I was recently dealing with a badly damaged installation of Windows XP Home...it wouldn't recognize its modem or CD ROM drive, wouldn't run System Restore (couldn't even get the window open to try it), and generally had suffered a lot of loss due to the 318 virus instances I had removed from it.
I decided to start clean. I ran the Files and Settings Transfer wizard, moving all the files I needed to a safe place...then dropped the partition, reformatted, and reinstalled XP.
With that done, I re-ran the F&S Transfer wizard to bring back the needed files...but found that that backup was only partial. I was missing some 490+ jpg files (family photos) from it!
Now, to the point (thanks for hanging on this long). After a bit of sweating, crying, and pounding of fists, I found RecoverMyFiles.com, which claims it will recover lost files even after a re-partition and reformat. Let me tell you that it does exactly that! I was able to recover all of those family photos in a couple of hours (the scan required after reformatting is a bit slow) without a problem.
I'm not usually big on endorsements, but I highly recommend RecoverMyFiles.com. It saved the day for me.
I was trying to map a network drive on PC A to PC B on a small network...with poor results. The Map Network Drive wizard kept complaining that it couldn't find the share I had set up on B...even though I'd used that share successfully dozens of times before with other machines.
I made sure that both machines were in the same workgroup, but that didn't do it. I finally disabled the Window XP Internet Connection Firewall on PC A and that did the trick. I thought that firewall was supposed to prevent traffic in only one direction (in), but apparently it prevents network activity in the out direction too.
I've never been so pleased to see Rainbow's CVS download broken! As strange as it may seem, it just reminds me how much work is getting done on the project, as developers from all over the place are squashing bugs at an incredible rate.
I suspect the CVS package will stabilize in the not-so-distant future, and Rainbow will be stronger and more stable than ever.
This weekend, my 4-year old and I were in the garage when he suddenly started crying out in pain. I went over to him, and he held out a spray can of “Deep Woods Off” insect repellant while screaming "I sprayed this in my eyes!"
We rushed him into the house, rinsed his eyes with water, then dried him off. After a few minutes, the tears stopped falling, he looked up and said calmly to my wife and I, "Remind me not to do that again."
With Rainbow installations, occasionally I'll end up with some (or all) objects in the database being owned by my local ASPNET account (computername\ASPNET). This results from building the database with a trustedconnection, and while I know this, I always forget and do it anyway.
The problem is that when I try to upload the existing database to a 'live' one somewhere, now that local ASPNET account owns everything and things go very sideways.
Anyway, I found this SQL script a while ago that (in two steps) changes the ownership of all the objects in a database to 'dbo'. I didn't write it, and it's been so long now, I don't even know where I got it...if it was yours, thank you very much. If not, here it is:
SELECT 'EXEC(''sp_changeobjectowner @objname = '''''+ ltrim(u.name) + '.' + ltrim(s.name) + '''''' + ', @newowner = dbo'')'
FROM sysobjects s, sysusers u
WHERE s.uid = u.uid
AND u.name <> 'dbo'
AND xtype in ('V', 'P', 'U')
AND u.name not like 'INFORMATION%'
order by s.name
Run this in Query Analyzer (with 'Results to Text' option set), then copy those results into a new QA window and run them.
On the off chance that someone else will encounter the same errors, I'm posting the problems I'm encountering in this upgrade.
After hearing about Google's new GMail product, where email is "categorized" instead of just jammed into folders, I was thinking it would be neat if you could do the same thing with files in the Windows file system.
Basically, you'd need a way to index the existing files, categorizing them according to the user's needs. For example, one Word document may be categorized in the 'Word documents', 'Code fragments', 'Memos', and 'Development Team' categories...instead of just getting filed away in 'My Documents' under, at best, a folder representing one of those categories.
The beauty of this would be in searching. Besides the usual 'search by name' junk, you could restrict a search to certain categories. (think...“I know I sent that code fragment in a memo to the whole development team“)
Using Google, I looked around for such a thing and found that Microsoft's Longhorn is packaged with exactly what I'm dreaming about: they call it WinFS and the article that dashed my dreams of fame and fortune is here.
I noticed this post from Ed Daniel a few days ago, but didn't get a chance to check it out until today. I really dig the format (short video interviews, quick and to the point).
