Troubleshooting

Daylight Savings Time

Chris Eargle — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 13:51:07 GMT

Daylight Savings Time went into effect this past Sunday, and nearly all of my devices updated correctly. However, my Windows XP work PC didn't.

My first inclination was to check the date/time settings.

It was set to Eastern Standard Time, and the checkbox for adjusting for daylight savings was checked. I then set the clock ahead an hour, but a few minutes later it reverted back when it synchronized with the time server.

I contacted the system administrator, and he said that my workstation was one of two in the organization having this problem. He said he would get back with me when he had a solution.

The meetings I was scheduled to attend kept confusing me throughout the day, so I decided to figure it out for myself. My research showed that the daylight savings time date was changed recently, and a patch was pushed out through Windows Update for XP machines (Vista and up have it already). Since network settings prevent me from using Windows Update, I couldn't pull the updates manually. I checked my event log to see if there were any issues, and it showed that my computer was having trouble connecting to the update server.

More research took me to a Microsoft knowledge base article. I followed the instructions there and it fixed my date time settings. Because the article is such a pain to read, I'm including the necessary files here if you need to fix your own machine. Download the zip file and extract the files. The double-click TZUpdate.reg. The run refreshTZinfo.vbs.

TZUpdate.zip (6.63 kb)

The Path Is Not a Legal Form

Chris Eargle — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 01:08:00 GMT

I've been struggling through a Team Foundation Server 2008 install with Sql Server 2008 over the weekend. It seems to be having an especially hard time with the SQL Server Reporting Services. After analyzing a few things, I determined that the configuration tool was having an issue due to some prior installations of software. The report urls were pointing to a SQL Express directory.

I went about setting up the virtual directories manually. This required setting up an application pool, and I assigned my service user to run the pool. After I did that, I had to grant the user write access to the RSTempFiles folder. Then I received an error when browsing the site, "the path is not a legal form."

I couldn't find a site anywhere with a solution, though there was a dead thread on the old msdn forums with the same problem with SRSS. Since the tubes held no hope for me, I had to resort to old fashioned troubleshotting.

If you receive this error, you need to add your application pool user to the SQLServerReportServerUser (followed by $servername$instancename) group. It's that simple, but the error doesn't indicate what is necessary to fix it.

Hung Database Restore

Chris Eargle — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 23:23:28 GMT

When doing a deployment today, the build script errored out with a SQL timeout.

C:\Projects\MyProject.proj (2374,3): error: PROJDB: Error # -2 on Line 0: Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding.

The line in the msbuild script was executing a backup/restore script to refresh the database for one of our teams. I decided to change the StatementTimeout for the ExecuteDDL task and try again. This time I received another error.

C:\Projects\MyProject.proj (2374,3): error: PROJDB: Error # 4060 on Line 65536: Cannot open database "PROJDB" requested by the login. The login failed.

C:\Projects\MyProject.proj (2374,3): error: PROJDB: Error # 18456 on Line 65536: Login failed for user 'DOMAIN\BuildUser'.

Why would my database login be messed up? I jumped onto the database server through Management Studio and discovered that the database was stuck in the Restore state. I waited for a while to see if it would go away, but it became clear that it was hung. I googled around to see what needed to be done to fix it. Someone suggested that running the following command would take it out of that state: RESTORE DATABASE <dbname> WITH RECOVERY. It didn't. Instead, I received an error that you can't alter the database while it is being restored.

I finally solved the problem by deleting the database, adding a new database with the same name back, then running the restore script.

MSI Compilation Error

Chris Eargle — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:18:45 GMT

While building a new Web Deployment project, I received the error "Unable to build project output group 'Content Files from (Active)." I checked all of my settings and everything seemed to be correct.

I found a support article on Microsoft's Help and Support site describing why this occurs. Apparently, if you have missing files in your project this will happen. In this case, it turns out that a folder of images had been moved in the source tree but not in the project file. This was causing them to all show the the yellow exclamation symbol. Even though the project has "warnings as errors" turned on, the compiler will not complain about missing content files since it does not need to do anything with them.

If you get the error, quickly scan the project you're deploying for any missing files. It will be a file with the Build Action set to Content.

Fixing a Bad AVG Install

Chris Eargle — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 01:19:10 GMT

Today I worked on a friend's PC with a bad copy of AVG Free installed. Whenever I tried to run it, it would throw the message "Could not initialize AVG Anti-Virus kernel interface."

I tried uninstalling it, but I received the same message. I ended up googling the error message, and someone suggested to download the installer to actually remove it. Unfortunately, the installer quickly said it had uninstalled... too fast to have actually done anything.

When I tried to install it again, it again went too fast to have performed any tasks. When I tried to start AVG, I received the same message.

I tried deleting all the files, but avgse.dll refused to delete; even after using Unlocker.

I went into regedit, searched for "avg" and deleted everything related to AVG. Be careful if you decide to do this as you can seriously screw your system up, particularly since you will get more hits than stuff related to AVG (Acrobat has a few entries).

I rebooted after doing this and was finally able to delete avgse.dll and the entire Grisoft folder. Finally, the reinstaller actually worked!