Developing a port monitor or how a unix programmer suffers from windows

  • 24.Nov.97 Read the sourcecode from the Windows DDK. Try to understand the code. Really easy to swallow because of the wonderful documentation. Here is a typical example of the Win95 DDK (hope thats not a violation of any copy rights) : 
    //------------------------------------------------
//
//------------------------------------------------

    And a sample from the Windows NT DDK (the comments are enclosed in the brackets) :

    ( )

  • 25.Nov.97 have to reboot my Windows 95 every 5 minutes :-(

  • 26.Nov.97 have to reinstall Windows 95
  • 27.Nov.97 Windows NT cleans my entire harddrive with all my operating systems [thanks god that i have a good backup].
  • 28.Nov.97 All data restored, but made a mistake with lilo. Want to fix this problem with my NT rescue disk. But NT crashed and removes my partition table. 8-( Starting backupprocedure again.
  • 01.Dec.97 Computer is up and running, starting to reboot Windows 95 every 5 minutes.
  • 02.Dec.97 have to reboot my machine every 5 minutes, but i can work. In the evening i got a skeleton monitor running on windows 95 :-) . Will see tomorrow how this skeleton works on NT.
  • 03.Dec.97 compiling my code on NT without problems, but code doesn't work.
    • Trying to search on the microsoft homepage. Seems that they have a new page without a link to msdn. Finaly found the link.
    • Tried to get some infos, but because of my last crash the cookie with my password information got lost.
    • Try to remember the password (a special function of this site). Does not work. Want to reenter my information (around 5 pages), but i got the information that a user is known with this e-mail and password . Finaly i got my access, but found nothing helpful about my topics. But found Servicepack 3 for Visual C++ with only 90 MB. Thanks god that we have a leased line. Getting this Servicepack is another story, because the only program which is capable of getting these files from the microsoft page is lynx ??? [don't ask me why]).
    • Started to develop on NT.
    • And now something completely different (Monty Phyton tm) : have to reboot my Windows NT every 5 minutes.8-(
  • 04 + 05.Dec : I am on holiday, so i don't have to reboot my machine.
  • 08 Dec.97: Back from holidays. Started to apply the patches for Visual C on Win 95 and NT. I am really surprised : After applying the patches my system is already up and running.

    I found a solution under NT, that i can restart the spooler. What a lucky day, my productivity increases between 100% - 300 %. Yes indeed windows NT has a higher productivity. The system is running now approximately between 10 and 15 minutes without a reboot.
    Find it helpful to have the NT Symbols for Service Pack 3, 22MB Download time 2 Hours ...
    Really impressive, since i start with this project i have downloaded approximately 100MB of servicepacks from the microsoft site ..

  • 09 Dec.97: It's going better and better, today i have to reboot only every 30 to 45 minutes. My skeleton port monitor started to work under NT.
  • 10-12. Dec.97 No development so i don't have to restart my computer.
  • 15. Dec.97: WHFC shows the first reactions on my port monitor not the expected ones, but now i know it can be done.
  • 16. Dec.97: First working Version !!!!
  • 24. Dec.97: People reported problems on Windows 95 which i can't reproduce. But my holidays begins today, so i don't do any further research.
  • 05. Jan.97: Back from holidays. Got some more problem reports on Windows 95. It looks like all people which had problems, uses IE4.0. So i decided to install IE4.0 (20MB more which i have to download from Microsoft for this problem). Hurra, IE4.0 can not be downloaded direct via ftp, so i have to use this MS-Download program. But after lunch, IE4.0 has arrived. So i can install it and what a wonder, my Win95 is still alive, but WHFC stops working. :-(
  • 06. Jan.97: After several reboots i found the problem. Installing IE 4.0 causes a change in the behavior of the printer manager.
  • 28.Oct.2000 : Got a Windows 2000 for testing WHFC and the portmonitor does not work anymore. Started to debug why the port monitor refuses to work. During debugging Windows 2000 stopped nearly working (only the Taskmanager runs, so i could gracefully shutdown windows every 15 minutes).
  • 29.Oct.2000 : After several reboots i found that the print spooler runs now with SYSTEM permissions and starts WHFC also with SYSTEM permissions via OLE.
  • 30.Oct.2000 : Searched for solutions (does not require to reboot), but found no.
  • 31.Oct.2000 : Does some tests without success but rebooted every 15 minutes.
  • 01.Sep.2000 : See 31.Oct.2000
  • 02.Sep.2000 : See 01.Sep.2000
  • 03.Sep.2000 : Seems senseless to change the user id of the portmonitor. So i tried to search an other solution (does not require to reboot)
  • 04.Sep.2000 : Started to play with pipes (does also not require to boot).
  • 05.Sep.2000 : Found finaly the solution : For Windows 2000 WHFC starts a new thread which listens on a pipe. The portmonitor itself does not call WHFC via OLE on Windows 2000, it uses now the pipe.
  • 06.Sep 2000 : Started to implement this,but since i had created a good userspace pipe test program i had to reboot only 2 times.
  • 07.Sep.2000 : Released a new version of WHFC and waiting for bug reports
Last updated: 03-Oct-2018 09:20