'm wondering how fast each of these slots are: I assume that all the 6 USB ports from the dockinstation somehow go through the docking connector on the bottom of my laptop. Does this connector has such a big bandwidth for all these 6 USB ports to perform like if they were dedicated ports as the 4 ones on my laptop? Also how is generally the performance of USB hubs (like the one on my ext. monitor?)?

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  • Cheated!! Please help

    - by Rohit K
    I was experiencing some hard disk problem with my HP laptop. It showed at bootup as system diagnostics are run -- Smart Drive attribute failed. Also i repeatedly got a warning for imminent hard drive failure and thus to back up my data. So i gave my laptop to authorized HP service center for repair. They formatted my hard disk and installed a pirated copy of Win 7 Ultimate (i earlier had genuine Win 7 Home Premium running on my laptop) and they told me they cover out-of-warranty issues and even charged me for it. What's worse is that the hard drive problem is still present and all i am left with is an illegal copy of windows which i think also voids my warranty. What should i do? I mean i did purchase a genuine Windows with my laptop, so there must be some way to reinstall it even when i don't have a genuine copy now on my machine. Can't i get legit keys to reinstall Win 7 from Microsoft because i did pay for the software when i purchased my machine. And if that's not possible, how can i claim warranty and get my hard disk replaced by HP?

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  • Easiest way to find out if user has either Windows 7 or Vista (through telephone support)?

    - by Rabarberski
    If you have to provide some initial troubleshooting support by phone [or email], and you don't have access to the PC itself, what is the easiest and most foolproof question to find out if the 'dumb' user is using either Windows 7 or Windows Vista? For example: determining if the user has either Windows XP or Windows Vista/7 is easy. Just ask the user if the button at the left bottom corner is (a) either square with the word 'Start' on it, or (b) it is a round button. But how to determine the difference between Vista and 7? Edit: For all the existing answers the user has to type something, and do it correctly. Sometimes even that is already hard for a computer illiterate user. My XP example just requires looking. If it exists (although I am afraid it doesn't), I think a solution that is just based on something this is visually different between Vista and 7 would stand above all others. (Which makes Dan's suggestion to turn over the box and look at the label" not so stupid). Perhaps the small 'show desktop' rectangle at the right side of the task bar (was that present in Vista)?

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  • vim: mapping <control-j> key

    - by bhh1988
    When I'm in insert mode, I sometimes want to be able to move around without using the arrow keys, and without having to go back into normal mode. So in my vimrc I've set up key bindings to do this: imap <C-l> <right> imap <C-h> <left> imap <C-k> <up> imap <C-j> <down> But for some odd reason the only one that doesn't work is the last one, . Doing this in insert mode just gives no response. I'm wondering why this might be, and I just don't know where to even begin looking for the problem. It doesn't appear to be mapped to anything since nothing happens when I do it, whether I'm in the terminal or in gvim. Any pointers would be great! Thanks!

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  • Moving an external hard drive while running

    - by user1108939
    I mean physically moving the drive around. I've never dealt with external hard drives before. Just plugged this wd mypassport to test the transfer rate. At one point I 'safely ejected' the drive. A minute later I decide to check the underside of the drive, not realizing the disk is still spinning. I lift the drive, rotating my writs about 70 degrees to the left... I hear a sequence of three high pitched sounds. I couldn't determine whether that was an indication beep by an internal security feature or the head scratching the plate (oh god...). Drive stops and usb power is disconnected. I reconnect it - it shows up fine - reads/writes. The drive was not reading/writing when i moved it. Did I damage my drive? Are these things that fragile? I thought them to be at least as durable as a standard 2.5" internal drive. Am I mistaken?

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  • SATA disks boot order?

    - by kire
    I have a computer with 4 SATA disks connected, 2 to the motherboard and 2 to a PCI-card. I've moved all the disks from other computers so 2 of them already has windows installed, the other 2 has just had data on them. I know one of the windows installations works and i want to use this install. If i only have this disk connected the computer boots fine. The problem is that when i boot with all 4 disks connected i get an error message about not being able to boot. This message is in swedish(the wrong windows installation is swedish) so it has to come from that installation. Ok, that means it is trying to boot from wrong disk, i try to pull out that disk but then i get the same error in english. I pull out the fourth disk instead I get another error about NTLDR not being able to load. If i disconnect all drives except the one with the correct windows installation, windows boots fine and i can also connect the other drives while windows is running and browse around in them without any problems. I have no clue what to do. In my BIOS setup i can only select SATA as boot-option, not the order of the disks. I also tried to remove what's left of windows on the other disk by simply deleting everything in explorer(got hidden- and sytstem-files visible). Both windows installations are XP btw. Edit: I switched the cables around and now it magically works. :)

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  • Notepad++ FTP best solution

    - by yoda
    Hi, I use Notepad++ for more than 2 years now, and there's only 1 thing that it needs for me to be perfect: a actually-working-ftp-plugin. It has an ftp plugin, written by someone that meanwhile left the project (by meanwhile I mean a long time ago), and since then nobody had courage to improve it. The problem is that it does't handle connections very well. Sometimes it lost connection with the server and literally "blocks", others don't save the files properly, other only load half of the ftp files, etc etc .. My question is: Is there a way to use ftp and notepad++ (without using its build-in ftp or a ftp client like filezilla)? I've tried using NetDrive, but it gets stuck sometimes (makes the editor crash), and everytime the temporary file is refreshed by windows / NetDrive, it will load the new file without asking and skip the pointer to the end of the file (very very very annoying). In case you know how to make the built-in notepad++ ftp plugin work at 100%, I'd be much more happy! I'd like to have some feedback from you guys :) (I'm using Windows Vista) Thanks in advance!

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  • What can cause two "identical" setups of IE8 and XP to display things differently?

