Chris May

If you are ever in a situation when you want to install the Windows Home Server connector software, but don't have the CD, you can always get it through the browser.

Just browse to:

https://SERVERNAME:56000

It's important that you do the https.

This page will give you the ability to download the right version of the connector software, as well as some tools for diagnosing issues with WHS.

For the last couple weeks I've been unable to install SP1 for Windows 7 x64.  From time to time windows update tries to install it, and it always fails with:

ERROR_NOT_FOUND 0x80070490

There are a ton of people online trying to figure out this problem, with a wide range of suggestions and solutions, and quite often people resorting to reinstalling windows.

One users post sent me down a path that allowed me to resolve the problem, but it wasn't completely clear from his post that what I was doing was working, so I wanted to elaborate on what I did and how I fixed the issue.

First, I did the following without any change:

• Run chkdsk
• Run sfs /scannow
• Run the System Update Readiness Tool
  

The post by Ben-IS was the one that got me going in the right direction:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itproinstall/thread/bfb3e5b5-a3bd-4124-b4d6-7fb437ac7b74

The log flies that I frequently checked (and cleared out) were:

C:\Windows\Logs\CBS\CBS.log (filled with stuff when you run the service pack install)

C:\Windows\Logs\CBS\CheckSUR.log  (filled when you run the System Update Readiness Tool)

C:\Windows\inf\setupapi.app.log (this one was most important)


When I checked setupapi.app.log I and searched for "failed to" it would find a line like this:

!!!  sto: Failed to find driver update 'C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\amd64_usbport.inf_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16788_none_19ba59901d3be89e\usbport.inf' in Driver Store. Error = 0x00000490
<<<  Section end 2011/12/17 20:38:02.355
<<<  [Exit status: FAILURE(0x00000490)]

So, given that line, I was then able to register the driver using the command:

pnputil -a C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\amd64_usbport.inf_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16788_none_19ba59901d3be89e\usbport.inf

So after doing that, I go back and run the SP install again, and guess what, it fails in exactly the same place with the same error.  Crap.

I had copied the setupapi.app.log out of it's folder so that a brand new one was created, so I went back and looked for the same "failed to" phrase and quickly found:

!!!  sto: Failed to find driver update 'C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\amd64_usb.inf_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.20934_none_27ac0e3841194697\usb.inf' in Driver Store. Error = 0x00000490
<<<  Section end 2011/12/17 21:42:08.609
<<<  [Exit status: FAILURE(0x00000490)]


But, if you look very closely, you'll see that this is NOT the same error.  It's a different error.  The first path ended in "89e\usbport.inf" and the 2nd ended in "697\usb.inf".

After an even closer examination of the entire block that contained this error showed that it had gotten 1 line further than last time.  And based on this header information:

>>>  [Uninstall Driver Updates]
>>>  Section start 2011/12/17 22:19:38.189
      cmd: C:\WINDOWS\servicing\TrustedInstaller.exe
     sto: Driver Update Context:
     sto:      Image State        = Specialized
     sto:      Image Architecture = amd64
     sto:      Transaction        = CbsDriversAndPrimitives
     sto:      Driver Updates     = 66

I knew that there were only supposed to be 66 drivers being worked on, and I had made it past 64 of them by this point.  I went back to earlier log files and found that I had only gotten past 63 before.  So I repeated the process a couple more times, each time getting 1 driver further until finally it installed completely.

I spent EASILY 20 hours on this over the past couple weeks.  It was a giant pain in the butt, but I'm really glad to have resolved it because reinstalling everything on my dev laptop would have taken days.

10 months ago I moved my blog from my old server to the new one that I've been using.  This meant going from Windows 2003 and IIS6 to Windows 2008 R2 and IIS7.5.  I soon found there were a lot of minor problems hosting a dasBlog on an x64/iis7.5 server.  

I got to the point where the site would run, but I still couldn't get it to save any new posts.  I put it on my todo list to figure it out and the proceed to have 10 months of work and family stuff get in the way of ever getting back to it.

I'll be posting once again from time to time now that I've resolved the issues.

Here are some great articles talking about properly enabling compression in IIS6.

I had made some of these changes in the past, but I noticed that they had since been overwritten or not persisted.  I believe with the changes to the metabase file it will help keep the compression working.

http://blog.grushin.com/2008/04/21/iis6-compression-including-js-css-etc/

http://blog.grushin.com/2008/04/21/iis6-compression-file-extensions-and-testing/

Last year, I donated a weekend of my time to work with some other developers to create a new site for Bear Necessities Pediatric Cancer Foundation.

