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  • I cannot access Windows Update at all

    - by Cardinal fang
    I have been unable to access the Windows update site for a couple of weeks now. I just get a message saying "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage" and saying I have connection problems. Same thing is replicated with any other Microsoft site I try to access. The Automatic Updates also do not work. I can access every other wesbite I've surfed to. I've tried Googling the problem and based on what other site have suggested I have cleared my cache and temp files. I've scanning my hard drive with my antivirus in case I have a virus (nada). I've tried turning off my firewall and anti-virus (I run Zone Alarm). I've downloaded SpyBot and scanned my drive with that in case something was missed by Zone Alarm (again nada). Based on suggestions from the smart cookies on the Bad Science forum, I've used nslookup to check my translation isn't wonky (got all the info they said I should get). I've also tried navigating there directly using the IP address I was given (nope). I normally access the internet through a 3 mobile broadband connection, but have also tried connecting using a mate's wi-fi connection in case it was something on my mobile modem interferring. I run Windows XP SP3 with Internet Explorer 7 and Zone Alarm Internet Security Suite as my anti-virus/ firewall. Any suggestions?

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  • Windows 7 BSOD when changing power plan

    - by dd5
    i have a strange problem. When i want to change the power plan on my laptop from High performance to Balanced, Windows freezes and i get bsod. The power plan settings are all default. Laptop specs: - Intel Core i3 330M/350M - Intel® HM55 Express Chipset - DDR3 1066 MHz SDRAM 8GB - ATI Mobility™ Radeon HD5730 1GB DDR3 VRAM - Intel SSD330 128gb - Windows 7 Home premium I've searched the internets but couldnt find a similar issue. BSOD first started when i installed this SSD and stopped when i've updated the chipset controller driver then started again yesterday when i wanted to change the power settings plan.Minidump file here. Any help with this weird issue appriciated, thanks. Edit: - i've ran Memory diagnostic tool, - Intel SSD diagnostics - and updated the firmware to 3.2.1. Non of these steps worked or shown signs of errors - but still got BSOD when changing power plan settings. After analizing the dump file via osronline.com here a first few lines: CRITICAL_OBJECT_TERMINATION (f4) A process or thread crucial to system operation has unexpectedly exited or been terminated. Several processes and threads are necessary for the operation of the system; when they are terminated (for any reason), the system can no longer function. Arguments: Arg1: 0000000000000003, Process Arg2: fffffa8008661b30, Terminating object Arg3: fffffa8008661e10, Process image file name Arg4: fffff800033de270, Explanatory message (ascii) -- Solution -- Provided by Vinayak: After installing the Intel Rapid storage Technology from MajorGeeks, i didn't experience a BSOD since, thank you :)

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  • Windows 7, Printer is unavailable until PC reboot

    - by Cjs
    We are having a problem that I haven't seen before and can find no answers to online. A desktop running Windows 7 is unable to print using network printers. When the user tries, no matter what printer it is, he get's the following message when using Microsoft Office applications: "Current printer is unavailable. Select another printer." When the end user uses Outlook we get the message: "Printing is not available. There are no printers installed. You can select and configure a printer in Windows Control Panel." Now here is the confusing part, if we reboot the pc it works fine for a little while and then goes back to the same old same old. The printers are working fine for every other user as well so I believe it is the user's machine. If anyone has any ideas please let me know. Edit: I'd like to add in that some people were having luck disabling snmp for the printers. Restarting the print spooler doesn't seem to do anything.

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  • Windows VPN for remote site connection drawbacks

    - by Damo
    I'm looking for some thoughts on a particular way of setting up a estate of machines. We have a requirement to install machines into unmanned, remote locations. These machines will auto login and perform tasks controlled from a central server. In order to manage patching, AV, updates etc I want these machines to be joined to a dedicated domain for this estate. Some of the locations will only have 3G connectivity (via other hardware), others will be located on customer premises in internal networks. The central server (of ours) and the Domain Controller will be on a public WAN. I see two ways of facilitating this. Install a router at each location and have a site to site VPN between the remove device and the data centre where the servers are location Have the remote machine dial up and authenticate via a Windows VPN connection to the DC via RAS Option one is more costly to setup and has a higher operational cost. It also offers better diagnostics if the remote PC goes down. Option two works well but is solely dependent on the VPN connection been made before any communication can be made to the remote machine. In a simple test, I can got a Windows 7 machine to dial a VPN prior to authentication to a domain, then automatically login to the machine using domain credentials. If the VPN connection drops, it redials. I can also create a timed task to auto connect every hour in case of other issues. I'd like to know, why (if at all) is operating a remote network of devices which are located in various out of band locations in this way a bad idea? Consider 300-400 remote machines all at different sites. I'd rather have 400 VPN connections to a 2008 server than 400 routers, however I'd like to know other opinions on this.

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  • Windows Explorer Hangs on Right-Click

    - by Bryan
    I am not sure if this is the right site to post this one as I typically post coding questions on stackoverflow. But I'll ask anyways and hopefully someone can move it if it's incorrect. Currently I have a customer built PC, utilizing an Intel i7 chip, 1300WATT PSU, 8Gigs of RAM, and two video cards. Originally I had the one video card (NVIDIA) that used the PSU and had two DVI output. After purchasing a third monitor I installed another ATI) graphics card not needed any PSU connectors. After installing and restarting, I noticed that when I right-click on my desktop, or through Windows Explorer it will hang, freeze then restarted. Sometimes after Windows Explorer restarts the problem dissipates. I checked to make sure everything was connected properly and it was. I repaired the ATI Catalyst Control Center to see if that had an issue, and I checked to see if either video card required updated drivers. Nothing worked. I tried restarting my PC and that didn't work. I tried using ShellXView (I forgot what it's actually called) and tried closed processes but that didn't work. Does anyone have any idea what could have caused this orpossible solutions I should try?< Thanks in advance.