    - by ccornet
    This has been baffling me for a while. Of the machines I use in visitting Stack Overflow, two of them are machines with the same setup: Dell with Windows XP with IE8. Since they were issued to me by the same company (one to use in the office, one to use at home), they have identical setups as well. But they display certain page elements differently! One is an Optiplex GX620 desktop, the other is an Inspiron 9100 laptop, but somehow the hardware doesn't seem like something that should be overriding how my browser displays things. Nevertheless, the laptop seems to display things differently than what is expected. Differences have included the following: This issue persisted on the laptop after Jeff fixed it, but was repaired for everyone else and on the Desktop. When viewing Vote Counts on a post, the grey line is left immediately beneath the upvotes but a number-sized white space is below that before the downvotes. On the desktop, it displays properly with the two adjacent and divided by a grey line. Code blocks seem to have a blank line at the end on the laptop. The following image illustrates how the last two elements look on the laptop. So, considering that as far as I can tell, these two setups are identical (I have not messed with any settings and they were both initialized identically as well), what else could be causing the display difference?

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  • Adding user groups from a remote domain server to permissions of a remote desktop terminal server fails. why?

    - by doveyg
    I have 3 computers, two of which are servers running Windows Server 2008 and another running Windows 7. One of the servers has the following roles installed; Active Directory, DHCP and DNS. The other server has a Terminal Server role installed. I am trying to log-on to the Terminal Server via Remote Desktop using the Windows 7 machine with credentials from the Active Directory server. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, no. Whenever I try to add users or groups from the Active Directory Domain server to the Terminal Server's permissions for RDP it seems to ignore, or forget, them. Though the various methods I was able to find it either adds a strange sting of numbers after the user group or the logo to the left has a question mark on it, reopening the dialogue box replaces the user group with the name of the Domain. I am confident I have the Domain setup correctly as I am able to log-on to users in the Active Directory from other computers I have put in the Domain, and when I attempt to browse the user objects from the Domain I am prompted with a username/password field and am able to view the structure of Active Directory objects. Please advise.

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  • SMTP Server setting on Windows 2008 R2

    - by user223298
    I am very very new to this and just trying to configure SMTP virtual server. I have followed a few threads to get it all running, but the mails are not being delivered. What I have done so far - 1) Install SMTP server. 2) SMTP server Properties General Tab - IP address is set to 'All Unassigned'. Access Tab - Authentication is anonymous access. Everything else is left to Default settings. Delivery Tab - Outbound security is anonymous access. In Advance section, entered the domain name in the FQDN field, and localhost in Smart host field. 3) Created an Inbound Rule for SMTP service to allow connections to Port 25. When I try to telnet, everything works up until the point the mail has to be send. Now, the sender's domain is different to the receiver's domain. Not sure if settings have to be changed to allow that? I had set the Relay restrictions on SMTP server, but because I couldn't send the mails, I thought I might as well make it work without the relay first. The error I see while sending the mail is 451 Timeout waiting for client input. I used to get some other error before when I had Relay restrictions on. Can anyone please point me in the right direction? Please let me know if you need more information. Thanks.

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  • Windows 8 Killed my SSDs

    - by SLaks
    I have a computer running 2 256GB Crucial M4's (CT256M4SSD2) in a RAID 0 (striped) array on an ASUS P9X79 Pro using Intel's (built-in) RAID system. I recently installed Windows 8 Pro as UEFI on this RAID array. (wiping a fully-function Windows 7 non-UEFI installation) Now, whenever the computer is left running for about an hour, the system no longer sees those drives. Since those drives contain Windows, this leads to various forms of BSODs. If I Intel RSTe (RAID manager) is running at the time, it will say that the disk backing that RAID array has been removed. Once this happens, if I reset the computer, it will no longer boot. Entering BIOS setup shows that the SATA 3 (6Gbps) ports that those disks are connected to are both empty. If I then power down the system completely, then turn it on again, the drives reappear, but the problem repeats after another hour or so. I have inconclusively determined that the problem occurs even if Windows is not running (booted into the installation environment from a UEFI flash drive) I don't think there has been any data corruption since this started happening, although I have had two strange issues with a GIT repo on that disk. sfc /ScanNow and Intel's disk check (in RSTe) both do not find anything. Does anyone know what might cause this?

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  • How can I document and automate a system's configuration?

    - by Diomidis Spinellis
    Having a system's configuration represented by its current state is risky, inefficient, and opaque. At some point you may be left with an unsupported system and no upgrade path. Then configuring a new system compatible with the old is a process or trial and error. Furthermore, if at some point the system is damaged the only option is to go back to the most recent full backup, and try to remember what changes followed from that point. Also, the only way to create a system compatible with the original is through a complete dump/restore. Finally, in such a setup there's no way to know how you solved a particular problem; the only thing you can do is to look at the corresponding configuration files and try to guess what you changed to achieve the desired effect. Currently for each system I maintain, I keep a log file where I record all system administration activity, starting from the installation: installation options, added packages, changes in configuration files, updates, problem fixes etc. In theory this allows me to (manually) replay all changes to arrive at the current state, or to unroll an erroneous change by executing the reverse commands. However, this process is also inefficient, error-prone, and relies on human judgment. Another thing I've tried is to put /etc configuration files under version control with git. This helps me document the changes automatically and also apply them on a clean setup. But it's not without problems: git has to run under sudo, passwords and private keys may be stored in the repository, installed packages can't be meaningfully tracked, and git will have a fit if I try to extend this approach to all the system's directories. I've also thought about performing all changes through shell scripts or makefiles, but I think this process will require a lot of effort and will be fragile. Are there some better methods or tools that I'm missing?

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  • Linux 'top' utility widly inaccurate (more so for multi-CPU/core hardware)?

    - by amn
    Hi all. After using 'top' for long time, albeit basically, I have grown to distrust it's '% CPU' column reports. I have a 8-core (quad core Intel i7 920 with hyperthreading) hardware, and see some wild numbers when running a process that should not use more than 5% overall. top happily reports 50%, and I suspect it is not so. My question is, is it a known fact that it's inaccurate when several CPUs/cores are present? I used 'mpstat' from the 'sysstat' package, and it's showings are much more conservative, certainly within my expectations. I did press '1' for 'top' to switch it to show all the core and us/sy/io stats, but the numbers are substantially higher than with 'mpstat'... I know that my expectations can be unfound as well, but my gut feeling tells me 'top' is wrong! :-) The reason I need to know is because the process I am monitoring only guarantees quality of service with CPU usage "less than 80%" (however vague that sounds), and I need to know how much headroom I have left. It's a streaming server.

