My daily work with SQL Server and Microsoft products.

How to shrink a VHD Virtual Hard Disk file

2011-11-10T10:03:00.000+01:00

Virtualization has become one of the most used features in personal computers and datacenters nowadays. Since the standalone application "Virtual PC 2007" back in Windows XP days up to current Hyper-V feature in Windows Server 2008, the amount of users has been steadily growing. One of the big decisions you have to make whenever you create a new virtual guest is deciding the size and type of the

Segmentation fault on Ubuntu 9.10 Server under Windows 7 x64 Virtual PC

2009-11-21T20:59:00.001+01:00

I have been using Ubuntu since version 8.10 Intrepid Ibex and I was anxiously waiting the release of Ubuntu 9.10 Karmik Koala some weeks ago. In previous versions of Ubuntu it was a nightmare to have it running under Microsoft virtual environments (i.e. Virtual Server 2007, Virtual PC 2004, Virtual PC 2007 and so on). Problems with screen resolutions, bouncing mouse cursors, and skewing clocks

Windows 7: Disable builtin DHCP server for “Internal network” in Virtual PC

2009-10-30T23:22:00.001+01:00

I recently installed Windows 7 and I have been waiting for the final release of XP Mode and Virtual PC which occurred last 22nd of October. I previously had (in Windows Vista and using Virtual PC 2007) a virtual domain, composed of virtual machines such as: server2003: a domain controller and DHCP server, with fixed IP address, connected to the “internal network” of Virtual PC. isa2006:

URL Canonicalization with 301 redirects for ASP.NET

2009-10-11T17:53:00.001+02:00

There are lots of pages talking about the benefits of canonicalization (c14n for short). It is a common agreement that it is just a set of rules in order to have our pages indexed in the most standardized, simplified and optimal way as possible. This would allow us to recollect our PageRank instead of having it spread among all the possible combinations of writing an URL for a particular page. In

Automatic generation of META tags for ASP.NET

2009-08-30T18:22:00.001+02:00

Some of the well known tags commonly used in SEO are the three following meta tags: meta title tag, meta keywords tag and meta description tag: <meta name="title" content="title goes here" /> <meta name="keywords" content="keywords, for, the, page, go, here"/> <meta name="description" content="Here you will find a textual description of the page" /> A lot has been written about the benefits

Fixing “Padding is invalid and cannot be removed” when requesting WebResource.axd

2009-08-21T14:56:00.001+02:00

If you are using ASP.NET in your website and have a look at your Application EventLog you will probably see warning entries like this: CryptographicException: Padding is invalid and cannot be removed. Event Type: Warning Event Source: ASP.NET 2.0.50727.0 Event Category: Web Event Event ID: 1309 Date: 21/08/2009 Time: 13:08:48 User: N/A Equipo: WEBSERVER Description: Event code: 3005

Conditional GET and ETag implementation for ASP.NET

2009-03-29T13:12:00.002+02:00

This post continues the series of Internet Information Services IIS optimization. See the link if you want to follow the whole series. You can download the VB project code of this article. Another way for optimizing your web site is setting it up for supporting conditional GET, that is, implementing the logic for handling requests whose headers specify If-None-Match (ETag) and/or

VIEWSTATE size minimization

2009-03-28T12:45:00.001+01:00

This post continues the series of Internet Information Services IIS optimization. See the link if you want to follow the whole series. According to Microsoft, in NET Framework Class Library documentation for Control.ViewState Property: A server control's view state is the accumulation of all its property values. In order to preserve these values across HTTP requests, ASP.NET server controls use

ASP.NET menu control size reduction (a graphical proof)

2009-03-25T08:32:00.001+01:00

I have prepared a graphical proof of the type of optimization I suggested a couple of days ago in my post ASP.NET menu control optimization. I just saved into plain txt files the following requests: ~/default.aspx: The original menu sample page without any optimization ~/default-optimized.aspx & ~/resources/menu-js.aspx: The optimized version that split menu related html to an external

IE8 breaks control

2009-03-23T10:05:00.001+01:00

There has been a lot of controversy since the public release of IE8 last March, 19th (even before, when in beta) due to it is following the standards and because it does not properly render <asp:Menu> controls under certain conditions (because <asp:Menu> control developers did not follow the standards). If you see this error feedback in Microsoft Connect regarding ASP.NET menu control not

ASP.NET menu control optimization

2009-03-22T12:33:00.000+01:00

This is the first of my posts regarding Internet Information Services IIS optimization. See the link if you want to follow the whole series. One of the controls that our website uses the most is the <asp:Menu> control. It is used in the masterpage so that, in the end, it is used at every page of the site, along with breadcrums. I have prepared a sample VS2008 website projects in VB and C# where

Internet Information Services IIS optimization

2009-03-21T11:56:00.000+01:00

It has been a long time since my last post. For the last 8 months I have been working on web pages, IIS based, ASP.NET 3.5, using master pages, and so on. When I thought that most of the work was almost done (master page designing, CSS/HTML editing, linking between pages, and so on), I faced the other side of the problem: SEO optimization, page sizes optimization, download times, conditional

