Tips and tricks from a Developer Support perspective.

While some cases may start of as complex, they sometimes turn out to be caused by something not that complex. As the case always is once you have the solution. So I thought I would share some of the things that I've come across, and hopefully tha

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 RS Add-In for SharePoint fails to install.

You are trying to install the Reporting Services add-in for SharePoint Products...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 03/03/2015

SharePoint 2013. Excel Services. w3wp.exe fails with "Exception code: 0x80131623"

I came across an issue the other day where the Excel Services failed to start in SharePoint...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 02/12/2015

"Installation of one or more roles, role services, or features failed. Error: 0x800f0922" when installing IIS 8.0 Application Initialization.

The other day I got a case where customer was trying to install the Application Initialization...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 11/19/2013

Repeated login dialogs ending with a 401 when using Basic Authentication in IIS.

You have chosen to use Basic Authentication on your web application. You know that you have the...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 10/03/2013

A network analysis of passive (EPSV or PASV) FTP connection.

Cases and questions somehow seems to come in bulk. Lately I have had several cases on FTP...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 07/04/2013

How to download multiple files concurrently using WebClient and the DownloadFileAsync method.

I had a case the other day where customer was using WebClient and the DownloadFileAsync method....

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 06/12/2013

How to deploy your Windows Store app to Surface RT for testing.

A short post on how to test your Windows Store apps on your Surface RT. This is not so hard but it...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 05/19/2013

IIS 7.5 - Unable to deploy second server to WFF farm, "Failed to upload assembly 'Microsoft.Web.PlatformInstaller, Version=3.0.3.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35' on remote agent"

I recently had a case where customer was setting up a web farm using the Web Farm Framework (WFF)....

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 02/27/2013

Adding printer with "Internet Printing" gives "Windows couldn’t connect to the printer. Check the printer name and try again."

The scenario is as follows, you have set up your Windows 2008 machine to be using “Internet...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 01/28/2013

How to edit server information in response sent to client.

The scenario is that you wish to hide the server information that is sent from IIS to the client in...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 11/27/2012

Using MSDeploy to update and remove sections in web.config. A simple example

I got a case the other day where customer was using Microsoft Web Deploy 3.0. "Web Deploy 3.0"...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 10/12/2012

One-to-one client certificate mapping. 401.1 with a sc-win32-status of 2148086018

I’ve seen a few cases like this, so I thought I do a post on this. The scenario is that you...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 07/13/2012

HTTP Error 500.19 0x8007000d Failed to decrypt attribute 'password' because the keyset does not exist

The scenario. You have a web application that uses Anonymous Authentication. This uses another...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 06/25/2012

"System.InvalidOperationException: Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior to obtaining a connection from the pool."

Another post on the following exception: System.InvalidOperationException: Timeout expired. The...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 05/21/2012

Windbg and managed code. What does, for example, a null value look like?

Sometimes when debugging I realize I forget what different values (NULL, TRUE, FALSE, empty strings...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 05/11/2012

How to setup UrlScan with DenyUrlSequence

I had a case where UrlScan and in particular [DenyUrlSequences] was needed to be setup. Doing...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 03/30/2012

"SQL Server Configuration Manager" gives "Invalid class [0x80041010]” when starting.

Ok, so it happened to me again today. I simply wanted to open the SQL Server Configuration Manager....

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 03/19/2012

How to create a dump on x number of threads in a process.

So, you have an application that uses a lot of threads and you would like to know how to trigger a...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 02/27/2012

How to create a dump on an OutOfMemoryException.

So, you are running your web application in IIS and intermittently you get an OutOfMemoryException....

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 02/14/2012

Some gotchas when using ASP.NET MVC with Entity Framework Code First.

A fairly short one today. I was playing around with ASP.NET MVC and Entity Framework Code First and...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 01/25/2012

How to create a clock style line rotation in Silverlight.

The other day I wanted a simple example on how to rotate a line from a center of an ellipse in a...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 01/09/2012

.docx, .pptx, .xlsx open as compressed folder in IE8.