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  • How do I disable DirectDraw and Direct3D acceleration on Windows 8? [closed]

    - by Favourite Chigozie Onwuemene
    Some old games that i would really like to play run slowly on some graphic drivers when direct3d acceleration is enabled. I have tried many suggestions but none seems to work. The only thing i have not tried is disabling direct3d acceleration. Is it possible to disable DirectDraw and Direct3D acceleration on my Windows 8 pc? There are certain bad versions of GeForce drivers that cause this problem. This is a problem in the drivers themselves and is unfortunately completely outside our control. The recommended way to fix this problem is to update your graphics card drivers (go to NVIDIA's web site for this). Alternatively, there is a workaround that alleviates or solves the slowdown problem altogether. Try this: Right-click on your desktop and select "Properties". Go to the "Settings" tab and click on "Advanced...". Click on the "Troubleshooting" tab and move the slider to the left until it says that all DirectDraw and Direct3D accelerations have been disabled (around the middle of the range). Finally, click on "OK". Note that this workaround might cause other games on your computer to slow down, so you may have to switch back and forth between settings, but it's certainly worth a try if you can't obtain an updated graphics driver. -source: interactionstudios

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  • How to diagnose computer freezing problem

    - by reinierpost
    I have a laptop (a Medion from Aldi) that tends to hang quite often - so often, in fact, that several attempts to install Windows XP or Ubuntu on it have all failed. However, I am able to boot and run Ubuntu as found on the standard Ubuntu 10.10 installation image. I have done this two times thus far. The first time everything was running smoothly, until at some point the GUI (i.e. X) became unresponsive. The cursor kept moving with the mouse, but menus would no longer show and clicking things no longer produced any response. So I switched to the consoles (Ctrl-F1, Ctrl-F2, etc., which in this setup automatically run shells. The shells were still responsive, and the cd command would still work, but any command that invoked an executable (e.g. /bin/ls or cd /bin; ./find caused the shell to hang up uninterruptibly. My hypothesis was that all attempts at disk access were hanging up, but I didn't actually try a command like echo /proc/$$ or while read line; do echo $line; done < /var/log/syslog to verify this. Another possibility is that an essential system library is cached in memory and somehow failing to function properly. The second time I left the system running overnight and it didn't hang itself spontaneously. I'm not sure I have the patience to just twiddle with the running system until the condition reappears, and I'm, not sure what to do once it does. Clearly we can rule out a software cause. It seems disk access related, but clearly it's not permanent hard disk failure because the system will reboot just fine. What kind of hardware problem might produce these symptoms? Can it be a memory problem?

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  • Partition Magic 8 made TrueCrypt partition invisible

    - by gmancoda
    Partition Magic 8 took a dump on my TrueCrypt partition... and I let it happen! And now I am left with cleaning up the mess. In short, my encrypted partition is now invisible. TestDisk analysis says of the disk containing the encrypted partition: "Space conflict between the following two partitions". From the googling and searching on various sites, I have learned the following: Hex editing is beyond me. Partition recovery tools are useless. I am not ready to drop the big bucks for professional help. ... that I should have kept an external backup of the Volume header. Now, to get back the volume header, I am planning on recreating the exact same partitions on a new disk of the exact same model, and then encrypting it with the exact same password/keyfiles, and then exporting its volume header to a file. Finally, I hope to be able to restore this volume header on to my damaged drive. Before I undertake this plan, I would like to know if anyone else out there has tried it and, if so, how successful they were. All other suggestions and tips and welcome!! Thanks.

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  • Ethernet/8P8C crimp contacts bent

    - by Fire Lancer
    (if anyone knows correct terminology please correct). Ive got a (fairly large) number of existing Ethernet cables that over the years many have got damaged connector clips, so got a crimp tool and some new connectors for them. However out of all 4 attempts I have tried, on crimping 2+ of the little copper contacts that bite into the wires have instead just bent to one side, and so gone between the gaps in in the crimp tool... Unless this really is me doing something wrong (what?) I am inclined to blame the hardware, but is this the crimper or the new connectors I got? I tried to take a picture, as you can just about see looking from the left 3rd, 6th, 7th and 8th pins didn't get pushed in, and so don't form a connector. Unfortunately my camera was barely able to focus on it and then this website converted it to a JPEG... Update: Connectors/Cable/Tools: The wires are stranded (looks about 6 and no evidence of being aluminum/not copper), and the pins(?) have 2 little flat spikes lengthways along the cables (I understand to dig into it, while solid core connectors would have like 2 plates designed to go around the core?). Crimper was http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0013EXTKK/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 (seemed to be highly rated, I already had tools for cutting/stripping). Update2: Picture of crimp "prongs" (?) Update3: Side picture of connector Update4: Comparison with old connector. The top (used) connector is one from a few years back (different tool and connectors), the thing that concerns me that it might not be the tool I need to replace is just how thin the pins are on the new one that maybe a tool could legitimately bend some into a gap rather than pushing them in fully? In fact I can move individual pins to the sides significantly with my fingernail, is that normal?

