Extract ISO for Visual Studio 2008 ISO-13346 "UDF"

I downloaded Visual Studio 2008 professional RTM and tried to extract the file en_visual_studio_2008_professional_x86_x64wow_dvd_X14-26326.iso using 7-zip but the only file I got was README.TXT with the following content:
This disc contains a "UDF" file system and requires an operating system
that supports the ISO-13346 "UDF" file system specification.

What I then did that solved this was to run Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 and dragged the ISO file to the CD/DVD icon and then I could drag and drop all files from the virtual PC to the host computer.

Update. A friend send an email and recommended a couple of alternatives. I only tried the first one below.

Virtual CloneDrive is a freeware that virtually mounts the ISO to a drive and it worked great in Vista with the VS 2008 ISO. No 64-bit version yet though.

DAEMON Tools Lite is a freeware that supports both X86 and X64. Be aware that you might want to don't want to or want to uninstall DAEMON Tools Searchbar and Save Now that is included.

Right click trouble in Vista

Suddenly my Internet Explorer in Windows Vista started to act strange. I could not right click and get the shortcut menu showing and nothing happened when I clicked on the >> for example.

Suddenly IE7 crashed after I had clicked around for a while. Usually IE starts again and I waited a while. In the meantime I went over to Outlook and right clicked on an email and it didn't show the menu there either.

I found in the task manager that iexplorer.exe was still running so I killed the process and things started to act normally again. Not a permanent solution as I still don't know why it failed in the first place but I have not seen it again.

Windows Live OneCare 2.0 released

One thing I noticed during the beta was the performance enhancement.

Don't know what Windows Live OneCare is?

Here is what it includes:

Protection Plus, with its antivirus and antispyware scanners, managed, two-way firewall, and integrated anti-phishing technology, helps protect your computer from viruses, worms, Trojan horses, hackers, phishing, and other threats. It runs continuously in the background, but you can scan individual files and folders for viruses on demand simply by right-clicking them. You can even scan attachments you receive via Windows Live Messenger or MSN Messenger.

Performance Plus regularly defragments your hard disk, removes any unnecessary files that can clog your computer, and helps make sure important security updates from Microsoft are installed efficiently and on time.

Backup and Restore regularly copies your important files and settings to CD, DVD, external hard disk, network drive, or other data-storage device.

Instant Support provides online help anytime you need it, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

JTB FlexReport 4 released

JTB FlexReport is a reporting tool that can help you analyze the usage of your network licenses.

The major news in this release of JTB FlexReport are:

• FLEXnet license denial notifications. You can get automatic emails sent when license requests are denied. The information on the denials are also saved to the database so they are available for study.
• Support for applications like 12d Model from 12D Solutions.
• The latest JTB FlexReport Detailed Reports.mdb must be downloaded separately if you upgrade an existing installation or you can rename JTB FlexReport Detailed Reports.mdb before installing.
• Groups defined in the detailed report are now correctly saved to the JTBFlexReport.NET.mdb again. For help to migrate the groups contact us.
• For other fixes and news see the Revision History on the website.

Existing customers should contact us for a new license file before installing. The license file should be located in the installation folder.

Detect educational plot stamped drawings with SmartPurger

SmartPurger can be used to help you detect drawings that has been created or saved by an Educational (Student and Faculty) version of AutoCAD® or AutoCAD-based software.

Why would you like to find these? PRODUCED BY AN AUTODESK EDUCATIONAL PRODUCT will be added along all four edges of any plot of these drawings. If one or more drawings with this stamp is circulating among your non educational drawings you might end up with getting more and more drawings affected. This can happen if you attach an xref or insert a drawing as block. If the xref or block has the stamp the host drawing will get it too.

A dialog box "AutoCAD Alert" shows when opening a drawing like that.

It says: "Educational plot stamp detected. If you continue with this operation, the drawing will be plotted with the following banner: "PRODUCED BY AN AUTODESK EDUCATIONAL PRODUCT" Do you want to continue?"

Learn your users or yourself to not answer Yes to the above question unless they know about the consequences.

Here is how SmartPurger can help. It's a bit semi automatic. But it can help if you want to go through thousands of drawings.

SmartPurger automatically creates a log file named SmartPurgerClosedPopUps.log in Windows temp folder. If a dialog box shows up that SmartPurger closes, it will be listed in this log file like this:
2007-11-25 15:34:34;D:\test\Educational Plot Stamped.dwg;AutoCAD Alert

Notice "AutoCAD Alert". This indicates that it could be an educational plot stamp in that drawing. If you script through 1000 drawings and find 10 with Alert you can open them manually and check if they have the Educational plot stamp or if the Alert was about something else.