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  • Lenovo System Update Breaks Windows Live

    - by wolfvilleian
    Hey everyone, I've been racking my brain (and fingers from typing) trying to solve this issue to no avail. I have a Lenovo computer and I install their system update tool to install all my missing drivers. However after this tool is installed Windows Live 2011 breaks, it will no longer sign in giving error number 8e5e0247 all the solutions online haven't helped. It appears that a language setting somewhere gets set to en_ms, and I'm en_ca. My computer is running Windows 7 x64. When i try to sign onto messenger it gives an error that (with some research) means your locale or language is not supported, I've searched my computer for any reference to en_ms but find none. Also a few other things seem to have broken, When a UAC box comes up it is no longer able to identify the publisher of anything, and also the indexing service does not work (I'm not sure if the indexing issue is related, but the UAC issue happened right after installation), I had this issue before but I don't remember how I fixed it, I believe it had something to do with environmental variables. When it goes to sign in it gets as far as the "Loading contacts" then stops and goes back to the sign in screen. Has anyone seen this before? Thanks

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  • Windows 7 Busy Icon won't stop spinning

    - by Lynda
    In windows 7 you have the busy icon that is a little blue wheel spinning beside the cursor when it is doing something. It has started to spin for about a second every 3-5 seconds. There is noting running that I can tell on the computer to cause the busy icon. It gets very annoying and I am not sure what to do to get it to stop. Ideas? Running a CPU Usage Gadget says I have less than 5% of the CPU being use and I have over 6GB of RAM free. (I have 8GB total) I am running a 3.6 GHZ AMD FX 4100 processor. EDIT- What I am actually seeing is the working in background pointer (the pointer is still visible beside the busy icon). EDIT 2 - After realizing this happened with the printer installation I turned on the the printer and the busy icon stopped. The printer is setup wirelessly. How do I stop Windows from (I guess) checking for the printer? That is what I assume it is doing. I am using a HP Officejet 8600

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  • Windows 7 - All Icons Missing, Explorer Progress Bar Never Finishes, Libraries Gone

    - by Alex
    since yesterday i've had three issues which all arose at the same time. windows 7 x64, i7 2.8ghz 12gb ddr3 1 - my libraries, favorites, drives are missing...basically the entire sidebar is gone. http://i.imgur.com/m8pRQ.png. yet when i open a dialog, my libraries and drives are back to normal ONLY for the dialog. i tried Restore Default Libraries. it works one time, but when i open libraries again i go back to the empty mess. restarting the computer temporarily fixes the problem. 2 - in the explorer window that's showing libraries, when i navigate to a certain folder i get an unending progress bar (the kind that turns the address bar green). yesterday when the problem started, i was saving a file to this folder. the program writing the file crashed during the write and i believe that's what caused the problem. i have sugarsync backing up that folder and when i restarted the computer sugarsync informed me that its database was corrupted, so i had to uninstall and reinstall the software. 3 - icons are missing. the Rebuild Icon Cache did not fix this. http://i.imgur.com/r9pgo.png restarting the computer temporarily fixes these problems, but when i open the directory with the initial write problem, everything stops working. edit: i should note that i did a chkdsk /f and it repaired problems. i also did the thing that verifies then restores windows files (can't remember the command now), which reported that everything was normal.

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  • Display issue with fresh install of windows server 2012

    - by Tony
    I installed windows server 2012 last night on my home "server". I use server loosely. From the get go I had display and graphic issues. The image was fuzzy and jumbled up during the install. This continued once booted into the install. I did installed Server 2012 twice now as the first time, I only installed "core". I know this is not a busted graphics card because it worked fine in Win7, during boot, and fine in "core" mode. Once booted into "GUI" install of Server 2012, the image was messed up again. To make things even more weird, the windows "loading" screen looks fine. Once the login screen appears the image is fuzzy and jumbled. My guess was that it was a driver issue. I did try to install the win8 x64 drivers from nvidia. This caused the system to become unbootable and I had to restore to a previous working point and uninstall the driver. I did try two different monitors and cables. Also both ports on the back of the video card. I did manage to get RDP running and that works fine. I rarely work directly on this machine but it would be nice to have the option back. Geforce 210, AMD 4600+, 4 gigs of ram.

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  • Fixing a corrupted Windows Server 2003 server

    - by Keith
    I have a Windows Server 2003 server that is being mainly used for some reporting done in SQL Server. Recently Windows has started complaining about being corrupted, we are getting an NTFS error 55: The file system structure on the disk is corrupt and unusable. Please run the chkdsk utility on the volume \Device\HarddiskVolume1. The server is RAID 5 and I did have a disk die however the RAID never went degraded since I have a hotspare. I replaced the hot spare and I'm still having problems. When I run chkdsk I get tons of messages.. some are: Deleting corrupted attribute record (128, "") from file record segment 194746 Those go on for a while. Then it deletes some orphan files. Then it does Correcting error in index $I30 for file 132426 And that goes on for a while. Then I get tons of Recovering orphaned file RE1AB6~1.LOG into directory file 534959 I have seen a lot of errors relating to the SQL Server reporting services. What are my options at this point? I would prefer to fix the issue instead of building a new server but I don't know if I can at this point.

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  • How can I get around windows 8.1 store (& metro apps) not working with UAC disabled

    - by Enigma
    I have UAC disabled because it is annoying and causes more problems that it could ever possibly solve, at least for me. Here is yet another problem, and it seems to be due to a recent update as I don't remember it in the past. Even with a MS account, I can't use the store because UAC is disabled. How can I get around this? Short term I can just enable it, reboot, use store, disable it, reboot and be on my way but there has to be a better way (other than MS getting their software completely right - like that will happen anytime, ever) Edit: Apparently this is far more of an issue than I originally thought. Now every(?)many metro apps requires UAC. Anyone aware of the update this got rolled in with? Thankfully netflix isn't affected which is the only metro app I use at the moment. What I see: Event Log info: Activation of app winstore_cw5n1h2txyewy!Windows.Store failed with error: This app can't be activated when UAC is disabled. See the Microsoft-Windows-TWinUI/Operational log for additional information.