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  • Two video card on one Mobo

    - by InfinityKing
    I recently purchased a new HP Pavilion p6-2265eo. It was then that I realised that it has only one DVI and one HDMI output.. I will connect my TV with the HDMI. so I am letft with only one DVI output. I need to have two monitors. Please help. Should I purchase a new video card and install it? My knowledge is limited. The specifications of my comp says that there is 1 x PCI-E x16, 3 x PCI-E x1. 1) I suppose that the video card already present in my purchase is connected on the PCI-E x16. Am I right? I dont want to open my desktop right now and check it for myself as it can void the warrenty. so I need an experienced person to tell me that. 2) I have an old nvidia geforce 7200 gt. Is it possible for me to connect it to my left over PCI-E x1? I searched for PCI-E x1 on the net and as far as I can understand the slot is too small for my old nvidia geforce 7200 gt graphic card. 3) what are the options? Please help this dummo :) Thankign you in advance,

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  • NOTEPAD++ Need macro or typeitin for automation of large lists

    - by user2526699
    I'm sure there is a way to do this but I can not seem to figure it out. I will try my best to explain this. I have a list with 20,000 lines in notepad++. I have two tabs open in notepad++. The right side tab is the main list. The left side tab is what needs to be added to the beginning of each line in the right tab. Here is an image of my notepad++ to give you a better understanding. I need to be able to do the following in an automated way as I have over 20,000 lines to do this way. copy line 1 of tab 'new 7' switch to tab 'new 6' paste clipboard(line 1 of tab 'new 7') at beginning of line 1 tab 'new 6' switch back to tab 'new 7' copy line 2 of tab 'new 7' switch to tab 'new 6' paste clipboard(line 2 of tab 'new 7') at beginning of line 2 tab 'new 6' I have both pasteitin and typeitin download but if i need some other program/app or if it's built in to notepad++ that would be great. I need to do this by the program itself or for me to only have to press a button to do each of these.

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  • Mac OS X: Applications not responding

    - by Robot55
    This happens to me several times a day. I'll quit an app, the window will close, but the app won't finish shutting down. It stays open in the dock, and right clicking and force quit show not responding. Force quit won't work. I can't shut the app down. Starting any other app when this happens causes that app to behave in exactly the same way: the icon opens in the dock, but the app is non-responsive and can't be forced to quit. Can't access terminal when this happens, because it locks up just like all the apps. While I haven't tried to open every app, I think any app I try to open when this is happening will lock up. If I relaunch Finder, it too locks up and then the only thing left is to hold down the power button for a hard reboot. Any app that is running while this is happening will continue to run normally unless I try to shut it down. Repairing disk permissions has no effect. I also did a time machine and a full restore on a brand new MbP - and sure enough, after restore, the new MbP suffers form the same problem. Creating a new user has no effect. Any thoughts? Please help MacBook Pro 15" AG 2.53ghz i5 cpu 8gb RAM 500gb HD (over 200gb free)

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  • Picasa duplicates everything into a `$My Pictures` folder.

    - by Barend
    My parents have a Windows XP laptop running Picasa, Dutch version of both. It's configured to put imported photos in C:\Documents and Settings\user\Mijn documenten\Mijn afbeeldingen, which is Windows XP's default My Pictures folder localized to Dutch. A while back I noticed disk space was going much faster than it should be. Turns out there was a Documents and Settings\user\Mijn documenten\$My Pictures pretty much the same size as the original one. This was well over a year ago. I figured it to be an internationalization bug, the $My Pictures thing looks like a placeholder that didn't get resolved. I figured it'd get fixed soon. It didn't. I threw out Picasa, tediously cleaned up the mess it left behind and replaced it by Windows Live Photo Gallery. My parents found WLPG to be unworkable and asked to get Picasa back. I reinstalled it, by now it's at 3.8.0 (build 117.29, 0). Wouldn't you have it, the mystery $My Pictures folder is back, 25GB of disk space has evaporated and it's the same mess it used to be. What's going on here? How do I stop it doing this?

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  • Create taskbar shortcut to website in Window 7

    - by BJ292
    I'd like to create a shortcut to a website in Windows 7 on the taskbar that is not pinned to the default web browser. Currently if I drag the favicon from the left end of the firefox address bar to the Win 7 taskbar it will pin a shortcut to the firefox browser icon. Similarly if I create a shortcut on the desktop to a website and drag it to the taskbar it will also end up pinned to the firefox icon. The problem with this is to get to that shortcut I have to right click on the firefox icon and then select the pinned shortcut. That is workable for me but I want to do this for a child - so the shortcut needs to be right there on the taskbar as a stand-alone item. There is a workaround that pretty much solves the problem - create a new folder somewhere safe - create the shortcut to the website in the new folder - right click the taskbar and select toolbars - new toolbar - then browse to the folder you created and select it as the new toolbar. The contents of the folder will now appear on the taskbar as shortcuts. You need to drag it from the right hand end of the taskbar into the middle - turn off show titles and show text and make the icon large. I'd call this a 75% solution. Anyone know how to make a web shortcut that looks and operates just like any of the other shortcuts on the taskbar?

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  • Reporting SQL Vulnerability [migrated]

    - by Ciaran87Bel
    My first post here so i'll hopefully keep it simple. I have just finished building a CMS targeted at a certain industry and built a test site to see how everything works. Anyway I wrote a program to check for sql injection vulnerabilities and the program followed a blog link to an external website. The program discovered that the external site had a massive vulnerability that left it open to practically anyone who could then access every bit of data on their MYSQL Server and run queries etc. The thing is this external site is the brand leader in their industry and do millions upon millions of sales per annum. I have tried contacting them to let them know and even went as far as contacting the company that built their platform but I was pretty much brushed off and haven't heard back from them. Their database would contain the details of hundreds of thousands of customers and all their data. I could easily make myself site admin etc in a few seconds but they won't listen to me even though I have offered to share the vulnerability with them and help in anyway I can. Is there anything else I can do because it is one of the biggest security risks I have ever personally come across. Is there any other steps I should take to report this? Thanks

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  • 100% CPU use when new usb device plugged in - services.exe / Windows Server 2003

    - by Will3265
    On my server I am trying to install a new usb drive but all that happens is that the system starts using huge amounts of processor cycles with services.exe. On closer inspection with process explorer there is a thread called umpnpmgr.dll using most of the services.exe processor time. I left it for a half hour and still nothing happened. Rebooted and tried again, same result. Tried a different usb drive, then a flash drive but still same issue. Tried updating driver but it said the update function was already in action. I have used process explorer to kill the thread now so the server can still perform its intended functions. Any device that was previously installed before this began happening will still work but any device new to the system will not. My question(s) is/are: Is there a way to manually install the device into the registry so Windows thinks it is a previously installed device? Or can this problem be repaired through anything other than a reinstall? To do a reinstall would mean backing up large amounts of data which is hard with a usb drive and insufficient space on all other network machines. Any help would be greatly appreciated. William

