Posts filed under 'windows'
If you’re here, you are probably getting an error like this during a gem install on a windows box.
cl -c -nologo -O1 -MD -Zi -DNDEBUG -DWIN32 -D_CONSOLE -DNO_STRICT -DHAV
E_DES_FCRYPT -DPERL_IMPLICIT_CONTEXT -DPERL_IMPLICIT_SYS -DPERL_MSVCRT_READFIX -
O1 -MD -Zi -DNDEBUG -DVERSION=\”6.4\” -DXS_VERSION=\”6.4\” -IC:\Perl\lib\CO
RE BitVector.c
‘cl’ is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
NMAKE : U1077:
Stop.
The fix is easy if you have visual studio or the .NET SDK installed.
If you don’t then either go download Visual Studio Express or the .NET SDK (anyone out of 1.1, 2.0 or 3.5 should do)
Now, do a search on your local machine for ‘cl.exe’
I use the phenomenal windows desktop search engine locate32), here were the results I got.
Now all I had to do was use the nifty windows Path Editor “Path Ed” to add one of those paths to the system path variable
and that error goes away.
Only to be replaced by an even more cryptic one in my case
(I was trying to install passenger … I know I can’t, but I thought I’d try)
August 18th, 2008
I ran into a “bad system call” error while trying to run Apache2 on cygwin.
I had installed Apache 1.3 and Apache 2 using cyg-apt, but when I went to start the Apache 2 server, I kept getting this error.
Of course, I set off to fix this and after googling for a while, I found out that to fix the “bad system call” error you have to set the CYGWIN environment variable to ’server’.
The problem is, no one actually tells you one of two things
- How to do it
- That you have to have cygserver installed and running before hand.
First of all, set the CYGWIN environment variable.
Start by going to the root of your cygwin install and open cygwin.bat
Now insert this line in it
set CYGWIN=server
save the file and restart your cygwin shell (more information on setting the CYGWIN environment variable)
Now type cygserver-config and hit enter
For me, that was enough (as you can see from the image above), but in case you need more help installing cygserver, here’s a link
After that, you just need to start the cygserver service like so
and now the command
httpd2 -k start
should work
May 8th, 2008
March 25th, 2008
This is very straight forward, but for those who think it might be complicated. Here is all it entails.
- you should see a screen like this pop up and shortly after Safari should be running with the new webkit engine.
I think you might require Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 to make this work …
It doesn’t seem to make sense for that to be the case, but do post a comment if you get this to run without having Visual Studio installed.
March 17th, 2008
I am a huge fan of Safari and Webkit … what it lacks in cool features, it more than makes up for in blazing fast speed and javascript performance.
When the Microsoft released a beta for IE8, I was prompted to run the Acid3 test on the browsers I had on my system.
Here are the results I got on my windows box, testing all the installed browsers against Acid 3
[I got the Safari seed off the Apple Developer Connection]
Safari (seed 31A15) ……………………………… 76
Opera 9.50 build 9613 ………………………… 65
Opera 9.50 build 9815 ………………………… 60
Firefox 3 beta 3 ………………………………….. 47
IE 7 …………………………………………………….. 12
I posted this on an Apple Discussion board and was told by a member to test the latest nightly (30881) … which I did.
The result?
March 7th, 2008
Segoe UI.
How do I know this and why am I posting it? Read on …
A long time ago, I installed about 833 fonts on my system. But over the years, I came to realize that a lot of the fonts were crap, looked exactly alike or were never going to be used.
So I grabbed the excellent font management software, The Font thing, and cleaned up shop. Whittling down my font count down to 300+.
Tired (it took an hour and a half), I went to use my email program (Windows Live Mail) . That was when I realized the fonts were bolded … everywhere. I knew instantly that I had deleted the font that it was using for its UI.
Windows Live Mail was trying to compensate by using the only version of the font it could find, which was the Bolded version. If I had deleted all of the font (bold, italic etc), it would probably have defaulted to an entirely different font … and given me a painful headache.
I thought for a couple of days about how I would find the font, without going through all my installed font faces to find one that had a bold version, but no normal version.
Eventually realizing that the font that Live Mail uses, isn’t a standard system font … I figured that if I sorted the Fonts in the C:\Windows\Fonts folder by “Date Modified” … the font I was looking for would be at the top of the list.
I did the sort … and sitting right there was a Segoe UI Bold … with no normal version. (Usually there is an italic, bold and bold italic version of a font).
I moseyed on down to my trash can, found the corresponding Segoe UI fonts … restored them and all was well with the universe 
But I made this post, just in case someone … somewhere ever has the same problem …
Segoe UI … that’s your answer!