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  • Windows 7 Media Center: sometimes no sound on a TV channel

    - by torbengb
    Problem Sometimes, recorded TV shows have no sound. This is of course very annoying because the recorded show is worthless. Also, when switching channels while watching live TV, sometimes a channel has no sound. This is always solved by switching channel again and then back (most often, once will do the trick). Media Center doesn't do this trick by itself when recording of course, so that's the bigger issue - but the cause is certainly the same. Details The computer is running a newly installed Windows 7 and Windows Media Center. It has 2 different tuner-cards installed. Both are installed with signed and up-to-date Win7 drivers and appear OK in Device Manager. Both tuners get the same antenna signal, from a split cable from the wall. The cable delivers analog cable TV (40+ channels) and digital cable TV (4 channels) at the same time. Both tuners have been configured to receive both analog and digital channels. This only happens with analog channels. How can I fix the no-sound problem? Update: I've now spent some time with the computer to try and pinpoint the problem, but I've had little success so far: I flipped through the channels until one didn't have sound, then I disconnected the antenna cable from one of the tuners. It was the right one because then the video also went away. I flipped lots more channels to see if the other card also would come up mute once but I never had a channel without sound. It might still be possible, I don't know. Then I disconnected the "good" tuner and connected the "bad" tuner and again flipped lots of channels but again I never had a channel without sound. It seems to me that the problem is erratic. It happens on any channel, and I haven't ruled out yet that it only happens on one tuner.

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  • Windows Server 2008 is stuck at "configuring updates - stage 3 of 3 - 0% complete"

    - by Chris
    This has happened the last two times I've done updates to this system, and I really have no idea what is going on. It is installing a only a month's worth of updates. It only responds to ping and no services are up, so I can't view the system remotely (I have to hook up a monitor to see this message). In the past I've just restarted the system at this point and it eventually finishes updating. I want to know what I can do to avoid this situation, how to diagnose what is going on, and how to get any kind of remote access during the updates. Edit: I can start the machine in safe mode (where I did nothing but backup some files). I restarted and it no longer tries to do a windows update, just goes to the desktop where everything seems extremely broken. I can click on some things, but not launch most programs. I guess all I can do at this point is do a system restore or something. Edit: Re-installed windows on this system yesterday. That's my usual solution to issues I don't feel like diagnosing, like this one.

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  • Windows 7 Taskbar resets on every login

    - by Arne Mertz
    I like to reorder my Taskbar a bit, other than the Windows 7 default is. I use two "rows", the lower is for quicklaunch and other toolbars: This works perfectly, as long as I don't log off from the computer. Every time I log in, Windows 7 has messed up/reset the toolbar positions like this: So I have to drag them into position again and again, every morning. Fixing the taskbar positions won't help, I tried to google for the problem but it does not seem to be very common. Does anyone recognize that problem and has a solution? Update: This is not the AutoLogon bug. AutoLogon is off. We have installed Novell at our company, and it does not matter wether I log directly onto the Novell network or only to the computer first and to Novell later. Update2: I get the same issue when I logon without Novell, i.e. when I log on only to the computer. When I boot in safe mode, the taskbar looks essentially the same: Update3: KB979155 says it's "not applicable to my system". Creating a neew user is not an option since I don't have the admin privileges to do that - I have almost any other local admin privileges, though.

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  • Windows 7 - ignore security when reading external drive

    - by w-
    hi, My system hard drive on an XP computer kind of failed (random corrupt sectors). So i got a new harddrive and am trying to recover the files. The filesystem is NTFS. The system i'm trying to use when recovering the files is Windows 7. I'm obviously an admin on this box. The last data i'm trying to recover is stuff in the Documents and Settings folder. I'm using a SATA to a USB cable thingy so that I just plug it in as an External Hard Drive. The problem: In Windows Explorer when i try to copy the data, I keep getting prompted with Security warnings and error messages. It keeps telling me i have to change the owner permissions of the folder and all it's contents. If i tell it to change all the files and folder permissions it takes a really long time because it has to recurse through all the folder contents to change the permissions. Is there a way for me to ignore the file permissions when doing this? thanks

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  • Windows 7 mouse multi selection on windows explorer with CTRL and point to select / single click to open

    - by bortao
    This is something that have annoyed me since i changed to Windows 7. I don't do double click for a long time now since windows introduced 1 click selection (Folder Options Click items as follows Single click to open an item). The problem is, when i click Control and hover over the items, they select/deselect automatically every small amount of mouse movement i make. What i want is to select/deselect the items only when i enter/exit them. So to deselect an item im hovering, i have to move the mouse out of it, and then back in. I'm using Intellimouse Explorer official drivers. (edit) Here's another related annoyance: When you are hovering something and move the mouse inside other item (Holding Ctrl) The new item may or may not be selected. If you continue moving the mouse it gets selected/deselected as you move. (more edit) I have found that the parameter HKCU\Control Panel\Mouse\MouseHoverHeight / MouseHoverWidth have some influence here. If it's set to 2, the item select/deselect really quickly as you move the mouse. When set to larger numbers, its slower. But setting to 20 or 200 don't seem to be much different.

