Tag: win7

Apple Magic Mouse Sleeping on Win7

My bluetooth Magic Mouse kept falling asleep. Here’s how to keep it away.

My Apple Magic Mouse was “falling asleep” on me in Windows 7.  Found this post that told how to resolve it.

1. Click on the “Bluetooth Devices” blue icon in the system tray (you’ll probably need to click that little UP arrow first) and choose “Open Settings” from the menu.
2. Under the “Hardware” tab of the resulting dialog, select the “Apple Built-in Bluetooth” device and click the “Properties” button on the lower right.
3. Under the “General” tab in the resulting dialog, click the “Change Settings” button on the lower left (it has a shield icon on it)
4. Under the “Power Management” tab in the resulting dialog untick the “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power” checkbox.
5. Press OK, OK and OK.

But for me, the Hardware tab was located under “Dell Wireless 573 Bluetooth Module with AMP.”

Reactive Framework conflict (SOLVED)

The type ‘System.IObservable exists in both ‘c:\Program Files (x86)\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\.NETFramework\v4.0\mscorlib.dll’ and ‘c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Reactive Extensions\Redist\DesktopV2\System.Observable.dll’ (SOLVED)

During an upgrade of a C# WPF application that was using Reactive Extensions, I ran into this compile error:

The type ‘System.IObservable exists in both ‘c:\Program Files (x86)\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\.NETFramework\v4.0\mscorlib.dll’ and ‘c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Reactive Extensions\Redist\DesktopV2\System.Observable.dll’

This is roughly the same kind of Defined in Multiple Assemblies problem as I faced before. (Solution provided.)

In this case, the System.Observable.dll was pinned to the 3.5 release of the Reactive Extensions.

The solution was to:

  1. Download the .NET 4.0 version of Reactive Extensions (Rx_Net4.msi).
  2. Install it.
  3. Remove System.Observable from the project.
  4. Re-add the System.Observable to the project, being super careful to select the latest version

Defined in Multiple Assemblies

The predefined type ‘System.Func’ is defined in multiple assemblies in the global alias … mscorlib.dll and System.Core.dll. SOLVED!

Today I migrated a C#/WPF project in Visual Studio 2010 from .NET 3.5 SP1 to .NET 4.0. Immediately the compile failed issuing this set of errors:

  • The predefined type ‘System.Func’ is defined in multiple assemblies in the global alias; using definition from ‘c:\Program Files (x86)\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\.NETFramework\v4.0\mscorlib.dll’
  • The predefined type ‘System.Func’ is defined in multiple assemblies in the global alias; using definition from ‘c:\Program Files (x86)\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\.NETFramework\v4.0\System.Core.dll’

To resolve this error involved understanding a little bit more about C#, .NET, and the Common Language Runtime (CLR).

According to C# 4.0 In A Nutshell from O’Reilly Press, on page 181 it says:

Some of the .NET types are used directly by the CLR and are essential for the managed hosting environment. These types reside in an assembly called mscorlib.dll and include C#’s built in types, ….

At a level above this are additional types that “flesh out” the CLR-functionality, …. These reside in System.dll, System.Xml.dll, and System.Core.dll, and together with mscorlib the provide a rich programming environment….

So mscorlib and System.Core are both needed. This begs the question, why is Func declared in both and thus causing a conflict? Or is it?

Further on in C# 4.0 In A Nutshell from O’Reilly Press, on page 183 in a general note it says:

A notable exception is the following types, which Framework 4.0 have moved from System.Core to mscorlib.dll:

  • The Action and Func delegates
  • …

This suggests a case exists where mscorlib is from our current .NET (the later one has Func), and System.Core is coming from the old one (which is where Func lives for that version).

How is this possible? It’s our projects fault.

This question on StackOverflow provides some insight; check out Simon‘s answer.

  1. Right-click the project and select Unload Project
  2. Right-click the project again and select Edit Project
  3. Scroll down in the XML to find the ItemGroup element; it’ll have Reference elements insider of it.
  4. Locate the Reference element that has Include=”System.Core” as an attribute.
  5. If it has other qualifiers, remove them. If it has a TargetFrameworkVersion subelement remove it.
  6. Save the XML.
  7. Right-click the project and reload it; try a build now.

In my case, I had an entry that looked like this:

<ItemGroup>
  <Reference Include=”System.Core”>
    <TargetFrameworkVersion>3.5</TargetFrameworkVersion>
  </Reference>
</ItemGroup>

Removing the TargetFrameworkVersion, shown in red above, un-pinned the dll from the older .NET framework and things worked just fine.

Error 0x80070057 (SOLVED)

Copy File

An unexpected error is keeping you from copying the file. If you continue to receive this error, you can use the error code to search for help with this problem.

Error 0x80070057: The parameter is incorrect.

SOLVED!

Went to copy a directory on Windows 7 from one drive to another, something that I had done quite frequently, even earlier that day.

However, this time, and nothing had changed substantially with the source files, I got an Error 0x80070057 message stating “The parameter is incorrect.” At that point the copy dialog from my simple drag and drop would allow me to retry (useless) or abort mid-copy.

The error message was unusually cryptic and less that helpful:

Copy File

An unexpected error is keeping you from copying the file. If you continue to receive this error, you can use the error code to search for help with this problem.

Error 0x80070057: The parameter is incorrect.

The disk was not full and a check disk revealed no errors.

THE SOLUTION
The destination directory name that I was copying into was pretty long, I basically had used a descriptive prefix, a date stamp of YYMMDDHHMMSS, by a space dash space, and a short descriptive comment. All in all it was about ~55 characters in length.

The directory I was copying from was a fairly deep structure.

That made me wonder if the fully qualified name of some directory path wasn’t exceeding some limit. On Windows, it appears to be 256 characters. On a Mac it appears to be 1023 characters.

Tricks aside, I was limited to the file system limits.

So, on the same disk, with the same files, immediately after yet-another-failure to copy, I renamed the destination folder to something considerably shorter and tried again.

Quick experimentation showed that was indeed the problem: the resulting path name formed during the copy was too long.

Solution: shorten the destination folder name and/or tighten up the path.

WPF Responsiveness Problem

Ran into an interesting problem where a WPF application was acting really, really, really slow. So slow that moving the application window was jumpy. Selecting items in a grid would take several seconds. Scrolling a list box of simple items would grind the CPUs for a while. And even typing in a regular text box was so delayed that I could type a word, sit back, and every few seconds a character would appear.

The problem turned out to be with the input stack at the operating system. Seems that the Pen / Tablet Driver was bringing the system to its knees, but only affecting WPF applications.

Disabling the driver and restarting the WPF application instantly showed colossal speed improvements for response time; the application responded near instantly. Re-enabling the driver while the application was running reverted the system to the broken state, although turning the driver back off did not bring the WPF application out of it’s slow like crawl. Restarting the WPF application resolved the problem, but the driver had to be disabled.

(Test conducted with WPF 3.5 SP 1 and Windows 7.)