Tips and Tricks

Little tips and tricks to do helpful but obscure things.
DNS Giving IAS The Axe

With the whole DNS fiasco going down here recently, vendors have been scrambling to push out patches for the vulnerability that will be demonstrated next month.  Unfortunately, it looks it like it has caused a few hiccups with Windows Server 2003 machines also running IAS. Sometime after applying the patch for DNS, you might get the following error: The Internet Authentication Service service terminated with the following error: Only one usage of each socket address (protocol/network address/port) is normally permitted. What's basically happening is that there are a number of services that use short lived UDP ports for conducting business. Unfortunately, it...

posted @ Thursday, July 17, 2008 8:50 PM | Feedback (0)

Create An iPhone Icon

One of the first things that I wanted to do when I got my brand new iPod Touch was create a webclip icon.  It really annoys my that a lot of mainstream sites like Digg.com, Weather.com, etc. haven't bothered to create one.  So, here we go. First, start off with a 128x128 image.  One of the things to keep in mind is that your iPhone is going to automatically apply some 'glossiness' to your image, so a nice flat image is ok.  The other thing to keep in mind is that because it does that, you should make sure that your...

posted @ Friday, April 11, 2008 9:07 PM | Feedback (0)

The Local Policy Of This System Does Not Permit You To Logon Interactively

When trying to log into a Windows Server 2003 server with a non-admin user, you may receive the following error: The local policy of this system does not permit you to logon interactively. This article explains how to grant a non-admin user logon access.

posted @ Wednesday, December 26, 2007 12:36 PM | Feedback (0)

C#: Enums and String Values

One of the biggest things that I've had a problem with C# is its complete, utter lack of string value enumerations.  Enums provide strongly typed domain values that make programming easier to manage.  However, since you can't include characters like wildcards, spaces, etc., this means that making a human readable enum a nearly impossible task.  Until now.  This takes a little more heavy lifting than I come to expect with the .Net framework, but is a relatively easy fix for what you get in return.  This is broken into two parts: Create the String value for the...

posted @ Friday, October 05, 2007 7:32 PM | Feedback (4)

HFS & DMG On XP

I've been doing some trouncing around with files that reside on a Mac OS X computer and have had a need to be able to read .DMG file whose file system is HFS. One problem, though, is that Windows XP does not natively support it. After mulling through a dozen or so applications (both free and commercial) and one seems to stand out above the rest (mostly 'cause it works and is free). HFSExplorer is what it's called and does a pretty good job of being able to read DMG disc images without any hitches. If...

posted @ Sunday, August 26, 2007 11:01 PM | Feedback (0)

ASP.NET: Download Files From A Website

Many times, dynamic documents, images, zip files etc are created in memory. Rather than save them to the server's disk and provide a link, that dynamic file can be directly saved to the user's computer. By using MIME encoding and a little C# magic, downloading dynamic files is a snap!

posted @ Sunday, April 15, 2007 9:55 PM | Feedback (0)

How To Integrate Drivers For Windows XP/Server 2003/Media Center 2005

Due to popular demand, I've decided to post this article on how to 'slipstream' drivers. First things first, have your XP or Windows Server 2003 discs handy. Second, download the following pieces of software: nLite Totally free application that does all the magic. ...

posted @ Tuesday, April 10, 2007 6:24 PM | Feedback (16)

RDP - Maximum Remote Desktop Connections

There have been numerous times at work that I've attempted to use Remote Desktop to get into a server, only to find that some people have left open their sessions, impeding others from doing work. If this is the case you would recieve the following message: Terminal server has exceeded maximum number of allowed connections.

posted @ Friday, February 02, 2007 7:41 PM | Feedback (0)

Return Primary Key After Insert Into Database

There have been a few times that it has been necessary to return an auto-generated primary key after an insert into a database. This is a tidbit of MS SQL Server code that will do just that.

posted @ Saturday, December 30, 2006 11:31 PM | Feedback (0)

Reset SQL Server Identity Fields

A lot of times after doing extensive testing with a website and its corresponding database, I find it annoying that the identity fields (those commonly called the auto-increment or autonumber fields) have run up their increment to a pretty high number, even though I have deleted all the rows out of them. So, after some research, I stumbled upon a way to reset it back to zero without dropping the table. As a side note, this method is valid for both SQL Server 2000 and 2005.

posted @ Monday, December 18, 2006 7:54 AM | Feedback (0)

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