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  • (Windows 7) Shared External Drive Permission Issues

    - by connec
    So, say I share my system (C) drive through windows (E.g. properties -> Sharing -> Advanced Sharing -> Share this Folder). I can then access this drive at \\Comp\C on another networked computer - all is well. However, if I insert a removable (USB) disk, say "E", and proceed to share it the same way, when I attempt to access \\Comp\E (either directly or through browsing) I get an error: Windows cannot access \\Comp\E You do not have permission to access \\Comp\E. Contact your network administrator to request access. Now, the permissions (Advanced Sharing -> Permissions) are set with "Everyone" having read access (same as the internal drive), so this doesn't make a lot of sense. Also of note, I have an SSH server on my computer (through Cygwin) and even through SSH (logging in as an administrator user) I cannot access /cygdrive/e (although /cygdrive/c is accessible). As a final note, the drive is of course accessible on the host machine (E:\), and also at \\Comp\E on the host machine.

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  • Transfer of ownership of Windows 7

    - by ziggy
    I am thinking of purchasing a copy of Windows 7 via either ebay or GumTree. I am unsure as to how the product key works. A close friend of mine is warning me against buying it from ebay as he is suggesting that once it has been used, the operating system registers itself on microsoft servers using the serial number of the motherboard of the system where it has been installed. This means once installed on one machine you wont be able to install it on another machine. Now i am struggling to believe that an operating system can only be installed on one machine. Can someone please explain exactly how this works. I can see a lot of copies being sold on Ebay which are used. I used the 'Ask a question' option and the majority of the users are saying that i should be able to use it. If someone buys Windows 7 from the shop, installs it on his PC but then decides that he wants to sell it can he not sell it? Will the person buying it not be able to use it? Does the person selling it have to somehow unregister it first? What do i need to look out for if buying it from Ebay? Thanks

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  • Windows 7 explorer crashing trying to read external hard disk

    - by Mario De Schaepmeester
    I have a 1TB Western Digital hard drive which is almost full and last time I tried to plug it into my laptop, I got a Windows dialog saying "this hard drive needs to be formatted". I did not panic because I have experienced things like this before and I know it's often solved by simply re-inserting the drive. Now however, whenever I plug it in and try to browse it in explorer by going to "computer", the explorer process crashes after a while. I simply close explorer since it takes ages trying to read the disk and nothing happens. After searching on the internet, the best thing to do would be a chkdsk. I tried it via properties in explorer (which also took a good 5 minutes to open up), locks up as well, after waiting a couple of minutes it says there's no access to the disk so a chkdsk is not possible... I want to make clear that I always use safe removal before pulling out the USB cable. Last time however, safe removal just would not work and when trying to shut down Windows, the logoff screen just would not disappear (I've waited at least 10 minutes or so) and I powered off the PC by force. This may be the cause of the problems but the disk was still recognised immediately after that. I really don't want to format this thing because it contains C: clones of 3 computers and a lot of other stuff that I don't want to re-copy. What would be the best course of action? Update I got chkdsk working via the command line. I used the /F and /R options. I already got a bunch of lines saying "file record segment X is unreadable" or whatever it is in English, my OS is Dutch. It looks bad... Will chdsk repair these errors?

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  • Lenovo System Update Breaks Windows Live

    - by wolfvilleian
    Hey everyone, I've been racking my brain (and fingers from typing) trying to solve this issue to no avail. I have a Lenovo computer and I install their system update tool to install all my missing drivers. However after this tool is installed Windows Live 2011 breaks, it will no longer sign in giving error number 8e5e0247 all the solutions online haven't helped. It appears that a language setting somewhere gets set to en_ms, and I'm en_ca. My computer is running Windows 7 x64. When i try to sign onto messenger it gives an error that (with some research) means your locale or language is not supported, I've searched my computer for any reference to en_ms but find none. Also a few other things seem to have broken, When a UAC box comes up it is no longer able to identify the publisher of anything, and also the indexing service does not work (I'm not sure if the indexing issue is related, but the UAC issue happened right after installation), I had this issue before but I don't remember how I fixed it, I believe it had something to do with environmental variables. When it goes to sign in it gets as far as the "Loading contacts" then stops and goes back to the sign in screen. Has anyone seen this before? Thanks

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  • WINDOWS 7: Make the contents of two folders appear in one

    - by big_smile
    In Windows 7, I have three folders: "Images", "assets" and "all". I want the contents of "Images " and "assets" to appear in "all" automatically without copying those files into that folder (e.g. I don't want to duplicate the files). I also only want the contents to be copied over and not the folders themslves (The reason for this is that if the folders are copied over, they will become sub-directories. I am using a printing hot folder that access "all" but it can't see any subdirectories in "all"). When Images and Assets are updated (e.g. with files being added or deleted), "all" should automatically update as well. How can I do this? This is what I have tried: Libraries: This is a feature built into Windows. It works exactly as I want. However, the print hot folder cannot recognise the library as a folder. Sym Link Extension: I can use this to make the "images" and "assets" folders appear as a sub directories of "all". However, I want the contents of "images"/"assets" to appear in the "all" folder (I don't want the directories to appear as sub directories, because as stated, the print hot folder cannot access sub directories).

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  • Which Windows 8 tool should I use to "read", "upload", my Windows 7 latest backup DVD (is it possible?)

    - by Robert
    Which Windows 8 tool should I use to "read", "upload", my Windows 7 latest backup DVD (is it possible?). I've just installed W8 and haven't made any changes to my new ecosystem and, what happened was that, as I was managing my new drivers, some mess* occurred, I confess, and now what I have left is every single backup tool I made use of W7, like system images, restore dvds, backup up to date monthly and so on, and would like to keep in touch with W8. I'm one of those with problems managing the amd switchable gpu drivers. Now I want to stay with W8 (download version - didn't clean install) but with my old personal files. I don't care to programs updates. I got everything original on dvds, of my interest. Yesterday I tried refreshing W8 once but didn't work. Maybe trying again tonight. What would you guys do in my place, please? *the mess I am talking about is to have disabled my intel (the only driver left) gpu in device manager tool in W8. I got black screen on system boot. Cheers, C.C.

