Category Archives: Windows

Clear all event logs on Windows using PowerShell

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I was bored with the vast amount of data in the eventlogs which were really not useful for me. So, in order to improve readability on my machine I decided to look for something to clear all of the eventlogs. Easy.

Since I always use the Administrative Events filter to view every warning and error I get a lot of junk (who cares for Kernel-Power warnings?)

Administrative Events

Since I didn’t feel like doing the following steps for each frigging event log there is on my machine. You would need to go to the following steps:

Step 1

Step 2

Now this is an excerpt  from the eventlogs I have on this machine:

Analytic
Application
DirectShowFilterGraph
DirectShowPluginControl
EndpointMapper
ForwardedEvents
HardwareEvents
Internet Explorer
Key Management Service
MF_MediaFoundationDeviceProxy
MediaFoundationDeviceProxy
MediaFoundationPerformance
MediaFoundationPipeline
MediaFoundationPlatform
Microsoft-IE/Diagnostic
Microsoft-IEDVTOOL/Diagnostic
Microsoft-IEFRAME/Diagnostic
Microsoft-IIS-Configuration/Administrative
Microsoft-IIS-Configuration/Analytic
Microsoft-IIS-Configuration/Debug
Microsoft-IIS-Configuration/Operational
Microsoft-PerfTrack-IEFRAME/Diagnostic
Microsoft-PerfTrack-MSHTML/Diagnostic
Microsoft-Windows-ADSI/Debug
Microsoft-Windows-API-Tracing/Operational
Microsoft-Windows-ATAPort/General
Microsoft-Windows-ATAPort/SATA-LPM
Microsoft-Windows-ActionQueue/Analytic
Microsoft-Windows-AltTab/Diagnostic
Microsoft-Windows-AppID/Operational
Microsoft-Windows-AppLocker/EXE and DLL
Microsoft-Windows-AppLocker/MSI and Script
Microsoft-Windows-Application Server-Applications/Admin
Microsoft-Windows-Application Server-Applications/Analytic
Microsoft-Windows-Application Server-Applications/Debug

And so on (for about 10 times as large). I’m not going to clear them by hand.

So let’s call Powershell to the rescue! (Play Thunderbirds theme song!)

First of all (and nothing to do with Powershell): wevtutil

We’re going to use this tool to display every available event source on this machine:

wevtutil el

The help states: 

el | enum-logs          List log names.

Good, that’s what we need. Next up, we pass every line of this list to a command using a pipe and the Powershell Foreach-Object cmdlet

wevtutil el | Foreach-Object { … commands go here … }

The commands are going to be

wevtutil cl “$_”

The help states: 

cl | clear-log          Clear a log.

And $_ is the current variable in the enumeration of Foreach-Object. I added the quotes since there are event sources with spaces and we need to have the full name in order to have wevtutil to be able to clear that log.

Now let’s add some diagnostics output to see which one we’re currently clearing:

wevtutil el | Foreach-Object {Write-Host "Clearing $_"; wevtutil cl "$_"}

Now just run it through Powershell, and bam, a clean event log.

Result

Cheers!

Windows Phone 7 TextBox, binding and ApplicationButton

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Consider a Windows Phone 7 application with a textbox and an ApplicationButton.

TextBox and ApplicationButton

UI:

  1. <Canvas x:Name="ContentGrid" Grid.Row="1" Height="545" Width="480">
  2.     <TextBlock Text="Enter text here" Canvas.Left="6" Canvas.Top="187" />
  3.     <TextBox x:Name="myTextBox" Text="{Binding Test, Mode=TwoWay}" Height="69" Width="480" Canvas.Left="0" Canvas.Top="209" />
  4. </Canvas>

Backend:

  1. namespace WindowsPhoneApplication1
  2. {
  3.     using System;
  4.     using System.ComponentModel;
  5.     using System.Windows.Controls;
  6.     using Microsoft.Phone.Controls;
  7.  
  8.     public partial class MainPage : PhoneApplicationPage, INotifyPropertyChanged
  9.     {
  10.         private string _test;
  11.         // Constructor
  12.         public MainPage()
  13.         {
  14.             this.InitializeComponent();
  15.  
  16.             this.DataContext = this;
  17.         }
  18.  
  19.         public string Test
  20.         {
  21.             get
  22.             {
  23.                 return this._test;
  24.             }
  25.             set
  26.             {
  27.                 if (value != this._test)
  28.                 {
  29.                     this._test = value;
  30.                     this.PropertyChanged(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs("Test"));
  31.                 }
  32.             }
  33.         }
  34.  
  35.         #region INotifyPropertyChanged Members
  36.  
  37.         public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged;
  38.  
  39.         #endregion
  40.  
  41.     }
  42. }

The textbox is bound to a property on the backend (two way binding) and when you click the bottom button the text is saved/send/encrypted/whatever.