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  • Building applications with WPF, MVVM and Prism(aka CAG)

    - by skjagini
    In this article I am going to walk through an application using WPF and Prism (aka composite application guidance, CAG) which simulates engaging a taxi (cab).  The rules are simple, the app would have3 screens A login screen to authenticate the user An information screen. A screen to engage the cab and roam around and calculating the total fare Metered Rate of Fare The meter is required to be engaged when a cab is occupied by anyone $3.00 upon entry $0.35 for each additional unit The unit fare is: one-fifth of a mile, when the cab is traveling at 6 miles an hour or more; or 60 seconds when not in motion or traveling at less than 12 miles per hour. Night surcharge of $.50 after 8:00 PM & before 6:00 AM Peak hour Weekday Surcharge of $1.00 Monday - Friday after 4:00 PM & before 8:00 PM New York State Tax Surcharge of $.50 per ride. Example: Friday (2010-10-08) 5:30pm Start at Lexington Ave & E 57th St End at Irving Pl & E 15th St Start = $3.00 Travels 2 miles at less than 6 mph for 15 minutes = $3.50 Travels at more than 12 mph for 5 minutes = $1.75 Peak hour Weekday Surcharge = $1.00 (ride started at 5:30 pm) New York State Tax Surcharge = $0.50 Before we dive into the app, I would like to give brief description about the framework.  If you want to jump on to the source code, scroll all the way to the end of the post. MVVM MVVM pattern is in no way related to the usage of PRISM in your application and should be considered if you are using WPF irrespective of PRISM or not. Lets say you are not familiar with MVVM, your typical UI would involve adding some UI controls like text boxes, a button, double clicking on the button,  generating event handler, calling a method from business layer and updating the user interface, it works most of the time for developing small scale applications. The problem with this approach is that there is some amount of code specific to business logic wrapped in UI specific code which is hard to unit test it, mock it and MVVM helps to solve the exact problem. MVVM stands for Model(M) – View(V) – ViewModel(VM),  based on the interactions with in the three parties it should be called VVMM,  MVVM sounds more like MVC (Model-View-Controller) so the name. Why it should be called VVMM: View – View Model - Model WPF allows to create user interfaces using XAML and MVVM takes it to the next level by allowing complete separation of user interface and business logic. In WPF each view will have a property, DataContext when set to an instance of a class (which happens to be your view model) provides the data the view is interested in, i.e., view interacts with view model and at the same time view model interacts with view through DataContext. Sujith, if view and view model are interacting directly with each other how does MVVM is helping me separation of concerns? Well, the catch is DataContext is of type Object, since it is of type object view doesn’t know exact type of view model allowing views and views models to be loosely coupled. View models aggregate data from models (data access layer, services, etc) and make it available for views through properties, methods etc, i.e., View Models interact with Models. PRISM Prism is provided by Microsoft Patterns and Practices team and it can be downloaded from codeplex for source code,  samples and documentation on msdn.  The name composite implies, to compose user interface from different modules (views) without direct dependencies on each other, again allowing  loosely coupled development. Well Sujith, I can already do that with user controls, why shall I learn another framework?  That’s correct, you can decouple using user controls, but you still have to manage some amount of coupling, like how to do you communicate between the controls, how do you subscribe/unsubscribe, loading/unloading views dynamically. Prism is not a replacement for user controls, provides the following features which greatly help in designing the composite applications. Dependency Injection (DI)/ Inversion of Control (IoC) Modules Regions Event Aggregator  Commands Simply put, MVVM helps building a single view and Prism helps building an application using the views There are other open source alternatives to Prism, like MVVMLight, Cinch, take a look at them as well. Lets dig into the source code.  1. Solution The solution is made of the following projects Framework: Holds the common functionality in building applications using WPF and Prism TaxiClient: Start up project, boot strapping and app styling TaxiCommon: Helps with the business logic TaxiModules: Holds the meat of the application with views and view models TaxiTests: To test the application 2. DI / IoC Dependency Injection (DI) as the name implies refers to injecting dependencies and Inversion of Control (IoC) means the calling code has no direct control on the dependencies, opposite of normal way of programming where dependencies are passed by caller, i.e inversion; aside from some differences in terminology the concept is same in both the cases. The idea behind DI/IoC pattern is to reduce the amount of direct coupling between different components of the application, the higher the dependency the more tightly coupled the application resulting in code which is hard to modify, unit test and mock.  Initializing Dependency Injection through BootStrapper TaxiClient is the starting project of the solution and App (App.xaml)  is the starting class that gets called when you run the application. From the App’s OnStartup method we will invoke BootStrapper.   namespace TaxiClient { /// <summary> /// Interaction logic for App.xaml /// </summary> public partial class App : Application { protected override void OnStartup(StartupEventArgs e) { base.OnStartup(e);   (new BootStrapper()).Run(); } } } BootStrapper is your contact point for initializing the application including dependency injection, creating Shell and other frameworks. We are going to use Unity for DI and there are lot of open source DI frameworks like Spring.Net, StructureMap etc with different feature set  and you can choose a framework based on your preferences. Note that Prism comes with in built support for Unity, for example we are deriving from UnityBootStrapper in our case and for any other DI framework you have to extend the Prism appropriately   namespace TaxiClient { public class BootStrapper: UnityBootstrapper { protected override IModuleCatalog CreateModuleCatalog() { return new ConfigurationModuleCatalog(); } protected override DependencyObject CreateShell() { Framework.FrameworkBootStrapper.Run(Container, Application.Current.Dispatcher);   Shell shell = new Shell(); shell.ResizeMode = ResizeMode.NoResize; shell.Show();   return shell; } } } Lets take a look into  FrameworkBootStrapper to check out how to register with unity container. namespace Framework { public class FrameworkBootStrapper { public static void Run(IUnityContainer container, Dispatcher dispatcher) { UIDispatcher uiDispatcher = new UIDispatcher(dispatcher); container.RegisterInstance<IDispatcherService>(uiDispatcher);   container.RegisterType<IInjectSingleViewService, InjectSingleViewService>( new ContainerControlledLifetimeManager());   . . . } } } In the above code we are registering two components with unity container. You shall observe that we are following two different approaches, RegisterInstance and RegisterType.  