A current Windows Forms project of mine requires the caching of a fair amount of data. Specifically, I want to store, in memory, on the client, a selection of XML data. When it's done, this should behave something like ASP.NET's session object...so I'll have access to user information and preferences without having to hit the data source every time to get it.
It's no problem to instantiate a class that retrieves and holds this information, but making that information available to other forms in the application (without again reloading an instance of the class and re-retrieving the data) is escaping me. I explored Microsoft's Caching Application Block, and while it appears to offer the kind of behavior I'm after, it's a bit more complicated than I need (and depends heavily on SQL Server...I want to avoid that).
Anyone have any suggestions out there?
It's a little like watching the neighbor kid grow up...a year ago, a Google search for 'Rainbow portal' would hit on rainbowportal.net, and not much more.
Now, you get pages and pages of hits, including this one and this one, which offer special Rainbow hosting packages. I can't wait to see those results next year, with a v1 release behind us and .Next getting rolling.
I agree with this guy...who agrees with this guy...
Although, as I look around, I have five different 'Teach yourself/Learn X in Y days/Hours' books on the shelves. *blush*
Every time I restart my XP Pro laptop, it downloads the same update (KB835732) and asks to install it.
Reference to an interesting article that tries to draw some conclusions about whether Diabetes is related to certain structural patterns of the ridges in the palms of the hands.
Browsing Google search results for 'fingerprint blog', I ran across this entry on an adoption site, where subject was told his prints 'failed' because
“Some people just have bad prints that can't be recorded at the level required to read them effectively.” While this is not impossible, it's very unlikely, and a few comments on that entry had also been given bad information. I felt obligated to post a comment myself:
“Fingerprints vary in quality from person to person, but it's likely that yours are fine (meaning, OK).
Generally speaking, 'blue collar' type workers (i.e. stone masons, builders) can have terrible fingerprint ridge structure...they're constantly wearing off the skin that forms the ridges. The same is also true for folks (again, generalizing) who shuffle a lot of paper (i.e. bank tellers, envelope-stuffers), because the paper has a similar effect.
In the *vast* majority of cases, though, bad recording of fingerprints is due to operator error...and the quality produced by ink/paper (done properly) still beats any computerized recording system in existence.”
I heard this exchange in the doctor's office last week:
Patient (walking back for his Vasectomy procedure): “Hey Doc. I hope you got a good night's sleep.”
Doctor: “Yep, I did. But I've been drinking all day.”
Our vacation stay at Villa Poincianna in the Abacos was really terrific. The house was amazing...remote and quiet, but a short boat ride from everything we wanted.
We got to see a good mix of sea critters (sharks, turtles, 'cudas, rays, and plenty of other fish) while snorkeling. Also, I was surprised at how 'un-touristy' the whole area was...no one bothered us to buy trinkets or bracelets (yes, that's what I expected) and local people were genuinely interested in helping us.
The stay wasn't perfect. Weather in the Abacos is apparently as uncontrollable as weather here in Michigan, and we ended up with high winds (and seas) the whole time. No matter, we were snorkeling and boating in it every day. The ride to Pete's Pub was especially interesting.
Being new to the whole blogging thing, I'm still learning what exactly this application is doing with my rambling text. I've noticed that many of the hits on this blog are rss aggregators (mostly from rssreader.com), and this article has now explained that concept.
I like the idea of getting all the news I care about brought directly to me...I wish I'd thought of that.
Tomorrow afternoon, we're heading out for Lubber's Cay in the Abacos for our first no-kids vacation since our honeymoon (in spring 1997). Seeya in a week or so!
In a post last week, I complained that one of my Rainbow installations was hung on the update screen with the 'Your Database is up to date' message. I found a solution (work-around, really), but more explanation is in order first.
I had backed up a production database onto a local server, then tried running the update. This backup had been made by copying the production data over an existing database, with the data copy mode set to 'overwrite'. This is the scenario that caused problems.
I ended up wiping out all tables in the local database, then running the data transfer again from the production site to the local one. When I ran the update against this new local DB, it went just fine.
So, I solved the problem...but I don't really know what it was...or something like that.
I've noticed that sometimes Visual Studio .NET 2002 hangs when I try to delete a file or files from the 'Solution Explorer'. It just gets stuck on 'deleting file' dialog, and I have to close it with the task manager.
Is anyone else seeing this, or am I just really lucky?
In trying to update a Rainbow installation from v 1756 to 1757, I'm stuck with the message 'Your database is up to date'
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