A quick one today. I had a case where the customer reported that IIS 6.0 returned Office 2007 / 2010...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 12/01/2011

How to create a StackOverflowException. And how to figure out where it is happening.

StackOverflowException. This usually means that you have a recursive call in your code. A recursion...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 11/04/2011

How to publish a calendar from Outlook to IIS and WebDAV

How do I publish a shared calendar using WebDav? If you have ever asked this question then hopefully...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 10/25/2011

How to resolve "Cannot debug pid , NTSTATUS 0xC0000048" - "An attempt to set a process's DebugPort or ExceptionPort was made ..."

Once I found out what was causing this error message it was pretty obvious what was going on. But...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 10/21/2011

How to use LogParser, SQL Server and ETW to find reasons for exceptions.

Today I’ll show you how to make life easier using ETW (or BID) tracing, Log Parser and a SQL...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 06/27/2011

No files in the “IIS Temporary Compressed Files” directory. Some possible reasons.

I had a case were no files were stored (or missing) in the “IIS Temporary Compressed...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 03/07/2011

WPF, DataBinding, DataGrid and simple conditional 'higher than' using IValueConverter

The other day I wanted to highlight some rows in a datagrid in a WPF project. This is not hard to...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 03/03/2011

Inserting a file into a FILESTREAM table from C#. And how to get it back as well.

Here is my take on how to insert files into a SQL Server 2008 FILESTREAM (in short, storing files on...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 02/28/2011

An unhandled exception of type 'System.StackOverflowException' occurred in System.Data.Entity.dll

I have now had two cases where customers report that they hit the following exception when using...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 01/28/2011

Running a database mirror setup with the SQLBrowser service off may produce unexpected results.

I had an interesting case the other day which I thought I'd share some information on here.Basically...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 12/15/2010

Clarification on the Failover Partner in the connectionstring in Database Mirror setup.

There is a common misunderstanding on how the Failover Partner keyword in the connectionstring works...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 12/08/2010

How to consume a web service from within SQL Server using SQL CLR

Today I’ll show how you can consume a Web Service from within SQL Server using the SQL Server...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 11/25/2010

Error : The OutputPath property is not set for project 'xxxxx.dbproj'.

I had an interesting case the other day and I thought I’d share how we managed to get around...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 11/18/2010

Simplified steps for creating BID / ETW traces for ADO.Net and SQLNCLI

In order to create BID traces for ADO.Net and/or SQLNCLI/10 follow these simplified steps: #1 On the...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 10/22/2010

Invalid object name 'MSysConf'. (State 42S02) (Code 208)

Sometimes customers call in wondering why they have the following Exception and User Error Message...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 10/22/2010

"Error Locating Server/Instance Specified [xFFFFFFFF]". SQLSRV32 to the rescue.

When connecting to SQL Server and when the connection fails the reason for the error may sometimes...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 06/21/2010

Registry keys for ODBC connections using sqlsrv32, sqlncli and sqlncli10

Here is the list of the registry keys used for ODBC connections when using SQLSRV32.dll /...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 05/11/2010

Simplified steps to create BID / ETW tracefiles.

Sometimes we in support need you to take a BID (Built In Diagnostics) or ETW (Event Tracing for...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 05/10/2010

Concurrency violation: the UpdateCommand affected 0 of the expected 1 records.

This exception still seems to catch people out when updating, for example, DataSets:...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 04/07/2010

Using User Instance with a .Net application

How to run a .Net application with a User Instance database. First of all, be aware that this...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 03/18/2010

Simple Databinding example with Entity Framework and Windows Presentation Foundation

A simple way to get Data Binding with WPF and Entity Framework First create two tables for Author...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 03/12/2010

"No value given for one or more required parameters." / "Incorrect syntax near the keyword 'DEFAULT'."

A follow up on the post from yesterday. If you forget to add a parameter to a parameterized query,...

Author: Michael Aspengren - MSFT Date: 03/04/2010

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