Mykre

For a really good example of a GUI System in Managed code you should look at http://www.c-unit.com, on the site Chad has a tutorial for creating a GUI System simular to the one used in the sample framework that is supplied in the SDK.

When you load the sample apps and expand the referances section what icons are around the Microsoft.DirectX assemblies. I had some problems loading some samples a while back as they referanced the wrong version of an assembly that I had loaded. I would re link the referances, by removing the links and Re adding the referances...

The Visual Studio Express Editions have been released, Inner Realm - News and Announcements

What version of 3ds do you use... The panda exporter does not work fully with version 7, if you are using 6 or below it works like a charm. I also have a small list of them on my site, See link in sig.

If you do want to have the service talk to the desktop, I would look into remoting as this will allow you to create 2 apps. The first would be the windows service, and the second would be a management App. This management app could be installed on an other computer so that they can manage the service. Also if remoting is not the way you could always use raw sockets to do the talking between apps.

It does support it, but there are no user samples for VB.Net, I would go back to pre october release to get the samples for VB.Net and convert them for the changes to the latest SDK..

On another note if you wish to setup an application that opens or configures the firewall, you might want to have a look at the documentation on MS about rolling out firewall settings. This is mainly designed for administrators to mass upgrade there network, but you might be able to create a install addin that would configure the opening

With Almost all MS Products they are intergrated. When you install MSn on Windows XP with the firewall active the install package sets up the connection. I know that if you setup a windows xp machine and have multiple applications installed... Then install SP2 most of those applications will not work (There is a list on MS on the applications that are afected, This is also one of the big complaints of SP2), You then have to add the ports and connections to the firewall system.

In most modern networks you need to forward the ports to keep you machines secure. To allowing so that you do not have to forward the ports would mean that you are allowing the machine to the wide world. Some systems will allow you to use a proxy server to formard the network traffic. Have a look at this example http://www.mentalis.org/soft/projects/proxy/

I add a possible solution to this problem to the MSDE Question Sticky Thread..

You are also going to have to take into account the Networking System... You need to make sure that the hosting service allows the SQL Server ports to go out, and then you need to make sure that your DB Hosting machine allows the SQL Server ports in and out... Ports 1433 (TCP and UDP) on a standadr install, note that this can be changed on the sql server. Also I some installs of MSDE the networking systems are turned off and only allow local Systems to connect to it.

Just to get some facts right... You have a windows service that runs in the background, and have a notify icon assigned to it... Is the notify icon compiled into the service, or is it another application that talks to the service. Remember that windows services do not interact well with forms or the desktop in a UI sence. To use a notify icon you need to have two programs. One is the service and the other is the moneitoring app. Then you need to work out a way for them to talk together (I would recomend using remoting). Then you would process events on the two apps that would publish to the other through the remoting system. This is how the service controller for SQL and MSDE Work. Jus

First you will need to find the other machines on the network, you will more then likly have to use the API to do this. Then you should be able to connect to the file system by using UNC Paths to connect. Then all you have to do is use the general filesystem commands to transfer the files.

You can use the .NET role-based security related classes to see if the current logged in user is in the administrators role. Try this code: 'Place the following Imports statements at the top of the module: Imports System.AppDomain Imports System.Threading Imports System.Security Dim fIsAdministrator As Boolean Dim wp As Principal.WindowsPrincipal CurrentDomain.SetPrincipalPolicy(Principal.PrincipalPolicy.WindowsPrincipal) wp = CType(Thread.CurrentPrincipal, Principal.WindowsPrincipal) fIsAdministrator = wp.IsInRole("BUILTIN\administrators") MsgBox(fIsAdministrator) See http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpguide/htm l/cpconcreatingwindowsidentitywindowsprincipalobjects.asp (and related surrounding "Securing Applications" topics) for more information.