Installing Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools on XP

I have an old development machine at home that still runs XP. Shoot me. The damn thing works fine and I’m not about to drop the money to upgrade the OS and hardware. I do from time to time like to use it for things it’s not designed for. I recently got an invitation to update my Windows Phone to the latest release of Mango. Well after reading the instructions I noticed I had to install the Windows Phone SDK 7.1, requirements are Vista or Windows 7. Problem.

Solution I found for this was the following:

1. Download the Windows Phone Developer Tools RTW from Microsoft Download Center
2. Extract the downloaded package by running vm_web.exe /x
3. Go to the folder of the extracted package & open the file baseline.dat in any text editor
4. Look for the ‘gencomp7788’ section and change this two entries from 1 to 0:
* InstallOnLHS=0
* InstallOnWinXP=0
5. Save the file baseline.dat
6. Run setup.exe /web

Thanks to Red Frogfish for this information. Hope this helps others.

Blazing ping times with GPRS (AT&T and Telit GM862)

I have been testing some web snippets with the Telit GM862 module lately, it’s incorporated into a project that I am working on for a client and while ironing out some connectivity issues and yadda-yadda blah blah blah, whatever Joe Rogan. Anyway I just wanted to share some blazing ping times I was getting with the module; ever wonder why your browser seems a bit sluggish to get moving on your phone?

Yes. I still use the Bliss wallpaper and XP.

Seared i7 anyone?

So we tracked down the problem to the computer that apparently had a mind of its’ own, shutting down at random times throughout the day. While the obvious answer anyone would guess is overheating, supposedly the i7 should scale down it’s speed if heat becomes an issue it cannot overcome so this was thrown out of the window. But what we didn’t know was that the i7 cannot scale itself down when it doesn’t even have a heat sink touching it to help keep it cool.

Hide your wife, hide your kids and go check to make sure your heat sink is properly attached before burning (<— like that pun?) through some 3D renders.

i7 showing some skin, errrr brown skin.