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  • Upload File to Windows Azure Blob in Chunks through ASP.NET MVC, JavaScript and HTML5

    - by Shaun
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/shaunxu/archive/2013/07/01/upload-file-to-windows-azure-blob-in-chunks-through-asp.net.aspxMany people are using Windows Azure Blob Storage to store their data in the cloud. Blob storage provides 99.9% availability with easy-to-use API through .NET SDK and HTTP REST. For example, we can store JavaScript files, images, documents in blob storage when we are building an ASP.NET web application on a Web Role in Windows Azure. Or we can store our VHD files in blob and mount it as a hard drive in our cloud service. If you are familiar with Windows Azure, you should know that there are two kinds of blob: page blob and block blob. The page blob is optimized for random read and write, which is very useful when you need to store VHD files. The block blob is optimized for sequential/chunk read and write, which has more common usage. Since we can upload block blob in blocks through BlockBlob.PutBlock, and them commit them as a whole blob with invoking the BlockBlob.PutBlockList, it is very powerful to upload large files, as we can upload blocks in parallel, and provide pause-resume feature. There are many documents, articles and blog posts described on how to upload a block blob. Most of them are focus on the server side, which means when you had received a big file, stream or binaries, how to upload them into blob storage in blocks through .NET SDK.  But the problem is, how can we upload these large files from client side, for example, a browser. This questioned to me when I was working with a Chinese customer to help them build a network disk production on top of azure. The end users upload their files from the web portal, and then the files will be stored in blob storage from the Web Role. My goal is to find the best way to transform the file from client (end user’s machine) to the server (Web Role) through browser. In this post I will demonstrate and describe what I had done, to upload large file in chunks with high speed, and save them as blocks into Windows Azure Blob Storage.   Traditional Upload, Works with Limitation The simplest way to implement this requirement is to create a web page with a form that contains a file input element and a submit button. 1: @using (Html.BeginForm("About", "Index", FormMethod.Post, new { enctype = "multipart/form-data" })) 2: { 3: <input type="file" name="file" /> 4: <input type="submit" value="upload" /> 5: } And then in the backend controller, we retrieve the whole content of this file and upload it in to the blob storage through .NET SDK. We can split the file in blocks and upload them in parallel and commit. The code had been well blogged in the community. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public ActionResult About(HttpPostedFileBase file) 3: { 4: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 5: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 6: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(file.FileName); 7: var blockDataList = new Dictionary<string, byte[]>(); 8: using (var stream = file.InputStream) 9: { 10: var blockSizeInKB = 1024; 11: var offset = 0; 12: var index = 0; 13: while (offset < stream.Length) 14: { 15: var readLength = Math.Min(1024 * blockSizeInKB, (int)stream.Length - offset); 16: var blockData = new byte[readLength]; 17: offset += stream.Read(blockData, 0, readLength); 18: blockDataList.Add(Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)), blockData); 19:  20: index++; 21: } 22: } 23:  24: Parallel.ForEach(blockDataList, (bi) => 25: { 26: blob.PutBlock(bi.Key, new MemoryStream(bi.Value), null); 27: }); 28: blob.PutBlockList(blockDataList.Select(b => b.Key).ToArray()); 29:  30: return RedirectToAction("About"); 31: } This works perfect if we selected an image, a music or a small video to upload. But if I selected a large file, let’s say a 6GB HD-movie, after upload for about few minutes the page will be shown as below and the upload will be terminated. In ASP.NET there is a limitation of request length and the maximized request length is defined in the web.config file. It’s a number which less than about 4GB. So if we want to upload a really big file, we cannot simply implement in this way. Also, in Windows Azure, a cloud service network load balancer will terminate the connection if exceed the timeout period. From my test the timeout looks like 2 - 3 minutes. Hence, when we need to upload a large file we cannot just use the basic HTML elements. Besides the limitation mentioned above, the simple HTML file upload cannot provide rich upload experience such as chunk upload, pause and pause-resume. So we need to find a better way to upload large file from the client to the server.   Upload in Chunks through HTML5 and JavaScript In order to break those limitation mentioned above we will try to upload the large file in chunks. This takes some benefit to us such as - No request size limitation: Since we upload in chunks, we can define the request size for each chunks regardless how big the entire file is. - No timeout problem: The size of chunks are controlled by us, which means we should be able to make sure request for each chunk upload will not exceed the timeout period of both ASP.NET and Windows Azure load balancer. It was a big challenge to upload big file in chunks until we have HTML5. There are some new features and improvements introduced in HTML5 and we will use them to implement our solution.   In HTML5, the File interface had been improved with a new method called “slice”. It can be used to read part of the file by specifying the start byte index and the end byte index. For example if the entire file was 1024 bytes, file.slice(512, 768) will read the part of this file from the 512nd byte to 768th byte, and return a new object of interface called "Blob”, which you can treat as an array of bytes. In fact,  a Blob object represents a file-like object of immutable, raw data. The File interface is based on Blob, inheriting blob functionality and expanding it to support files on the user's system. For more information about the Blob please refer here. File and Blob is very useful to implement the chunk upload. We will use File interface to represent the file the user selected from the browser and then use File.slice to read the file in chunks in the size we wanted. For example, if we wanted to upload a 10MB file with 512KB chunks, then we can read it in 512KB blobs by using File.slice in a loop.   Assuming we have a web page as below. User can select a file, an input box to specify the block size in KB and a button to start upload. 1: <div> 2: <input type="file" id="upload_files" name="files[]" /><br /> 3: Block Size: <input type="number" id="block_size" value="512" name="block_size" />KB<br /> 4: <input type="button" id="upload_button_blob" name="upload" value="upload (blob)" /> 5: </div> Then we can have the JavaScript function to upload the file in chunks when user clicked the button. 1: <script type="text/javascript"> 1: 2: $(function () { 3: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 4: }); 5: });</script> Firstly we need to ensure the client browser supports the interfaces we are going to use. Just try to invoke the File, Blob and FormData from the “window” object. If any of them is “undefined” the condition result will be “false” which means your browser doesn’t support these premium feature and it’s time for you to get your browser updated. FormData is another new feature we are going to use in the future. It could generate a temporary form for us. We will use this interface to create a form with chunk and associated metadata when invoked the service through ajax. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: if (window.File && window.Blob && window.FormData) { 4: alert("Your brwoser is awesome, let's rock!"); 5: } 6: else { 7: alert("Oh man plz update to a modern browser before try is cool stuff out."); 8: return; 9: } 10: }); Each browser supports these interfaces by their own implementation and currently the Blob, File and File.slice are supported by Chrome 21, FireFox 13, IE 10, Opera 12 and Safari 5.1 or higher. After that we worked on the files the user selected one by one since in HTML5, user can select multiple files in one file input box. 1: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 2: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 3: var file = files[i]; 4: var fileSize = file.size; 5: var fileName = file.name; 6: } Next, we calculated the start index and end index for each chunks based on the size the user specified from the browser. We put them into an array with the file name and the index, which will be used when we upload chunks into Windows Azure Blob Storage as blocks since we need to specify the target blob name and the block index. At the same time we will store the list of all indexes into another variant which will be used to commit blocks into blob in Azure Storage once all chunks had been uploaded successfully. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10:  11: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 12: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 13: var blockSizeInKB = $("#block_size").val(); 14: var blockSize = blockSizeInKB * 1024; 15: var blocks = []; 16: var offset = 0; 17: var index = 0; 18: var list = ""; 19: while (offset < fileSize) { 20: var start = offset; 21: var end = Math.min(offset + blockSize, fileSize); 22:  23: blocks.push({ 24: name: fileName, 25: index: index, 26: start: start, 27: end: end 28: }); 29: list += index + ","; 30:  31: offset = end; 32: index++; 33: } 34: } 35: }); Now we have all chunks’ information ready. The next step should be upload them one by one to the server side, and at the server side when received a chunk it will upload as a block into Blob Storage, and finally commit them with the index list through BlockBlobClient.PutBlockList. But since all these invokes are ajax calling, which means not synchronized call. So we need to introduce a new JavaScript library to help us coordinate the asynchronize operation, which named “async.js”. You can download this JavaScript library here, and you can find the document here. I will not explain this library too much in this post. We will put all procedures we want to execute as a function array, and pass into the proper function defined in async.js to let it help us to control the execution sequence, in series or in parallel. Hence we will define an array and put the function for chunk upload into this array. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4:  5: // start to upload each files in chunks 6: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 7: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 8: var file = files[i]; 9: var fileSize = file.size; 10: var fileName = file.name; 11: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 12: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 13: ... ... 14:  15: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 16: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 17: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 18: }); 19: }); 20: } 21: }); 22: }); As you can see, I used File.slice method to read each chunks based on the start and end byte index we calculated previously, and constructed a temporary HTML form with the file name, chunk index and chunk data through another new feature in HTML5 named FormData. Then post this form to the backend server through jQuery.ajax. This is the key part of our solution. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 15: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 16: // load blob based on the start and end index for each chunks 17: var blob = file.slice(block.start, block.end); 18: // put the file name, index and blob into a temporary from 19: var fd = new FormData(); 20: fd.append("name", block.name); 21: fd.append("index", block.index); 22: fd.append("file", blob); 23: // post the form to backend service (asp.net mvc controller action) 24: $.ajax({ 25: url: "/Home/UploadInFormData", 26: data: fd, 27: processData: false, 28: contentType: "multipart/form-data", 29: type: "POST", 30: success: function (result) { 31: if (!result.success) { 32: alert(result.error); 33: } 34: callback(null, block.index); 35: } 36: }); 37: }); 38: }); 39: } 40: }); Then we will invoke these functions one by one by using the async.js. And once all functions had been executed successfully I invoked another ajax call to the backend service to commit all these chunks (blocks) as the blob in Windows Azure Storage. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.series(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: }); That’s all in the client side. The outline of our logic would be - Calculate the start and end byte index for each chunks based on the block size. - Defined the functions of reading the chunk form file and upload the content to the backend service through ajax. - Execute the functions defined in previous step with “async.js”. - Commit the chunks by invoking the backend service in Windows Azure Storage finally.   Save Chunks as Blocks into Blob Storage In above we finished the client size JavaScript code. It uploaded the file in chunks to the backend service which we are going to implement in this step. We will use ASP.NET MVC as our backend service, and it will receive the chunks, upload into Windows Azure Bob Storage in blocks, then finally commit as one blob. As in the client side we uploaded chunks by invoking the ajax call to the URL "/Home/UploadInFormData", I created a new action under the Index controller and it only accepts HTTP POST request. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: } 8: catch (Exception e) 9: { 10: error = e.ToString(); 11: } 12:  13: return new JsonResult() 14: { 15: Data = new 16: { 17: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 18: error = error 19: } 20: }; 21: } Then I retrieved the file name, index and the chunk content from the Request.Form object, which was passed from our client side. And then, used the Windows Azure SDK to create a blob container (in this case we will use the container named “test”.) and create a blob reference with the blob name (same as the file name). Then uploaded the chunk as a block of this blob with the index, since in Blob Storage each block must have an index (ID) associated with so that finally we can put all blocks as one blob by specifying their block ID list. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 8: var index = int.Parse(Request.Form["index"]); 9: var file = Request.Files[0]; 10: var id = Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)); 11:  12: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 13: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 14: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 15: blob.PutBlock(id, file.InputStream, null); 16: } 17: catch (Exception e) 18: { 19: error = e.ToString(); 20: } 21:  22: return new JsonResult() 23: { 24: Data = new 25: { 26: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 27: error = error 28: } 29: }; 30: } Next, I created another action to commit the blocks into blob once all chunks had been uploaded. Similarly, I retrieved the blob name from the Request.Form. I also retrieved the chunks ID list, which is the block ID list from the Request.Form in a string format, split them as a list, then invoked the BlockBlob.PutBlockList method. After that our blob will be shown in the container and ready to be download. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult Commit() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 8: var list = Request.Form["list"]; 9: var ids = list 10: .Split(',') 11: .Where(id => !