When we wrapped up work, the site was nearly completed, with a few ends to tie up, and of course, all the content needed to be entered and hosting setup and DNS ..... you get the idea.

So FF a many months and I was starting to think that the site would never go live.  Well it finally did.

http://bearnecessities.org/

It isn't the most beautiful site (we didn't have any graphic artists on the team) but it's waaaaay better than what they had.

I've been getting this error every now and then.

Usually this problem is caused by having 2 controls with the same name.  It can be that they are in different folders as well.

I came across this post today:

http://personalinertia.blogspot.com/2007/06/there-bug-in-compiler.html

Well, a quick search online told me that this might be a result of a known bug in the compiler. The fix was easy, you have to compile your app in non-batch -mode. How do you do this, I hear you asking. Simple: enter the compilation section of your web.config, and set batch="false", as so:

<compilation debug="true" batch="false">
...
</compilation>

In SQL Server 2005 and newer you can create database catalog wide triggers that you can use to track all schema changes to any objects in that database.

I wanted to track all schema changes to all catalogs on my server, so what I did was to create a database catalog called SchemaChangeLog that contained a table and a SP as follows:

USE [SchemaChanges]
GO

/****** Object:  Table [dbo].[SchemaChangeLog]    Script Date: 01/27/2011 11:17:26 ******/
SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO

SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO

SET ANSI_PADDING ON
GO

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[SchemaChangeLog](
    [SchemaChangeLogId] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL,
    [EventType] [varchar](100) NULL,
    [PostTime] [datetime] NULL,
    [LoginName] [varchar](100) NULL,
    [Username] [varchar](100) NULL,
    [DatabaseName] [varchar](100) NULL,
    [SchemaName] [varchar](100) NULL,
    [ObjectName] [nchar](100) NULL,
    [ObjectType] [varchar](100) NULL,
    [SqlText] [varchar](max) NULL,
    [ServerName] [varchar](100) NULL,
 CONSTRAINT [PK_SchemaChangeLog] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED 
(
    [SchemaChangeLogId] ASC
)WITH (PAD_INDEX  = OFF, STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE  = OFF, 
IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, 
ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS  = ON, 
ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS  = ON) ON [PRIMARY]
) ON [PRIMARY]

GO

SET ANSI_PADDING OFF
GO


USE [SchemaChanges]
GO

/****** Object:  StoredProcedure [dbo].[SchemaChangeLog_Save]    Script Date: 01/27/2011 11:17:31 ******/
SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO

SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO

-- =============================================
-- Author:        Chris May
-- Create date: 1/27/11
-- Description:    saves schema change info
-- =============================================
CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[SchemaChangeLog_Save]
      @data XML
AS
BEGIN
    BEGIN TRY
          
        insert  INTO schemachanges.[DBO].SchemaChangeLog
                (
                  [EventType],
                  PostTime,
                  ServerName,
                  LoginName,
                  Username,
                  DatabaseName,
                  SchemaName,
                  ObjectName,
                  ObjectType,
                  SqlText
                        
                )
        VALUES  (
                  @data.value('(/EVENT_INSTANCE/EventType)[1]', 'sysname'),
                  GETDATE(),
                  @data.value('(/EVENT_INSTANCE/ServerName)[1]', 'sysname'),
                  @data.value('(/EVENT_INSTANCE/LoginName)[1]', 'sysname'),
                  @data.value('(/EVENT_INSTANCE/UserName)[1]', 'sysname'),
                  @data.value('(/EVENT_INSTANCE/DatabaseName)[1]', 'sysname'),
                  @data.value('(/EVENT_INSTANCE/SchemaName)[1]', 'sysname'),
                  @data.value('(/EVENT_INSTANCE/ObjectName)[1]', 'sysname'),
                  @data.value('(/EVENT_INSTANCE/ObjectType)[1]', 'sysname'),
                  @data.value('(/EVENT_INSTANCE/TSQLCommand)[1]', 'VARCHAR(max)')
                ) ; 

    END TRY
    BEGIN CATCH
        -- we just don't want any errors here
                
    END CATCH ;
END

GO

Then on each database catalog you want to track schema changes on, just run this to create the trigger:

create TRIGGER Trigger_Track_Schema_Changes ON DATABASE
    FOR DDL_DATABASE_LEVEL_EVENTS
AS
    SET NOCOUNT ON
    DECLARE @data XML ;
    BEGIN TRY
   
