SwisherTech

Force Windows XP to Update Microsoft Products

Jonathan — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:04:58 +0000

I have been needing this for along time. I can not count how many times I have sat around waiting for a Windows XP machine to start Microsoft automatic updates. In Windows Vista the Widows update window has a button to force the OS to go out to the internet (unless your using a Windows Server Update Service (WSUS)) and get updates. In Windows XP use this command line tool:

wuauclt.exe /detectnow

Original post blogged on b2evolution.

Apostrophe in a SQL Query String

Jonathan — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:42:39 +0000

I was running into a problem with a SQL query string being terminated to soon. One of the variables I was using in the concatenation of the string contained an apostrophe. In order to handle this situation you have to put two apostrophes to escape the character in the string.

For example SELECT column1 FROM table WHERE column2='values's' needs to be SELECT column1 FROM table WHERE column2='values''s'.

The application I was writing used Jython. Jython is just Python implemented in Java. I have found working with strings in Jython to be very easy.

Here is the function I came up with to use on the variable before using it in the SQL query string.

def sqlApostrophes(strInput):
	strOutput = strInput.replace("'","''")

	return strOutput

Original post blogged on b2evolution.

IMAP Account in Outlook Not Deleting Mail Items

Jonathan — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 23:18:40 +0000

I have recently setup an IMAP email account in Outlook. After using it for a few days I notice that none of the mail items I delete disappear. Each time I delete a mail item it just becomes grey with a line crossing it off. I thought at first it just took time for the message to leave the server. After a couple of days of a cluttered inbox I did a search on the internet and found that you have to tell the Outlook email client to purge all the deleted mail from the server. Here are the steps:

When you want to delete all the crossed out emails go to Edit->Purge->Purge Marked Items in “your email account”

Original post blogged on b2evolution.

Virtual PC 2007 Network Adapter Error

Jonathan — Sun, 31 May 2009 16:58:22 +0000

Two things happened to me today when I tried setting up Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 on my Windows 7 x64 development machine. First I received an error saying "Virtual PC could not open the virtual machine network services driver." To solve this problem I had to go into the network adapter properties of the host machine and enable "Virtual Machine Network Services." Here is a picture of the network adapter property you want to have checked.

I found the solution to this problem at http://www.aspdeveloper.net

After the network service error was gone I then received an error when starting the virtual machine. The error said "The network adapter with address "00:00:00:00:00:00" of virtual machine 'VMName' failed to initialize because the address is a null address." To fix this problem I had to edit the registry by using regedit. Here are the steps:
1. Examine the key value at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002bE10318}\nnnn\DriverDesc to locate the desired host adapter where nnnn is a four digit number.
2. Look at the GUID value for the NetCfgInstanceId key value.
3. Add the DWORD key named "Flags" at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VPCNetS2\Parameters\Adapters\"guid" and set the value to 0 where "guid" is the GUID found in step 2.
4. Restart the computer.

I found the solution to this problem at http://blogs.msdn.com

Original post blogged on b2evolution.

A fatal error occured while trying to sysprep the machine. Windows 7

Jonathan — Fri, 15 May 2009 22:36:17 +0000

I was trying to create an image of Windows 7 for Windows Deployment Services (WDS) when I ran into a problem with sysprep. Every time I ran sysprep I would receive this error. "A fatal error occurred while trying to sysprep the machine." I tried both a command window and the GUI interface of sysprep. I then came across this webpage http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itproinstall/thread/8f5002e1-95b4-47bf-b031-4b72b3eb388a/. The problem seemed to be with one of the Microsoft Media Player processes. The process I killed was wmpnscfg.exe. You may need to show processes for all users. Once wmpnscfg.exe was ended sysprep ran just fine.

Original post blogged on b2evolution.

HP Pavilion dv9000 service dv9334us nvidia Video Card Driver Issue

Jonathan — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 02:03:38 +0000

After about a whole day of scouring the internet I have found a solution that seems to work. Before I give the solution let me explain the problem.

The Problem:
When I try to install a driver for the nvidia GeForce Go 7600 the computer would restart to a blue screen. The only option of booting up was with safe mode. Once in safe mode I could uninstall the driver and restart into regular mode. This went on all day trying to install video card drivers from the nvidia site and HP site. I also tried updating the bios and manually specifying the inf file rather than running the setup.exe file. The problem machine would still boot to a blue screen unless I was using the standard VGA driver.

The solution:
After many hours I came across a post here http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=51785. The suggestion to use the tweaked driver here http://www.tweakforce.com/ solved my problem. The driver acts just like the nvidia driver with the nvidia control panel, but does not cause the computer to blue screen on boot.

Original post blogged on b2evolution.

How to check if a group policy has been applied

Jonathan — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 00:52:29 +0000

A great tool I always forget about is Resultant Set of Policy (RSoP). You can run the command rsop.msc from the run or command menu. The wizard will return with the group policy set that is currently applied to the machine.

Original post blogged on b2evolution.

Running Tom Cat on Windows 7

Jonathan — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 05:29:04 +0000

I was trying to get Tom Cat to start on Windows 7. When trying to start the service I would receive an error message stating the service could not start.
After some digging around on the internet the solution to the problem was to set the environment variables.

right click computer and choose properties.
click advanced system settings.
click environment variables.
under system variables click new.
input the variable name as JAVA_HOME and the value as the path to the root of the jdk directory.
Add another new system variable.
input the variable namee as PATH and the value as the path to the bin folder in the jdk directory.

i.e.

JAVA_HOME C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_12
PATH C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_12\bin

Original post blogged on b2evolution.