March 6th, 2008
Microsoft is definitely trying hard to keep pace with Firefox, Opera and Safari.
It has released a beta for IE 8
March 5th, 2008
On windows xp on bootcamp, the delete key actually does what the backspace key should do.
To get it to act like it should, just hit hold down [fn] then delete to your heart’s desire.
February 6th, 2008
I’m being unfair here but I saw this today on “Microsoft’s Channel 9 website” and I thought it was pretty funny.
But then, I’m easily amused :]
PS: I actually first saw it years ago, but now I have a blog
February 4th, 2008
I finally made the jump from mysql 4 the other day, to take advantage of mysql’s new “INSERT … ON DUPLICATE UPDATE” command (which I think is spectacular by the way).
I didn’t want to actually upgrade from mysql4 to mysql5, just run the two mysqls side by side … so I looked around for a bit and figured out that all you need to do is get both servers running on different ports. The trick is to remember to reference localhost:port (eg: “localhost:3307″) instead of just “localhost” whenever you connect to it, in php, for example. Below are screenshots of the things you need to watch out for when doing this on a windows machine.
The first part of the install is pretty straight forward, just make sure to install it into a different folder than your current mysql install.
At this screen be sure to tick the “Configure the MySQL Server now” box
At this screen pick “detailed configuration” and continue on …
At this screen be sure to change the port number.
From the dropdown pick a service name that won’t conflict with the name of the service for the current MySQL install.
After that is all done, we want to try and connect to our brand new server. So fire up MySQL Administrator or MySQL query browser and create a new connection, like so … (Yes. I know running as root is bad for you … thanks).
Once you’re done … connect to MySql Query browser and you should go to this screen! The nice thing about this is that you can probably even run mysql 4, 4.1 and 5 all together.
February 4th, 2008
Netbeans has become my IDE of choice for Ruby on Rails, and boy, is it an excellent choice.
However, I was opening a project I was working on when this prompt came up.
How does the question … “Do you really want to open it?” have only one option for a response?
Clearly, the right set of options should be
- open it/don’t open it
- skip file/open it (I prefer this because it tells the user that the process will not terminate)
- no/yes (not as good as the others)
Don’t make me think Netbeans team … a tiny spot on an otherwise fantastic product.
December 30th, 2007
Just a quick note to help folks who want to get rid of the annoying restart prompt that keeps popping up after an automatic update has installed.
- Press the windows button and R (windows button + R) for the run prompt
- If you’ve done this before the command will be pre-filled … if it isn’t then type in
- net stop “automatic updates” <——— note the quotes?
Remember … you really should restart your computer after an update has installed. So make sure you do that eventually.
PS: Starting certain applications will cause the automatic update service to start running again and the nag will come back. Just Rinse and repeat
December 19th, 2007
This is a neat little feature in the new Windows Live Mail.
For those who don’t know, Windows live mail is the Microsoft’s email replacement for Outlook Express 6.
I love this feature so much because now, my email client won’t corrupt my contacts with a ton of useless entries (if you use craigslist a lot you’ll know what I mean).
Its exellent logic, because if I exchange emails with a person a couple of times, then its a pretty good bet that I want that person in my contact list but am too lazy to do it manually. Now Live Mail does it automagically, so you don’t have to … thats called an “intelligent default”. Makes for excellent application design because it “doesn’t make me think”
What would be even better would be the ability to set the threshold number manually.
December 19th, 2007
Safari for Windows (3.0.4) became my current favorite browser by (to my trained eye) slaughtering Opera in Javascript performance.
Hopefully that changes with Opera 9.25. Of late though, I’ve been having trouble with it. Safari initially broke on my Windows Laptop a few weeks ago, popping up a debugger prompt and closing immediately if I cancelled out of it.It kept running on my main workstation, however … that is until this evening, now its doing the same on my desktop.
I realize how poorly supported this browser is, because there is no place to file a bug report except from in the browser itself. Shouldn’t there be an active bug database or something for Safari on windows?
If anyone knows how to fix this please let me know … I want my super fast javascript back!
[Click on Images to see bigger versions]
December 19th, 2007
Trust microsoft to make me look stupid on the rare day that I wade in to defend them in this unfair pile-on (5 lame exuses from people still using hotmail for email).
Hotmail is inaccessible today … and I’m ripping my hair out.
The url says something about being unable to access my user data file?!?!
sigh … I have a gmail account too, BUT I can’t remember the last time they had an outage.
December 18th, 2007
Previous Posts
