I noticed the other day a team member was having exceptions being thrown every second when idle in a service. Digging deeper it was revealed that the MSMQ Distributor has some code that peeks into a queue to determine if to process messages in the Enterprise...

I don't have to do this often but when I do I occasionally forget the steps. For those wanting to create a new virtual disk in VPC, Windows Virtualization, etc here are some steps that may help: Create a new virtual hard disk Capture the setup...

If you first choose online help then go into Help -> Manage Help Settings, then choose Install Content from online you may get an exception message. This may be due to your intranet or desktop requiring a proxy configuration. The application being...

Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Current Version: 10.0.30319.1 (RTM) .Net 4.0 Current: 4.0.30319 (RTM) General Visual Studio Downloads Page http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/bb984878.aspx Visual Studio Feature Packs http://msdn.microsoft.com...

Most of you are familar with the PageAsyncTask class ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.web.ui.pageasynctask.aspx ). I ran across a scenario that I call the "decision task" and created a "chain pattern" architecture. Scenario There...

After a long journey, the work I did along with others has finally paid off. The VS2010 Guidance is now available on codeplex. I worked on the developer (database) portions. I hope everyone enjoys the hard work. Reference: http://vs2010quickref.codeplex...

Generally speaking it is better to have less large DLLs versus many smaller DLLs for the following reasons: Hard Disk time: Loading 100 dlls will almost always take longer than a single large DLL. DLLs are physically scattered across the disk. Latency...

A friend asked about some sites to learn about Visual Studio and programming. There is a lot of great free resources out there. I created an article with a starting list to help. Feel free to comment and suggest the "best" free sites out there. Visual...

Steps to add programs to Send to folder Navigate to your SendTo folder (Windows XP location is C:\Documents and Settings\{user}\SendTo and just replace {user} with your login user name) Right click select New/Shortcut to add a shortcut Type...

Started a article that will contain lots of free/commerical add-ons and website articles for TFS. Enjoy the first edition: http://blogs.msdn.com/mab/pages/team-foundation-server-extras.aspx

As a Microsoft VSTS ranger, I come across some interesting TFS add-ons on occasion. The recently introduced Free Telerik TFS Manager and Dashboard tool seems impressive. Most of the features enhance SCRUM/Agile methodology shops but can be used for any...

Scenario Web application wants to pop-up a window as a certain size, chromeless, etc. However doesn't want to have the opening (parent) window show. Common usages are launching from shortcut or an application. Solution In the "parent" page that launches...

Scenario A parent document contains a frame that loads a file which content is dynamic and you want the frame to not scroll and autosize the height of the frame. Solution function autoResizeParent() { // if no parent don't attempt to change if...

Scenario Have some perl code that wants to access Microsoft SQL Server 2005. The SQL Server is configured to only allow SSL connections for security reasons. Solution Here are the parts you will need: Perl on Linux (given) DBI ... http...

Scenario Download your favorite image (or create one) and you want to exchange files with the guest OS. You are running Wi-fi and have to use the wired connection as your virtual network. You can access your image just fine through the Hyper-V Virtual...

Many clients I have worked with simply use the IISReset.exe command to recycle applications. Although this may have the desired affect sometimes, there are many alternatives that are better. By no means is this an exhaustive list but will give you some...

Ever tried to install a printer by just giving users a link? Well here is a small snippet of one way to do this. Please note that since you are interacting with the OS (outside the browser) that you may receive security warnings. This has been tested...

For those interested in installing VSTS and using with IIS7 on Vista (and possible with Win 7) you should follow the following instructions: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa964620.aspx

Scenario You have a normalized table that has values in rows. Let's take an example that has a history table with an approved flag: Date Approved DollarValue Customer 1/1/2008 Y 13.5 A 2/1/2008 N 12 A 3/1/2008 Y 14 A 1/1/2008 Y 11.5 B 2/1/2008...

Scenario Recently I ran into a security issue that has a simple fix. Here is the situation: SSIS Package that contains a Script Task Run SSIS package as a SQL Job Use a special credential/proxy for the step of executing the SSIS package...

I was working on a common scenario and found an interesting side effect. Applications typically have a listing page that get search criteria from a UI and passes to a stored procedure. In the procedure you often find statements like: SELECT a , b ...

Scenario A table that contains several columns that you need to take and change into rows in order to normalize the data. With SQL Server 2005, a new T-SQL command UNPIVOT can help. An example table: **Table called MyTable FieldID FieldOne FieldTwo...

I know several people have blogged about this and it is available in the help files somewhat. I thought I would just capture a quick note on what I sometimes use. Scenario: Show me all the changes (history) for all files within a location in a team...

You can use the following to move your sharepoint location on your existing TFS Sharepoint sites or Repritng Services to another port or to another server. Note that you must have the Sharepoint site or Reporting Services already configured. TFS 2005...

Working with a friend at work, we were discussing how to create some SQL to go after records in a table and process in a farm of computers (processing cluster). After few minutes of thinking I came up with the following. BEGIN TRAN MyTran UPDATE TOP...