With RegisterInstance we are registering an existing instance and the same instance will be returned for every request made for IDispatcherService   and with RegisterType we are requesting unity container to create an instance for us when required, i.e., when I request for an instance for IInjectSingleViewService, unity will create/return an instance of InjectSingleViewService class and with RegisterType we can configure the life time of the instance being created. With ContaienrControllerLifetimeManager, the unity container caches the instance and reuses for any subsequent requests, without recreating a new instance. Lets take a look into FareViewModel.cs and it’s constructor. The constructor takes one parameter IEventAggregator and if you try to find all references in your solution for IEventAggregator, you will not find a single location where an instance of EventAggregator is passed directly to the constructor. The compiler still finds an instance and works fine because Prism is already configured when used with Unity container to return an instance of EventAggregator when requested for IEventAggregator and in this particular case it is called constructor injection. public class FareViewModel:ObservableBase, IDataErrorInfo { ... private IEventAggregator _eventAggregator;   public FareViewModel(IEventAggregator eventAggregator) { _eventAggregator = eventAggregator; InitializePropertyNames(); InitializeModel(); PropertyChanged += OnPropertyChanged; } ... 3. Shell Shells are very similar in operation to Master Pages in asp.net or MDI in Windows Forms. And shells contain regions which display the views, you can have as many regions as you wish in a given view. You can also nest regions. i.e, one region can load a view which in itself may contain other regions. We have to create a shell at the start of the application and are doing it by overriding CreateShell method from BootStrapper From the following Shell.xaml you shall notice that we have two content controls with Region names as ‘MenuRegion’ and ‘MainRegion’.  The idea here is that you can inject any user controls into the regions dynamically, i.e., a Menu User Control for MenuRegion and based on the user action you can load appropriate view into MainRegion.    <Window x:Class="TaxiClient.Shell" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:Regions="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Practices.Prism.Regions;assembly=Microsoft.Practices.Prism" Title="Taxi" Height="370" Width="800"> <Grid Margin="2"> <ContentControl Regions:RegionManager.RegionName="MenuRegion" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" HorizontalContentAlignment="Stretch" VerticalContentAlignment="Stretch" />   <ContentControl Grid.Row="1" Regions:RegionManager.RegionName="MainRegion" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" HorizontalContentAlignment="Stretch" VerticalContentAlignment="Stretch" /> <!--<Border Grid.ColumnSpan="2" BorderThickness="2" CornerRadius="3" BorderBrush="LightBlue" />-->   </Grid> </Window> 4. Modules Prism provides the ability to build composite applications and modules play an important role in it. For example if you are building a Mortgage Loan Processor application with 3 components, i.e. customer’s credit history,  existing mortgages, new home/loan information; and consider that the customer’s credit history component involves gathering data about his/her address, background information, job details etc. The idea here using Prism modules is to separate the implementation of these 3 components into their own visual studio projects allowing to build components with no dependency on each other and independently. If we need to add another component to the application, the component can be developed by in house team or some other team in the organization by starting with a new Visual Studio project and adding to the solution at the run time with very little knowledge about the application. Prism modules are defined by implementing the IModule interface and each visual studio project to be considered as a module should implement the IModule interface.  From the BootStrapper.cs you shall observe that we are overriding the method by returning a ConfiguratingModuleCatalog which returns the modules that are registered for the application using the app.config file  and you can also add module using code. Lets take a look into configuration file.   <?xml version="1.0"?> <configuration> <configSections> <section name="modules" type="Microsoft.Practices.Prism.Modularity.ModulesConfigurationSection, Microsoft.Practices.Prism"/> </configSections> <modules> <module assemblyFile="TaxiModules.dll" moduleType="TaxiModules.ModuleInitializer, TaxiModules" moduleName="TaxiModules"/> </modules> </configuration> Here we are adding TaxiModules project to our solution and TaxiModules.ModuleInitializer implements IModule interface   5. Module Mapper With Prism modules you can dynamically add or remove modules from the regions, apart from that Prism also provides API to control adding/removing the views from a region within the same module. Taxi Information Screen: Engage the Taxi Screen: The sample application has two screens, ‘Taxi Information’ and ‘Engage the Taxi’ and they both reside in same module, TaxiModules. ‘Engage the Taxi’ is again made of two user controls, FareView on the left and TotalView on the right. We have created a Shell with two regions, MenuRegion and MainRegion with menu loaded into MenuRegion. We can create a wrapper user control called EngageTheTaxi made of FareView and TotalView and load either TaxiInfo or EngageTheTaxi into MainRegion based on the user action. Though it will work it tightly binds the user controls and for every combination of user controls, we need to create a dummy wrapper control to contain them. Instead we can apply the principles we learned so far from Shell/regions and introduce another template (LeftAndRightRegionView.xaml) made of two regions Region1 (left) and Region2 (right) and load  FareView and TotalView dynamically.  