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(id)) 12: .Select(id => Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(int.Parse(id)))) 13: .ToArray(); 14:  15: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 16: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 17: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 18: blob.PutBlockList(ids); 19: } 20: catch (Exception e) 21: { 22: error = e.ToString(); 23: } 24:  25: return new JsonResult() 26: { 27: Data = new 28: { 29: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 30: error = error 31: } 32: }; 33: } Now we finished all code we need. The whole process of uploading would be like this below. Below is the full client side JavaScript code. 1: <script type="text/javascript" src="~/Scripts/async.js"></script> 2: <script type="text/javascript"> 3: $(function () { 4: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 5: // assert the browser support html5 6: if (window.File && window.Blob && window.FormData) { 7: alert("Your brwoser is awesome, let's rock!"); 8: } 9: else { 10: alert("Oh man plz update to a modern browser before try is cool stuff out."); 11: return; 12: } 13:  14: // start to upload each files in chunks 15: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 16: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 17: var file = files[i]; 18: var fileSize = file.size; 19: var fileName = file.name; 20:  21: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 22: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 23: var blockSizeInKB = $("#block_size").val(); 24: var blockSize = blockSizeInKB * 1024; 25: var blocks = []; 26: var offset = 0; 27: var index = 0; 28: var list = ""; 29: while (offset < fileSize) { 30: var start = offset; 31: var end = Math.min(offset + blockSize, fileSize); 32:  33: blocks.push({ 34: name: fileName, 35: index: index, 36: start: start, 37: end: end 38: }); 39: list += index + ","; 40:  41: offset = end; 42: index++; 43: } 44:  45: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 46: var putBlocks = []; 47: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 48: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 49: // load blob based on the start and end index for each chunks 50: var blob = file.slice(block.start, block.end); 51: // put the file name, index and blob into a temporary from 52: var fd = new FormData(); 53: fd.append("name", block.name); 54: fd.append("index", block.index); 55: fd.append("file", blob); 56: // post the form to backend service (asp.net mvc controller action) 57: $.ajax({ 58: url: "/Home/UploadInFormData", 59: data: fd, 60: processData: false, 61: contentType: "multipart/form-data", 62: type: "POST", 63: success: function (result) { 64: if (!result.success) { 65: alert(result.error); 66: } 67: callback(null, block.index); 68: } 69: }); 70: }); 71: }); 72:  73: // invoke the functions one by one 74: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 75: async.series(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 76: var data = { 77: name: fileName, 78: list: list 79: }; 80: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 81: if (!result.success) { 82: alert(result.error); 83: } 84: else { 85: alert("done!"); 86: } 87: }); 88: }); 89: } 90: }); 91: }); 92: </script> And below is the full ASP.NET MVC controller code. 1: public class HomeController : Controller 2: { 3: private CloudStorageAccount _account; 4: private CloudBlobClient _client; 5:  6: public HomeController() 7: : base() 8: { 9: _account = CloudStorageAccount.Parse(CloudConfigurationManager.GetSetting("DataConnectionString")); 10: _client = _account.CreateCloudBlobClient(); 11: } 12:  13: public ActionResult Index() 14: { 15: ViewBag.Message = "Modify this template to jump-start your ASP.NET MVC application."; 16:  17: return View(); 18: } 19:  20: [HttpPost] 21: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 22: { 23: var error = string.Empty; 24: try 25: { 26: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 27: var index = int.Parse(Request.Form["index"]); 28: var file = Request.Files[0]; 29: var id = Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)); 30:  31: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 32: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 33: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 34: blob.PutBlock(id, file.InputStream, null); 35: } 36: catch (Exception e) 37: { 38: error = e.ToString(); 39: } 40:  41: return new JsonResult() 42: { 43: Data = new 44: { 45: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 46: error = error 47: } 48: }; 49: } 50:  51: [HttpPost] 52: public JsonResult Commit() 53: { 54: var error = string.Empty; 55: try 56: { 57: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 58: var list = Request.Form["list"]; 59: var ids = list 60: .Split(',') 61: .Where(id => !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(id)) 62: .Select(id => Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(int.Parse(id)))) 63: .ToArray(); 64:  65: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 66: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 67: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 68: blob.PutBlockList(ids); 69: } 70: catch (Exception e) 71: { 72: error = e.ToString(); 73: } 74:  75: return new JsonResult() 76: { 77: Data = new 78: { 79: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 80: error = error 81: } 82: }; 83: } 84: } And if we selected a file from the browser we will see our application will upload chunks in the size we specified to the server through ajax call in background, and then commit all chunks in one blob. Then we can find the blob in our Windows Azure Blob Storage.   Optimized by Parallel Upload In previous example we just uploaded our file in chunks. This solved the problem that ASP.NET MVC request content size limitation as well as the Windows Azure load balancer timeout. But it might introduce the performance problem since we uploaded chunks in sequence. In order to improve the upload performance we could modify our client side code a bit to make the upload operation invoked in parallel. The good news is that, “async.js” library provides the parallel execution function. If you remembered the code we invoke the service to upload chunks, it utilized “async.series” which means all functions will be executed in sequence. Now we will change this code to “async.parallel”. This will invoke all functions in parallel. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.parallel(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: }); In this way all chunks will be uploaded to the server side at the same time to maximize the bandwidth usage. This should work if the file was not very large and the chunk size was not very small. But for large file this might introduce another problem that too many ajax calls are sent to the server at the same time. So the best solution should be, upload the chunks in parallel with maximum concurrency limitation. The code below specified the concurrency limitation to 4, which means at the most only 4 ajax calls could be invoked at the same time. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.parallelLimit(putBlocks, 4, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: });   Summary In this post we discussed how to upload files in chunks to the backend service and then upload them into Windows Azure Blob Storage in blocks. We focused on the frontend side and leverage three new feature introduced in HTML 5 which are - File.slice: Read part of the file by specifying the start and end byte index. - Blob: File-like interface which contains the part of the file content. - FormData: Temporary form element that we can pass the chunk alone with some metadata to the backend service. Then we discussed the performance consideration of chunk uploading. Sequence upload cannot provide maximized upload speed, but the unlimited parallel upload might crash the browser and server if too many chunks. So we finally came up with the solution to upload chunks in parallel with the concurrency limitation. We also demonstrated how to utilize “async.js” JavaScript library to help us control the asynchronize call and the parallel limitation.   Regarding the chunk size and the parallel limitation value there is no “best” value. You need to test vary composition and find out the best one for your particular scenario. It depends on the local bandwidth, client machine cores and the server side (Windows Azure Cloud Service Virtual Machine) cores, memory and bandwidth. Below is one of my performance test result. The client machine was Windows 8 IE 10 with 4 cores. I was using Microsoft Cooperation Network. The web site was hosted on Windows Azure China North data center (in Beijing) with one small web role (1.7GB 1 core CPU, 1.75GB memory with 100Mbps bandwidth). The test cases were - Chunk size: 512KB, 1MB, 2MB, 4MB. - Upload Mode: Sequence, parallel (unlimited), parallel with limit (4 threads, 8 threads). - Chunk Format: base64 string, binaries. - Target file: 100MB. - Each case was tested 3 times. Below is the test result chart. Some thoughts, but not guidance or best practice: - Parallel gets better performance than series. - No significant performance improvement between parallel 4 threads and 8 threads. - Transform with binaries provides better performance than base64. - In all cases, chunk size in 1MB - 2MB gets better performance.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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  • Upgrading from Vista Home Basic to Vista Business