0x80074E24 FWX_E_CONNECTION_KILLED in ISA Server 2004 / 2006

2008-02-26T09:43:00.001+01:00

We have recently installed a Samsung SHR-5040 digital video recorder (DVR) in our remote workshop in order to monitor activities and the evolution of customers' orders. We have our branch (workshop) and central offices connected by using a VPN, maintained by two ISA Servers. We thought that making the live output of the DVR available in our central office would be straight away but it was not so

Illegal characters in path deploying to SharePoint

2008-01-11T12:22:00.000+01:00

I recently started doing tests with SharePoint and I reached the point where I needed doing my own WebPart and debug it. I read about setting a development environment for WSS 3.0 in The .NET Addict's Blog: Setting up your SharePoint 2007 Development Environment. Summing up (changing slightly his suggestions), I needed a spare computer or virtual machine to: Install Server 2003 R2, with IIS,

Chain e-mail traffic forwarded by your own internal users... is this spam?

2008-01-09T12:06:00.001+01:00

This entry is not about anything related to Microsoft nor any of its products. I work for a medium size company as dba, but there are also other things that I have to handle in a daily basis. One of these things is the e-mail server. It does not matter which product/vendor we use, the problem more general than that. We all know what spam is, there are lots of protecting schemes out there: SPF,

Access 2007: Digital signatures are lost in ADE files

2007-05-08T09:29:00.001+02:00

Some weeks ago I posted the following message in microsoft.public.access.security. Here I will reproduce and extend it, since I have not received any response there, to spread the words and reach a higher audicence. Maybe someone would give me a hint some day... I also made a translation of this article in spanish called Access 2007: La firma digital se pierde cuando se compacta un .ADP o se

DFS replication: Inter-site problems

2007-05-07T12:43:00.000+02:00

.myborder { border: 1px solid #000; } We had DFS replication (the one released with Windows Server 2003 R2) between 3 servers, two of them on the central site (MAIN1 & MAIN2) and the other in the branch site (BRANCH1). The topology we had set up was a hub and spoke with MAIN1 as the center of the star: MAIN2 <-> MAIN1 <-> BRANCH1 One day we thought that it would be better to have a full mesh

Partial multi-column reports in Reporting Services

2007-04-18T11:59:00.000+02:00

Scenario. You need to create a multicolumn report in reporting services, but unfortunately, you just need the multicolumn behaviour in the details part of the report, not also on the master. Suppose you have an invoice (master: invoice number, customer, total sum, etc, details: every item being invoiced), or any other type of report that has a master/details structure and you just need the multi

How to: Enable Remote Errors (Reporting Services Configuration)

2007-04-04T19:46:00.000+02:00

Simple, but it took me a while to find it when I needed it. So here it is: How to: Enable Remote Errors (Reporting Services Configuration)You can edit the ConfigurationInfo table in the report server database to set EnableRemoteError to True, but if the report server is actively used, you should use script to modify the settings.

Error 0x8007007f: A problem is preventing Windows from accurately checking the license for this computer

2007-03-22T11:39:00.000+01:00

SYMPTOMS After you install SP2 for Windows Server 2003 x64 you get the following error message when you try to login using local console or RDP: A problem is preventing Windows from accurately checking the license for this computer: Error Code 0x8007007f Un problema impide que Windows compruebe con precisión el estado de la licencia para este equipo. Código de error: 0x8007007f RESOLUTION Some

How to convert several rows into a CSV string

2007-02-06T18:31:00.000+01:00

Scenario I recently posted just about the opposite (see INNER JOIN with a comma separated values CSV field ) and now I want to show how to create a CSV list when you have several rows to merge, grouping by some criteria. Let's suppose you have a set of data such as: F1 F2 Item ----------------- 1 4 A 1 4 B 3 2 A 3 3 C 5 1 B 5 4 A 5 4 E 5 4 F 6 1 E 6 1 W

Outlook 2007 Business Contact Manager served by SQL Server 2005

2007-02-05T10:02:00.000+01:00

My last post dealed with installing BCM 2003 on a remote dedicated server; in this case, the same subject but related to the new Office Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager is addressed here. Microsoft has this procedure fully documented on Outlook 2007 Document: Deploying Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager in a Remote Database Configuration Outlook 2007 with Business Contact

Outlook 2003 Business Contact Manager served by SQL Server 2005

2007-01-31T12:21:00.000+01:00

When you install Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager Update , a named instance of MSDE is installed (under %PROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL$MICROSOFTSMLBIZ ). If you are the only one to work with your contact database it will be fine, but if you plan to share the database with your coworkers in a workgroup or domain, either you need to leave your computer permanently online or

Process Explorer for Windows

2007-01-25T14:46:00.000+01:00

Previously developed by Sysinternals (acquired by Microsoft in July, 2006), Process Explorer for Windows v10.21 was released last November 1st, 2006. This is a must-have-tool for admins. Whenever you need to know which process has open which files or what DLLs are being used by whom, you will need it. http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/ProcessExplorer.mspx Simple to download