To help with loading of the views dynamically I have introduce an helper an interface, IInjectSingleViewService,  idea suggested by Mike Taulty, a must read blog for .Net developers. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.ComponentModel;   namespace Framework.PresentationUtility.Navigation {   public interface IInjectSingleViewService : INotifyPropertyChanged { IEnumerable<CommandViewDefinition> Commands { get; } IEnumerable<ModuleViewDefinition> Modules { get; }   void RegisterViewForRegion(string commandName, string viewName, string regionName, Type viewType); void ClearViewFromRegion(string viewName, string regionName); void RegisterModule(string moduleName, IList<ModuleMapper> moduleMappers); } } The Interface declares three methods to work with views: RegisterViewForRegion: Registers a view with a particular region. You can register multiple views and their regions under one command.  When this particular command is invoked all the views registered under it will be loaded into their regions. ClearViewFromRegion: To unload a specific view from a region. RegisterModule: The idea is when a command is invoked you can load the UI with set of controls in their default position and based on the user interaction, you can load different contols in to different regions on the fly.  And it is supported ModuleViewDefinition and ModuleMappers as shown below. namespace Framework.PresentationUtility.Navigation { public class ModuleViewDefinition { public string ModuleName { get; set; } public IList<ModuleMapper> ModuleMappers; public ICommand Command { get; set; } }   public class ModuleMapper { public string ViewName { get; set; } public string RegionName { get; set; } public Type ViewType { get; set; } } } 6. Event Aggregator Prism event aggregator enables messaging between components as in Observable pattern, Notifier notifies the Observer which receives notification it is interested in. When it comes to Observable pattern, Observer has to unsubscribes for notifications when it no longer interested in notifications, which allows the Notifier to remove the Observer’s reference from it’s local cache. Though .Net has managed garbage collection it cannot remove inactive the instances referenced by an active instance resulting in memory leak, keeping the Observers in memory as long as Notifier stays in memory.  Developers have to be very careful to unsubscribe when necessary and it often gets overlooked, to overcome these problems Prism Event Aggregator uses weak references to cache the reference (Observer in this case)  and releases the reference (memory) once the instance goes out of scope. Using event aggregator is very simple, declare a generic type of CompositePresenationEvent by inheriting from it. using Microsoft.Practices.Prism.Events; using TaxiCommon.BAO;   namespace TaxiCommon.CompositeEvents { public class TaxiOnMoveEvent:CompositePresentationEvent<TaxiOnMove> { } }   TaxiOnMove.cs includes the properties which we want to exchange between the parties, FareView and TotalView. using System;   namespace TaxiCommon.BAO { public class TaxiOnMove { public TimeSpan MinutesAtTweleveMPH { get; set; } public double MilesAtSixMPH { get; set; } } }   Lets take a look into FareViewodel (Notifier) and how it raises the event.  Here we are raising the event by getting the event through GetEvent<..>() and publishing it with the payload private void OnAddMinutes(object obj) { TaxiOnMove payload = new TaxiOnMove(); if(MilesAtSixMPH != null) payload.MilesAtSixMPH = MilesAtSixMPH.Value; if(MinutesAtTweleveMPH != null) payload.MinutesAtTweleveMPH = new TimeSpan(0,0,MinutesAtTweleveMPH.Value,0);   _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiOnMoveEvent>().Publish(payload); ResetMinutesAndMiles(); } And TotalViewModel(Observer) subscribes to notifications by getting the event through GetEvent<..>() namespace TaxiModules.ViewModels { public class TotalViewModel:ObservableBase { .... private IEventAggregator _eventAggregator;   public TotalViewModel(IEventAggregator eventAggregator) { _eventAggregator = eventAggregator; ... }   private void SubscribeToEvents() { _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiStartedEvent>() .Subscribe(OnTaxiStarted, ThreadOption.UIThread,false,(filter) => true); _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiOnMoveEvent>() .Subscribe(OnTaxiMove, ThreadOption.UIThread, false, (filter) => true); _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiResetEvent>() .Subscribe(OnTaxiReset, ThreadOption.UIThread, false, (filter) => true); }   ... private void OnTaxiMove(TaxiOnMove taxiOnMove) { OnMoveFare fare = new OnMoveFare(taxiOnMove); Fares.Add(fare); SetTotalFare(new []{fare}); }   .... 7. MVVM through example In this section we are going to look into MVVM implementation through example.  I have all the modules declared in a single project, TaxiModules, again it is not necessary to have them into one project. Once the user logs into the application, will be greeted with the ‘Engage the Taxi’ screen which is made of two user controls, FareView.xaml and TotalView.Xaml. As you can see from the solution explorer, each of them have their own code behind files and  ViewModel classes, FareViewMode.cs, TotalViewModel.cs Lets take a look in to the FareView and how it interacts with FareViewModel using MVVM implementation. FareView.xaml acts as a view and FareViewMode.cs is it’s view model. The FareView code behind class   namespace TaxiModules.Views { /// <summary> /// Interaction logic for FareView.xaml /// </summary> public partial class FareView : UserControl { public FareView(FareViewModel viewModel) { InitializeComponent(); this.Loaded += (s, e) => { this.DataContext = viewModel; }; } } } The FareView is bound to FareViewModel through the data context  and you shall observe that DataContext is of type Object, i.e. the FareView doesn’t really know the type of ViewModel (FareViewModel). This helps separation of View and ViewModel as View and ViewModel are independent of each other, you can bind FareView to FareViewModel2 as well and the application compiles just fine. Lets take a look into FareView xaml file  <UserControl x:Class="TaxiModules.Views.FareView" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:Toolkit="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Windows.Controls;assembly=WPFToolkit" xmlns:Commands="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Practices.Prism.Commands;assembly=Microsoft.Practices.Prism"> <Grid Margin="10" > ....   <Border Style="{DynamicResource innerBorder}" Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="0" Grid.RowSpan="11" Grid.ColumnSpan="2" Panel.ZIndex="1"/>   <Label Grid.Row="0" Content="Engage the Taxi" Style="{DynamicResource innerHeader}"/> <Label Grid.Row="1" Content="Select the State"/> <ComboBox Grid.Row="1" Grid.Column="1" ItemsSource="{Binding States}" Height="auto"> <ComboBox.ItemTemplate> <DataTemplate> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Name}"/> </DataTemplate> </ComboBox.ItemTemplate> <ComboBox.SelectedItem> <Binding Path="SelectedState" Mode="TwoWay"/> </ComboBox.SelectedItem> </ComboBox> <Label Grid.Row="2" Content="Select the Date of Entry"/> <Toolkit:DatePicker Grid.Row="2" Grid.Column="1" SelectedDate="{Binding DateOfEntry, ValidatesOnDataErrors=true}" /> <Label Grid.Row="3" Content="Enter time 24hr format"/> <TextBox Grid.Row="3" Grid.Column="1" Text="{Binding TimeOfEntry, TargetNullValue=''}"/> <Button Grid.Row="4" Grid.Column="1" Content="Start the Meter" Commands:Click.Command="{Binding StartMeterCommand}" />   <Label Grid.Row="5" Content="Run the Taxi" Style="{DynamicResource innerHeader}"/> <Label Grid.Row="6" Content="Number of Miles &lt;@6mph"/> <TextBox Grid.Row="6" Grid.Column="1" Text="{Binding MilesAtSixMPH, TargetNullValue='', ValidatesOnDataErrors=true}"/> <Label Grid.Row="7" Content="Number of Minutes @12mph"/> <TextBox Grid.Row="7" Grid.Column="1" Text="{Binding MinutesAtTweleveMPH, TargetNullValue=''}"/> <Button Grid.Row="8" Grid.Column="1" Content="Add Minutes and Miles " Commands:Click.Command="{Binding AddMinutesCommand}"/> <Label Grid.Row="9" Content="Other Operations" Style="{DynamicResource innerHeader}"/> <Button Grid.Row="10" Grid.Column="1" Content="Reset the Meter" Commands:Click.Command="{Binding ResetCommand}"/>   </Grid> </UserControl> The highlighted code from the above code shows data binding, for example ComboBox which displays list of states has it’s ItemsSource bound to States property, with DataTemplate bound to Name and SelectedItem  to SelectedState. You might be wondering what are all these properties and how it is able to bind to them.  The answer lies in data context, i.e., when you bound a control, WPF looks for data context on the root object (Grid in this case) and if it can’t find data context it will look into root’s root, i.e. FareView UserControl and it is bound to FareViewModel.  Each of those properties have be declared on the ViewModel for the View to bind correctly. To put simply, View is bound to ViewModel through data context of type object and every control that is bound on the View actually binds to the public property on the ViewModel. Lets look into the ViewModel code (the following code is not an exact copy of FareViewMode.cs, pasted relevant code for this section)   namespace TaxiModules.ViewModels { public class FareViewModel:ObservableBase, IDataErrorInfo { public List<USState> States { get { return USStates.StateList; } }   public USState SelectedState { get { return _selectedState; } set { _selectedState = value; RaisePropertyChanged(_selectedStatePropertyName); } }   public DateTime? DateOfEntry { get { return _dateOfEntry; } set { _dateOfEntry = value; RaisePropertyChanged(_dateOfEntryPropertyName); } }   public TimeSpan? TimeOfEntry { get { return _timeOfEntry; } set { _timeOfEntry = value; RaisePropertyChanged(_timeOfEntryPropertyName); } }   public double? MilesAtSixMPH { get { return _milesAtSixMPH; } set { _milesAtSixMPH = value; RaisePropertyChanged(_distanceAtSixMPHPropertyName); } }   public int? MinutesAtTweleveMPH { get { return _minutesAtTweleveMPH; } set { _minutesAtTweleveMPH = value; RaisePropertyChanged(_minutesAtTweleveMPHPropertyName); } }   public ICommand StartMeterCommand { get { if(_startMeterCommand == null) { _startMeterCommand = new DelegateCommand<object>(OnStartMeter, CanStartMeter); } return _startMeterCommand; } }   public ICommand AddMinutesCommand { get { if(_addMinutesCommand == null) { _addMinutesCommand = new DelegateCommand<object>(OnAddMinutes, CanAddMinutes); } return _addMinutesCommand; } }   public ICommand ResetCommand { get { if(_resetCommand == null) { _resetCommand = new DelegateCommand<object>(OnResetCommand); } return _resetCommand; } }   } private void OnStartMeter(object obj) { _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiStartedEvent>().Publish( new TaxiStarted() { EngagedOn = DateOfEntry.Value.Date + TimeOfEntry.Value, EngagedState = SelectedState.Value });   _isMeterStarted = true; OnPropertyChanged(this,null); } And views communicate user actions like button clicks, tree view item selections, etc using commands. When user clicks on ‘Start the Meter’ button it invokes the method StartMeterCommand, which calls the method OnStartMeter which publishes the event to TotalViewModel using event aggregator  and TaxiStartedEvent. namespace TaxiModules.ViewModels { public class TotalViewModel:ObservableBase { ... private IEventAggregator _eventAggregator;   public TotalViewModel(IEventAggregator eventAggregator) { _eventAggregator = eventAggregator;   InitializePropertyNames(); InitializeModel(); SubscribeToEvents(); }   public decimal? TotalFare { get { return _totalFare; } set { _totalFare = value; RaisePropertyChanged(_totalFarePropertyName); } } .... private void SubscribeToEvents() { _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiStartedEvent>().Subscribe(OnTaxiStarted, ThreadOption.UIThread,false,(filter) => true); _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiOnMoveEvent>().Subscribe(OnTaxiMove, ThreadOption.UIThread, false, (filter) => true); _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiResetEvent>().Subscribe(OnTaxiReset, ThreadOption.UIThread, false, (filter) => true); }   private void OnTaxiStarted(TaxiStarted taxiStarted) { Fares.Add(new EntryFare()); Fares.Add(new StateTaxFare(taxiStarted)); Fares.Add(new NightSurchargeFare(taxiStarted)); Fares.Add(new PeakHourWeekdayFare(taxiStarted));   SetTotalFare(Fares); }   private void SetTotalFare(IEnumerable<IFare> fares) { TotalFare = (_totalFare ?? 0) + TaxiFareHelper.GetTotalFare(fares); } ....   } }   TotalViewModel subscribes to events, TaxiStartedEvent and rest. When TaxiStartedEvent gets invoked it calls the OnTaxiStarted method which sets the total fare which includes entry fee, state tax, nightly surcharge, peak hour weekday fare.   Note that TotalViewModel derives from ObservableBase which implements the method RaisePropertyChanged which we are invoking in Set of TotalFare property, i.e, once we update the TotalFare property it raises an the event that  allows the TotalFare text box to fetch the new value through the data context. ViewModel is communicating with View through data context and it has no knowledge about View, helping in loose coupling of ViewModel and View.   I have attached the source code (.Net 4.0, Prism 4.0, VS 2010) , download and play with it and don’t forget to leave your comments.  

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