No big deal because there is no point installing ORF on Windows Vista: the IIS SMTP component has been removed from IIS 7 of Vista (rant below). Yet even if you do not install ORF on Vista, you may try running the ORF Log Viewer on your brand new OS, but what you get is a program that eats 100% of the processor time and has to be shut down from Task Manager.
I’ve done some debugging and found that the ORF Log Viewer (and the ORF Reporting Tool) hangs on the HTML Help initialization:
HtmlHelp(0, nil, HH_INITIALIZE, dwCookie);
(see MSDN)
It is a Microsoft API that should just work, but it does not. Any ideas?
And now, the promised ranting (I love ranting! :). Why IIS SMTP had to be removed from IIS 7 on desktop Vistas? According to a Microsoft blog post , the whole point of shipping IIS 7 with Vista before Longhorn Server is released is to make life of developers easier. So why they actually make our life harder? As the blogger points out, developers typically use desktop Windows versions for development and testing. We do not run server operating systems on our desktop computers. Now if we decide to upgrade to Vista for developer desktop, we will have to install Windows 2000/2003 Server or XP into a virtualization solution, testing code in the virtual machines. That is big PITA, so Microsoft, I am not happy for your decision.
Microsoft crippled the HTML Help in Vista since it was such a huge vector for infections.
From Pegasus Mail’s developer David Harris:
“For reasons not adequately explained, Windows Vista does not include a functional help system (WinHelp has been removed, and HTMLHelp has been crippled). This means that you will not be able to use the Pegasus Mail help system unless you download WinHelp from the official Microsoft site (we are forbidden to distribute or make it available ourselves). We are working on developing our own help system to work around this problem. “
Jeff,
I wasn’t aware of the HTML Help part, but also did not find any info on this particular issue. Although HH_INITIALIZE is more or less optional (there is a workaround), I wonder why we are the only company having this problem… Really weird. I think it’s a good time to call MS PSS :)
Pingback: Vamsoft Insider » ORF No Longer Hangs on Windows Vista