        SET @data = EVENTDATA() ;
        EXEC SchemaChanges.dbo.SchemaChangeLog_Save @data

    END TRY
    BEGIN CATCH
            -- we just don't want any errors here
    END CATCH ;

go 

If you want to undo this you can always drop the trigger by using:

drop TRIGGER Trigger_Track_Schema_Changes ON DATABASE

EDIT: I've found that some things (like some actions in SQL Compare) cause this trigger to throw an error.  I'm not sure why.  But, if you want to just disable the trigger for a moment you can run this:

disable trigger Trigger_Track_Schema_Changes on database

 

Say you have a VHD from some VM but you really don't want (or can't) spin up the VM to access the drive.  Well you can just mount it up in windows 2008 using Disk Management inside Computer Management.

Very handy.

I had a small WMV file that I wanted to convert into a stand alone flash video (not a FLV, a SWF) to stick on a website.

There are lots of seemingly poor options out there for doing this, but this one was perfect: http://www.youconvertit.com.

I uploaded the WMV and they had a number of output options, one of which was SWF.  They emailed me a few seconds later letting me know my conversion job was completed, and I downloaded the SWF, which worked just as expected.

 

If you don't really care about spaces vs tabs when comparing files in visual studio using the built in compare tool you can use the info found here to get VS to ignore white space.

Tools -> Options -> Source Control -> Visual Studio Team Foundation Server -> Configure Users Tools.. -> Add ->

Add "%5 /ignorespace" at the end of the "arguments" textbox.

That's it.

I just got to the bottom of this problem...

I was running Greenshot from startup (Greenshot is a nice OSS screen capture tool), and I was having this issue where from time to time the "print" wouldn't work.

When running Greenshot, pressing the Print key allows you to select a region of the screen for a cropped screen shot.

After some tinkering, the issue is that when Greenshot is running w/o admin rights, it won't be able to respond when my focus is on an application that is running WITH admin rights.

As long as the app I have focus on is using regular level permissions, or greenshot is running with elevated premissions, all is well.

I'm simply running it with elevated permissions now and have no issues.

Even though I opened up the correct port in the Firewall, my Filezilla connection would always fail shortly after connecting.

It would attempt to enter passive mode, and also get a list of the FTP contents, and then the connection would die.

Turns out that by default, the FTP client (filezilla and maybe many others) enter a "Passive" mode when not actively transfering files.  However, to do this the client needs to connect to a random port assigned by the server, which for windows FTP server is between 1024 and 5000.

Now, if you don't want to open up all those ports in your FW, then you can use the instructions here to change the PassivePortRange in the Metabase.xml file.

http://www.winservermart.com/HowTo/IIS_Passive_FTP.aspx

Worked prefect for me.

Adding this to your registry will give you the ability to build/clean/rebuild projects using the right click in windows explorer.  It uses .net 4.0 version of msbuild.  Just paste this into a .reg file and run it.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.sln] 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.sln\shell] 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.sln\shell\Build] 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.sln\shell\Build\command] 
@="cmd.exe /K \"\"%%windir%%\\Microsoft.NET\\Framework\\v4.0.30319\\MSBuild.exe\" \"%1\" /t:build\"" 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.sln\shell\Clean] 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.sln\shell\Clean\command] 
@="cmd.exe /K \"\"%%windir%%\\Microsoft.NET\\Framework\\v4.0.30319\\MSBuild.exe\" \"%1\" /t:clean\""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.sln\shell\Rebuild] 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.sln\shell\Rebuild\command] 
@="cmd.exe /K \"\"%%windir%%\\Microsoft.NET\\Framework\\v4.0.30319\\MSBuild.exe\" \"%1\" /t:rebuild\""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.csproj] 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.csproj\shell] 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.csproj\shell\Build] 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.csproj\shell\Build\command] 
@="cmd.exe /K \"\"%%windir%%\\Microsoft.NET\\Framework\\v4.0.30319\\MSBuild.exe\" \"%1\" /t:build\""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.csproj\shell\Clean] 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.csproj\shell\Clean\command] 
@="cmd.exe /K \"\"%%windir%%\\Microsoft.NET\\Framework\\v4.0.30319\\MSBuild.exe\" \"%1\" /t:clean\""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.csproj\shell\Rebuild] 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.csproj\shell\Rebuild\command] 
@="cmd.exe /K \"\"%%windir%%\\Microsoft.NET\\Framework\\v4.0.30319\\MSBuild.exe\" \"%1\" /t:rebuild\""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.vbproj] 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.vbproj\shell] 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.vbproj\shell\Build] 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.vbproj\shell\Build\command] 
@="cmd.exe /K \"\"%%windir%%\\Microsoft.NET\\Framework\\v4.0.30319\\MSBuild.exe\" \"%1\" /t:build\""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.vbproj\shell\Clean] 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.vbproj\shell\Clean\command] 
@="cmd.exe /K \"\"%%windir%%\\Microsoft.NET\\Framework\\v4.0.30319\\MSBuild.exe\" \"%1\" /t:clean\""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.vbproj\shell\Rebuild] 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.vbproj\shell\Rebuild\command] 
@="cmd.exe /K \"\"%%windir%%\\Microsoft.NET\\Framework\\v4.0.30319\\MSBuild.exe\" \"%1\" /t:rebuild\""