Now the problem is that clicking the button doesn’t do a UI –> source binding update as it would do with a normal button.

Testing the app

I enter the text ‘test’ on the TextBlock and IMMIDIATLY click the ApplicationButton. I don’t do anything else. This is a common user practice, he changes something and clicks the save/send/whatsoever button.

This is the result:

Visual Studio 2010 Watch 1

Check the Watch 1. As you can see the value is still null. The value is not sent to the _test value. How do we solve this?

You can add the following line to the click event handler:

  1. this.myTextBox.GetBindingExpression(TextBox.TextProperty).UpdateSource();

So the result will look like this:

  1. private void AppbarButton1Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
  2. {
  3.     this.myTextBox.GetBindingExpression(TextBox.TextProperty).UpdateSource();
  4.  
  5.     // handle save/send/encrypt/whatever here
  6. }

There are 3 downsides I think:

  1. You need to name your TextBlock which (I think) unnecessarily clutters your scope with otherwise unused variables (that’s why we use bindings too!)
  2. Your UI and ViewModel (in my case) aren’t decoupled 100% anymore. In Windows Phone 7 this is no issue though, since WP7 has no ICommand and I have to couply my UI and ViewModel anyway :)
  3. You need to remember to write this line! Which can be quite cumbersome with a lot of application buttons.

And items in a ApplicationBar.MenuItems (ApplicationBarMenuItem) have the same problem. The UI doesn’t push the update to the ViewModel.

I hope this will be fixed in the final version, and I will post this to Microsoft Connect. If anybody has a better solution please feel free to share it.

Windows Phone 7, adding and displaying icons.

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Hi all,

I tried to display an icon in my Windows Phone 7 application:

<shell:ApplicationBarIconButton x:Name="appbar_button1" IconUri="/Images/appbar.feature.settings.rest.png" Text="Settings" />

By default, when you add an image to the solution folder it sets the build action as Resource, as shown below:

Build Action Resource

But when you run the application with the Build Action as Resource you will get a result looking like this:

Wrong icon

While I really meant an icon looking like this:

Gear

How do we fix it?

Set the Build Action to Content!

Build Action Content

And this is the result:

Result

Small update on enabling shares in Windows 7.

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Execute this line in the CMD as Administrator (start > type ‘cmd’ > hit control+shift+enter) and paste this line (rightmousebutton > paste).

reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\ /v LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy /t REG_DWORD /d 1

Be sure to DISABLE your Homegroup and to enable file sharing in the Network & Sharing Center

Format after BitLocker.

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So yesterday I reinstalled my laptop because some beta driver was acting up, no big deal. I had both of my partitions secured with Bitlocker (and a BIOS password set up) so that my laptop is secure.

After formatting I noticed that my C drive wasn’t encrypted anymore (which is obvious, it was formatted).

But my D drive looked like this:

locked

It was locked. Fortunately I printed my recovery key so I was able to unlock the drive.

Please print the keys, and keep them safe!

Java, stop unstalling unwanted stuff on my computer!

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Well not really my computer, but my girlfriend’s. It needed some updating (you know how people are, not updating & stuff).

Adobe Reader already sets 2 programs in startup. A speed launcher and another one which I am too lazy to identify. If your application is too slow then optimize it, don’t treat the symptoms.

Then our good slow friend Java. Always had their speed launcher (symptom treatment!!) in startup, but guess what also added a service.

naamloos

What the f*ck? I’m moving closer and closer to not install Java on new pcs, since it’s a burdon to manage and keep up to date!

MSDN downloading on Vista

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Let’s say you are one of the gifted persons to have MSDN access.

Let’s say you use Vista 64-bit (I don’t know if the problem occurs on 32-bit).

Let’s say you want to download something from MSDN with Microsoft File Transfer Manager.

And it does not work.

Well use this workaround:

First: download the File Transfer Manager from here.

Download and install the MSI. The default path is c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft File Transfer Manager”. Remember this.

Then use Firefox to go to the MSDN website, start a download, and it will prompt you to do something with the default.aspx. Well open that file with the File Transfer Manager. And it works!

Woei!