Microsoft.net

[G-CPTN]

My Vista computer has downloaded and installed Microsoft.net and continues to demand permission to run dll files.
Is this spyware that is collecting information from my activities (that will be sent back to Microsoft)?
Does Microsoft.net serve any useful purpose to the average user (or is it merely a tool for software developers)?
Will I be able to uninstall Microsoft.net (or will Vista fall over)?

[Gertrude the Wombat]

"Microsoft.net" was a marketing name for a set of concepts, now fallen into disuse.

I think you might be referring to the .net runtime systems, which are used by all sorts of things, including bits of the operating system. Yes it's possible that malware could be written in a .net language and require the CLR, but it's not the most obvious way to choose to do it!

Removing the .net runtimes from your machine, if you can manage to achieve this, will likely cripple all sorts of things fairly seriously.

[Bushfiva]

G-CPTN, it's not spyware, and as GTW says, you should leave it be.

[G-CPTN]

Many thanks - I'll let it be . . .

[Jofm5]

Gertrude the wombat:

"Microsoft.net" was a marketing name for a set of concepts, now fallen into disuse.

The microsoft.net framework is very much alive and is still a core part of Windows 7.

The .net framework comes in many different flavours e.g.: -

Framework 1.1
Framework 2.0
Framework 3.0
Framework 3.5

Windows vista itself uses Framework 3.5 so other versions could be uninstalled from the Add/Remove programs without upsetting the operating system itself.

However any applications that require one of the previous frameworks you are uninstalling would then fail to operate as they require that framework to run.

Can you provide some examples of DLL names that are requesting administrative access as this could help in identifying what the problem is. By default the framework itself is not loaded until an application that requires the framework is loaded. The framework itself should not be asking for administrative access unless an application is requesting the framework to be doing something outside of the security zone the application is running in.

It may be worth going into task manager as soon as your machine has booted (Before starting anything)to check which processes are running - you may have a rogue bit of software such as spyware installed etc.

Cheers

Jof

[Shunter]

There's no .**** on my XP machine and it runs just fine.

.net is a runtime environment which supports software written by programmers who generally have no idea how to program.

I interviewed a guy last week who was, to be fair, a pretty accomplished .net programmer. I asked him to explain the concept of buffer and stack overflows on the whiteboard. He didn't have the faintest idea what I was talking about. Not the kind of people whose software I want on my PC.

[Gertrude the Wombat]

I interviewed a guy last week who was, to be fair, a pretty accomplished .net programmer. I asked him to explain the concept of buffer and stack overflows on the whiteboard. He didn't have the faintest idea what I was talking about. Not the kind of people whose software I want on my PC.

Decades ago I learned not to hire someone who had never programmed assembler, even if I only wanted them to write Visual Basic. Some concept of what on earth a computer actually is turns out to be rather useful, at any level!

[Jofm5]

OK I will rise to it...

Decades ago I learned not to hire someone who had never programmed assembler, even if I only wanted them to write Visual Basic. Some concept of what on earth a computer actually is turns out to be rather useful, at any level!

Wow that would have been tough to get to work for you. Would love to know what your writing that requires specifically assembly knowledge.

.net is a runtime environment which supports software written by programmers who generally have no idea how to program.

Which is the general idea of it, with the OS environments changing so quickly one of the points of the .net framework is to protect the developer from those changes (whilst also protecting them from themselves).

There is alot more to the CLR than just noddy programmers using it for winforms or netforms development - if you look at say the CLR integration into SQL Server you will find a secure platform for extensibility that will not bring down (easily) your server platform. Very much more dangerous in the old ODS way of doing things.

Whilst I can see merits in what you have both said - off the cuff comments like that devalue what serious coders can and do complete with the technology and how good they are to leverage the most out of the platform(s).

The lack of being able to manage your memory properly yourself is a big hindrance, but in terms of having a stable and forgiving platform I dont think it can be rivalled at the moment maybe not even with Java.

Assembly is all well and good but when your processor changes you need to recode to take advantages of those changes to their full extent. You also have the problem with 2GL languages as such that debugging is a very time consuming and costly excercise - memory leaks are common and a nightmare to debug.

Move on to a 3gl such as C++ and it becomes slightly easier but the problems still persist - now if the world of software development was full of purists it would be a mixture of assembly and C++ but in todays environment it is too slow and too costly.

So rather than slate .net and programmers of it - lets stick to the thread and talk about this problem rather than nostalgic views on how programming was sooo much better in the day when it was a fine art mastered by a select few.

And to answer any doubts I am a .net programmer at the moment, but I am also proficient in C++, x86 and 680x0 assembly.

Regards,


Jof
p.s. saying it was decades ago you learned not to trust non assembly programmers means little - "decades" ago (as in 25 years +) there was almost no option but assembly - mr gates was just about to go into his baptism of fire.

[Gertrude the Wombat]

Would love to know what your writing that requires specifically assembly knowledge.

Just a matter of having at least some remote clue as to what a computer actually is - y'know, it's a thingy that fetches an instruction, resolves addresses, manuipulates multipexors, that sort of stuff - I found that having had a few lectures and an exercise on assembler at college was a reasonable proxy (I only insisted on educational exposure to assembler, not on having written it for a living).

Performance is a blindingly obvious example - one line of VB (or any other modern high level language) can take thousands or millions of times as long to execute as another similar looking line, and someone who has not the remotest idea what might be going on under the hood is simply not going to understand this and design and code accordingly.

Of course a C++ (non-managed) programmer is going to come across real assembler in real life quite often, being every time that stepping through the source using the debugger doesn't find the problem and it's necessary to step through at assembler level. I still wouldn't, of course, require anyone to have written x86 assembler for real! - it's much too horrible. (Personally the last time I wrote thousands of lines of assembler was for the 68000.)

[green granite]

(Personally the last time I wrote thousands of lines of assembler was for the 68000.)

Weren't you the lucky one. When I first started in computer servicing it was in the (just) pre micro days, the system was built using ttl logic and some early examples of logic arrays for 1/2 adders etc. Nobody ever got round to writing an assembler for it so it was programmed in m/c code, luckily it was dedicated to 2 tasks only.
Then we graduated to a Texas instruments 990 mini computer and life got much easier.

[Shunter]

Jof - you're reading too much into my comment. The job isn't a coding role, and perhaps I'm being too general.

It does however demand a "master of all trades" skillset. All the technology is first-of-type, from scores of different suppliers who code in everything you can imagine. Narrow skill sets just don't cut it. Most of the guys are over 40 and have a detailed insight of how computers work, necessary to take the holistic view the role requires; people who were on the scene well before MS showed up and dumbed everything down.

If you turned to the guys in my team who are red hot .net coders and said, "why do you use .net?", most of them answer, "It's quick and dirty for general purposes and pays the mortgage. For specialist jobs, use specialist tools".

.Net has it's place, just not where I work. "Raiders of the lost ark"-style hangars stuffed full of Sparc boxes is closer to the mark.