SQL Server 2005 and later keeps statistics about it's own transactions.

You can leverage this data to find the procedures that take the longest to run, or are run so frequently that tuning them up could have a big impact on your overall performance.

There are numerous examples and info in this article of how to utilize this information.

There are a number of different server tags (<%, <%#, <%$, <%@, <%=) which each mean different things.

This article goes into a little depth talking about each of these tags.

The one I never use, is <%$, which I learned is for displaying expressions, but you can also easily write your own expression provider by extending the expressionbuilder class.  An example of doing so can be found here.

Pretty cool.

Visual Studio has a nice "Go to definition" shortcut, but with our MVP pattern we are doing a lot of work against interfaces, which means that quite often going to definition actually takes us to a method in an interface.  For example:

Dim e As IEmployee = New Employee(1234)
Call e.GiveRaise(1.05)

If you did "Go to Definition" on "GiveRaise" you would not end up in the Employee class, but rather than IEmployee interface.

This plugin helps fix that problem.

I ended up skipping that part where he sets up the keyboard shortcut in favor of just using right click, but if you want to set that up you might find that the menu item he talks about is missing.  To get that dialog to show up use the keyboard shortcut CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+O.

 

Companies that have unused office space can sublet it to individuals or other small group swho need an office but can't afford the full deal.

It's great for independent contractors who want to have an office outside of their house.

http://openofficespace.com attempts to make these arrangements (and other more standard office space) easy to list/find.  While it "kinda" worked for me, the implementation is really lacking.  Lots of the results that came back were not in the specified area radius and some that WERE were not shown until I modified my location.

People listing $0/month is also quite useless for people who don't want to have to call the agent to find out that actual asking price.

But still, probably a useful resource.

If you try using Fiddler you might notice that it's very difficult to use localhost and get fiddler to show your traffic.

Here's a trick: put a "." after localhost in your browser URL.

So instead of browsing to http://localhost/whatever.aspx, you use http://localhost./whatever.aspx.

 

Interesting post on how to use a different schema strategy for nested comments that doesn't involve a recursive hierarchy:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3763273/asp-net-threaded-comments

One approach I remember seeing somewhere was rather than using a Comment ID and a Parent ID , comments had a Comment ID and a "sort key" which was a concatenation of all the Comment IDs of their ancestors.

E.g. If comment 1 had two replies, comments 2 and 3, the sort keys would be:

1 : 0001
2 : 0001.0002
3 : 0001.0003

Then if someone replied to comment 2, it would be..

4 : 0001.0002.0004

So if you select all comments and sort by this sort key, they'll fall out in the right order.

Then, to do the indenting, you simply look at the length of the sort key to see how many levels deep the comment is, and indent an appropriate amount.

Adding comments is easy: the sort key of the new comment is simply it's parent's sort key, with its own ID added on to the end.

-----------------------


Obviously you'd have to pad the ID values sufficiently.  In addition, if you wanted to just show comment 12345 and all children, you could just display the thread where code like '%00012345%'.

I inherited a web app that has a structure like this:
table
  tr
     td
     td
     td
        table

The last table in that list was supposed to be right align, but no modifications to it's TD parent will change that.  You can't use align="right" or text-align:right.

You need to use align="right" on the TABLE that you want to be right aligned, not on its TD parent.

I know this is a bad idea as CSS is much better for aligning elements instead of nesting tables, but in this case I'm not going to rewrite the whole app layout for 1 thing.