ben.hamilton.id.au

This post has been written using WriteMonkey as the text editor. Not only that but I’ve utilised Markdown as the method of text mark-up. All of this has been achieved using WordPress as my CMS, Firefox as my browser and a Firefox plug-in called It’s All Text.

My first impressions are actually good. Although its taken a little setup, I’m actually happy with the result. You see, using WriteMonkey as a text editor is, well, gorgeous. The screen is emptied of all distractions. With typewriter mode enabled, it is a pure joy to use.

Now to get this to work I did the following:

• disabled the visual editor in WordPress,
• installed the It’s All Text Firefox plug-in,
• installed the PHP Markdown plug-in for WordPress,
• started writing :)

Not so hard is it? Actually the writing bit is the hardest. But you knew that…

What it now means is that when I begin writing a new post in WordPress, I simple click the little edit button that appears, and WriteMonkey fires up, comes to the foreground and I start writing. To finish up, I press CTRL-Q and I click YES I do want to save it.

So I can whole-heartedly say that it’s worth the effort to setup WriteMonkey. Go do it! It feels good.

Of course, now the hard bit is about to start, that is, do more writing.

PS: Only found out about WriteMonkey via DownloadSquad

Had an issue yesterday where we wanted to remove some entires from Outlooks location list.

Huh? When you book an appointment in Microsoft Outlooks calendar you can specify a location. If ACT! by Sage has a Resource that is designated as a location, when ACT! sync’s with Outlook that location list gets filled in.

So, we wanted to edit that list in Outlook. Well, you can’t.

But you can clear the list completely, which for our purpose suited us fine, it’ll get repopulated with the correct values.

Thus, without further ado, here is how you do this:

Open up Regedit and remove the value from this key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Preferences\LocationMRU

Note that you will need to replace the version number for your version of Microsoft Office (14.0 = MSO2010, 12.0 = MSO2007).

Hat tip to superuser.com.

So you’re working on a Microsoft Server machine, merrily getting stuff done, when you get a message saying that it can’t continue because files are open. Sound familiar? It happens to me often.

Here is how I find out which files are open and who has them open:

If you’re working on a Microsoft Server 2008, Start | Administrative Tools | Share and Storage Management | Manage Open Files…

If you’re working on a Microsoft Server 2003, Start | right click My Computer | Manage | Computer management (local) | System Tools | Shared Folders | Open Files

Makes it a great deal easier, now you know which file needs closing, and who you need ask to do it.

Hope that helps you. Anything you’ve found helpful? Let me know in the comments.

If like me you need to test if network traffic is getting through a firewall then this tool will be of use to you as well.

You run it on the target/client system, specify which port you want it to listen on, a response message and click on listen. Able to listen on multiple ports even.

Get listen from here.

A Terminal Server I was attempting to work on today gave quite a lot of grief. The first hint was that users were unable to login to it. When I then tried to login, it gave an error message of: Login Failed
You are connected to the remote computer. Howerver, an error occured while an initial user program was starting, so you are being logged off. Contact the system administrator for assistance.

So I rebooted it remotely using the command shutdown /r /f /m \TSERVER1 while having a continuous ping running, from the ping results I could see it go down, come back up. However on trying to login now, after entering a username/password I could see the logon script run, but no taskbar, start button appeared. Right clicking the desktop didn’t give any menu.

I could however navigate to the hard drive on that machine by pointing My Computer to \tserver1\c$\.

Copying some of the tools at live.sysinternals.com I was able to view the event logs, no issues apparent, check status of various services, all ok.

So I connected via RDP once more (mstsc /v:tserver1 /console) and viewed the background (still no start button or taskbar) and pressed CTRL-ALT-END which allowed me to start the Task Manager. This allowed me to run a new task (File | New tas (run...)) so now I was able to copy the sysinternals autoruns program to the root of the C: partition, and run it from the affected terminal server. Running c:\windows\explorer.exe didn’t work tho.

Delving into it’s depths I found an entry for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\Explorer – renaming this entry then allowed Explorer to run. So I’ve exported the key (in case I do want it sometime) and then deleted it.

Rebooted the server once more and bingo, it lets everyone log in. Very satisfying after a couple of hours of mad hair tearing.

Like Symantec Anti-virus. At a friends house right now, and trying to uninstall the product, it won’t – it keeps saying that something else wants to keep it there. Very unhelpful error message by they way (if Symantec is listening).

Found a great page that explains how to remove unwanted software (surprise, they also trying to remove Symantec… hmmm….).

Here it is at it.toolbox.com/blogs/locutus.