Make sure to check "Close Popups Automatically" in SmartPurger>Options>Settings.

In this case you don't want SmartPurger to do anything with the drawings so make sure to just save the drawings to a temp folder that you can empty afterwards. If you have older drawings it can be a good idea to set "Convert to" as showed below.

  

Here is a sample DWG with the Educational plot stamp that you can try with.

UPDATE: We now have a separate application EduFinder that quickly can identify all drawings with the educational plot stamp.

Now you can get Camtasia Studio 3.1.3 absolutely free

and if you want the latest and greatest Camtasia Studio 5.0 screen recording software you can upgrade with a great deal. It is time limited so grab your copy unless you already have it. Not suitable for Windows Vista though.

Download Camtasia Studio 3.1.3 and get the license key.

If you want to find what has been added between the versions 3.1.3 and 5.0 take a look at this comparison chart.

Via updatexp.

Now you can get SnagIt 7.2.5 absolutely free

and if you want the latest and greatest SnagIt 8.2 Screen Capture and Image Editor software you can upgrade with a great deal. It is time limited so grab your copy unless you already have it. Not sure if it's suitable for Windows Vista though.

Download SnagIt 7.2.5 and get the license key.

If you want to find what has been added between the versions 7.2 and 8.2 take a look at this comparison chart.

Via updatexp.

Optimize scanned PDF using Acrobat

A useful feature in Acrobat is to optimize scanned PDF's.

Recently I got a bunch of JPG files that I combined to a PDF and because they where so skewed the deskew option was really useful.

Available from Document>Optimize Scanned PDF.

 

Here is the result with the deskewed image to the right. Much better.

Autodesk Plant Customer Council

Just wanted to repost this comment on a previous post.

We're doing something similar in the Plant group, but we're using the Myfeedback portal to host it. To sign up for the Plant Customer Council, go to http://myfeedback.autodesk.com/ and use the keywords Plant Customer Council for the Beta Code when signing up.
Peter Quinn, Autodesk

Operating system that starts up in less than 1 second

Zebor Technology, a Swedish company makes this possible.

ZDOS is a 32-bit real time operating system for the X86-platform and was written entirely in assembly language for maximum performance.

Via PC FÖR ALLA

New PR Manager for Autodesk Northern Europe

Mikael Löwenhielm is the new PR Manager for Autodesk Northern Europe. He comes from PTC where he was Nordic marketing and PR Manager.

According to the press release in Swedish his first working week will be attending Autodesk University. Wonder what he will say about Autodesk PLM.

More in Swedish at It24.

AutoCAD 2008 startup errors

This Autodesk Knowledge Base document: Errors during program startup includes a lot of great tips how to find a solution to problems to start AutoCAD 2008 or AutoCAD LT 2008.

In addition to this I can mention that yesterday something happened with my AutoCAD Architectural 2008 and I could not start it no matter what I did. The solution was simple though. All I had to do was to restart the computer.

Windows Live Hotmail comments and bugs

The change the other day to from the old Hotmail to Windows Live Hotmail introduced some changes that where not only for the good.

Before it was possible to set the background color for a whole email. The background color extended for the whole width of the message. Now it's only the text that can have a background.

This is how it could be before.

But now it look like this.

Before animated gif's where animated when viewing a email message in Hotmail but now they are not animated.
A small thing is that the emoticons has changed slightly.

The emoticon to the left is the new one and to the right the old one. The old one is looking better on a black background as you see.
       

And as you can see there are two different gif's used.
http://graphics.hotmail.com/i.p.emsmile.gif is the old one.
http://gfx1.hotmail.com/mail/w2/emoticons/smile_regular.gif is the new one.

I also find wonder when Microsoft will stop using Trend Micro for safety check and scanning for viruses instead of their own Windows Live OneCare or Microsoft enterprise security product. The agreement was extended at Apr 10, 2006 and I'm not sure for how long that was.

Calculate surface area of a Mass Element in AutoCAD Architecture

I got an email with the question how to achieve this on a very complex Mass Element and here is one solution how it can be done.

To get the surface area of a Mass Element use ConvertTo3dSolids (or select the Mass Element, right click and select Convert To>3D Solid) to convert to a 3DSolid and then use the Area command with the Object option and select the 3D Solid.