    - by miracle2k
    I have a PC that came with Vista Home Basic, and I now have some need for Remote Desktop, which is not included in Home Basic, so I'd like to upgrade. Now, there is apparently some hack to get Remote Desktop working in Home Premium, and obviously, it's in Ultimate, but really, the Business Edition would be the best fit for us. Unfortunately, Windows Anytime Upgrade does not provide a path from Home Basic to Business. My question is, if I were to buy a standalone Vista Business license, could I use it to do an upgrade from my current Home Basic installation? Would it be simply entering the new license key?

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  • [MISC GEEKERY] Support for Some Versions of Windows is Ending

    - by Matthew Guay
    Are you sticking with your older version of Windows instead of upgrading to Windows 7?  There’s no problem with that, but here’s a quick reminder to make sure you’re running the latest service pack to stay protected. Microsoft offers security updates and more throughout the lifetime of a version of Windows, and periodically they roll all the latest updates and improvements together into a service pack.  After a while, only computers running the latest service pack will still get updates to keep them safe. Recently, Microsoft has been warning that support is ending for Windows XP with Service Pack 2 and the release version of Windows Vista.  When support ends, you will not receive any new security updates for Windows.  You can continue to use your computer the same as before, but it may not be as secure and if new security issues are discovered they will not be updated. However, it’s easy to stay supported: simply install XP Service Pack 3 or Vista Service Pack 2, depending on your computer.  Here’s how to do that: Windows XP To install Windows XP Service Pack 3, you can either check Windows Update for updates, or simply download it from Microsoft at this link: Download XP Service Pack 3 Run the download (or if you’re updating from Windows Update the installer will automatically launch), and proceed just as you normally would when installing a program.  Your computer will have to reboot during the install, so make sure you’ve saved all your work and closed other programs before installing.   To check what service pack your computer is running, click Start, then right-click on the My Computer button and choose Properties. This will show you what version and service pack of Windows you are running, and in this screenshot we see this computer has be updated to Service Pack 3. Please Note:  The version of XP shipped with Windows XP Mode in Windows 7 comes preconfigured with Service Pack 3, and does not need updated.  Additionally, if your computer is running the 64 bit version of Windows XP, then Service Pack 2 is the latest service pack for your computer, and it is still supported. Windows Vista If your computer is running Windows Vista, you can install Service Pack 2 to stay up to date and supported.  Simply check Windows Update for Service Pack 2 if you haven’t installed it yet, or download the installer for your computer from the link below: 32 bit: Vista Service Pack 2 32-bit 64 bit: Vista Service Pack 2 64-bit Run the installer, and simply set it up as a normal program installation.  Do note that your computer will reboot during the installation, so make sure to save your work and close other programs before installing. To see what service pack your computer is running, click the Start orb, then right-click on the Computer button and select Properties. This will show what service pack and edition of Windows Vista your computer is running right at the top of the page. Conclusion Microsoft makes it easy to keep using your computer safely and securely even if you choose to keep using your older version of Windows.  By installing the latest service pack, you will make sure that your computer will be supported for years to come.  Windows 7 users, you don’t need to worry; no service has been released for it yet.  Stay tuned, and we’ll let you know when any new service packs are available. www.microsoft.com/EOS – End of Support Information from Microsoft Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Remove Optional and Probably Unnecessary Windows Vista ComponentsRequesting Hotfixes from Microsoft the Easy WayUnderstanding Windows Vista Aero Glass RequirementsAdd Network Support to Windows Live MovieMakerCustomize the Manufacturer Support Info in Windows 7 or Vista TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional OutSync will Sync Photos of your Friends on Facebook and Outlook Windows 7 Easter Theme YoWindoW, a real time weather screensaver Optimize your computer the Microsoft way Stormpulse provides slick, real time weather data Geek Parents – Did you try Parental Controls in Windows 7?

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