In a nutshell this is how:

1. Open regedit, browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\ WINDOWS\CURRENT VERSION\UNINSTALL
2. Then do a search for Symantec (or the name of the software you want to be rid of)
3. Copy the value of UninstallString
4. Open a command prompt (Start | Run | CMD) and paste the UninstallString here and add REMOVE=ALL to the end of that string, press enter. It will look similar to this: MsiExec.exe /X{DBA4DB9D-EE51-4944-A419-98AB1F1249C8} REMOVE=ALL
5. Done.

I’ve just found myself needing to FTP some files to a clients site. The file are in the data directory on our company’s terminal server (which I don’t have admin rights on) and I need them on a SQL Server for a client.

I do have access to a FTP Server but the first step is to get the files up to the FTP Server then download them to the client site. Yes, I could use the command line tool ftp but that is just too painful at this time of day (read: night).

Thus a quick google turned up this: AnyClient – The Free No-Install FTP Client.

It is a java applet. What a lifesaver, nice gui (similar to Filezilla, which is my choice of FTP clients). Anyway, AnyClient is quick and easy to use. Just thought I’d share the find.

Oh, and of course, no admin rights needed, as there is no program installing. Yay!

My old beloved Palm T3 PDA, which in my humble opinion is possible the best PDA I’ve ever used, is now used by my daugher. She set the system password… and forgot it… oops.

Thusly, to reset it to factory defaults, and in the process, lose ALL saved data on it, you need to press and hold the POWER button, while pressing the reset button (hidden on the back). Once the “Palm Powered” logo appears, release the POWER button, say YES to erasing all the data, and Bob’s your uncle, all reset to factory defaults.

Unfortunately the Palm doesn’t have a phone in it, like the company provided PDA, hence why I don’t use the palm any longer.

[update: SQL2005 versions more info here]

To find out what version of SQL Server your running, do this:

From the command prompt on the SQL Server itself,

osql -E -S %computername%

This will give you a SQL prompt, at which you do the following:

1>exec master..xp_msver 'ProductName' 2>exec master..xp_msver 'ProductVersion' 3>go

This gives you two bits of information, (1) the Product Name & (2) the Product Version – which requires some interpretation, note them both. But first, at the SQL prompt, type quit.

1>quit

The table below will help determine exactly what SQL Server is running.

2005.90.1399 – SQL Server 2005 RTM 2005.90.2047 – SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 1 2005.90.3042 – SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 8.00.194 – SQL Server 2000 RTM 8.00.384 – SQL Server 2000 SP1 8.00.532 – SQL Server 2000 SP2 8.00.760 – SQL Server 2000 SP3 8.00.760 – SQL Server 2000 SP3a *note below 8.00.818 – SQL Server 2000 SP3 w/ Cumulative Patch MS03-031 8.00.2039 – SQL Server 2000 SP4 7.00.1063 – SQL Server 7.0 Service Pack 4 (SP4) 7.00.961 – SQL Server 7.0 Service Pack 3 (SP3) 7.00.842 – SQL Server 7.0 Service Pack 2 (SP2) 7.00.699 – SQL Server 7.0 Service Pack 1 (SP1) 7.00.623 – SQL Server 7.0 RTM (Release To Manufacturing) 6.50.479 – SQL Server 6.5 Service Pack 5a (SP5a) Update 6.50.416 – SQL Server 6.5 Service Pack 5a (SP5a) 6.50.415 – SQL Server 6.5 Service Pack 5 (SP5) 6.50.281 – SQL Server 6.5 Service Pack 4 (SP4) 6.50.258 – SQL Server 6.5 Service Pack 3 (SP3) 6.50.240 – SQL Server 6.5 Service Pack 2 (SP2) 6.50.213 – SQL Server 6.5 Service Pack 1 (SP1) 6.50.201 – SQL Server 6.5 RTM You will notice that there is SQL Server 2000 SP3 and SP3a both have the same version number. Some software providers require at least SP3a (i.e. some MYOB products). So how does one tell the difference between the two?

By finding the file SSNETLIB.DLL and right clicking it, and checking the version number. If the version number of this file is 2000.80.760.0, you have SQL Server 2000 SP3. If the version number of this file is 2000.80.766.0, you have SQL Server 2000 SP3a.

This file is normally found in one of these two locations:

• Default instance: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\Binn\Ssnetlib.dll
• Named instance: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQLServer\MSSQL$<InstanceName>\Binn\Ssnetlib.dll

Of course, Microsoft have more to say and you can find it at: www.support.microsoft.com/kb/321185

Two pages I’ve found useful when playing with GRUB (a Boot loader that allows you to choose between multiple operating systems on boot up) are these:

• The GRUB Manual
• The GRUB page – particularly this one on temporarily editing a GRUB menu item

It is nice to be able to re-order the menu items, change the length of time the menu stays on screen and change the wording of each entry.