Some Problems Running Windows CardSpace
19. October 2007 – 17:50 byI like OpenID a lot but Windows CardSpace has always been at the back of my mind, though I have never got around to actually testing it. Yesterday MyOpenID announced support for Infocards so that seemed like a good point to start exploring it. However I failed miserably.
Version 3 of Microsoft’s .NET Framework is running on my Windows XP Home SP2 machine and actually that should do the trick. I even had the CardSpace symbol in my control panel. Though when double clicking it Windows reported that a class was missing. Then I tried un-installing .NET Framework versions two and three but failed again; eventually I removed them manually, ran Windows Install Clean Up and then installed version three again. Now Windows told me that the CardSpace service didn’t run. I tried starting it but it didn’t find the path.
Anyone know how to sort things out? I don’t want to run a complete Windows installation, though.
3 Responses to “Some Problems Running Windows CardSpace”
Hi Carsten:
First off I recommend that anyone working with CardSpace use the latest Beta 2 release. This release, though marked beta, fixes a number of critical stability issues and it invokes a lot faster (after the first time it is used). Thus, it is better for demos and testing. There are some minor UI tweaks but it is mostly the same.
If you open CardSpace and click “Help” you should see the latest release version for Beta 2 is “3.0.4506.590.”
CardSpace still ships as part of “Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 2,” which you can download from here:
Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 2
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=d2f74873-c796-4e60-91c8-f0ef809b09ee&displaylang=en
See if that helps in any way.
Also when you get a chance you should try out the PiP’s Cardspace implementation as we’re a bit different from MyOpenID.
The way ours works is that we do not accept a self issued card which requires you to bind it to your account. Instead we issue two cards: 1) which is an account managed card which you download from the My Account setting in the PiP. Downloading this card automatically binds it to your account so you don’t have to go through that process. The second 2) card we issue is an Identity Managed card. This card is linked to your OpenID identity(s) you have created in your PiP account. This card you would use to login to other CS relying parties. In theory the way this would work is if MyOpenID acted as a relying party and accepted our managed identity card you could login to myopenid using one of our issued managed cards.
Good luck.
Gary.
By Gary Krall on Oct 19, 2007
Thanks a lot for the info, Gary. However installing the beta release didn’t work either. It seems like I have to completely re-install XP (and I really don’t want to do that) since .NET Framework 3 doesn’t work either anymore. I tried deleting registry entries but still no luck.
By Carsten Pötter on Oct 20, 2007