Tired of ISP DNS service errors? switch to use Google’s. They are FAST and ALWAYS available. Primary: 8.8.8.8 Secondary: 8.8.4.4

Ever wanted to re-order your Thunderbird accounts? You can either modify the prefs.js manually 1. Exit Thunderbird if its running. 2. Locate your prefs.js file (default location is c:\users\[your account]AppData\Thunderbird... 3. create a backup , just in case. 4. Open the prefs.js in any text editor and look for: user_pref("mail.accountmana... "account1,account2,account3... line 5. Change the order of the accounts manually 6. Restart Thunderbird OR 1. Download and install...

I recently attempted to install a windows service I had created. I created an installer and deployed the msi to the target machine. When I ran the setup I was prompted for the username and password credentials for the identity to run the service. I had a local account created. The account was permissioned correctly and had been granted the rights to logon as a service. After supply the credentials, the I received the following error: Error 1001. The account name is invalid or does not exist, or the...

This has nothing to do with .Net development, but I’m sure others are running into this problem, so I thought I’d write a quick post about it. After updating my Windows PC to Adobe Flash Player 10.1, whenever I attempt to view YouTube videos (either through IE or Chrome), I get a green background and no video, some audio, and then my browser locks up. Turns out to be an issue with Adobe’s hardware acceleration feature (new to version 10). To disable hardware acceleration, you need to modify a setting...

This is one of the scary problems that turns out to have a pretty easy solution. I tried to view one of my websites hosted by IIS on my primary workstation and the site wouldn’t render. I checked IIS Admin and the site was there, but I couldn’t access it on either port 443 or port 80. In reviewing the event log I found the following entry: The World Wide Web Publishing Service (WWW Service) did not register the URL prefix http://x.x.x.x:80/ for site 1. The site has been disabled. The data field contains...

Recently I needed to determine the length of a string and perform a Substring operation on a variable in a DOS Batch (.bat) file. (Yes, people still use DOS batch files!) After some Googling and some playing around I came up with the following functions. :Substring ::Substring(retVal,string,s... :: extracts the substring from string starting at startIndex for the specified length SET string=%2% SET startIndex=%3% SET length=%4% if "%4" == "0" goto :noLength CALL SET _substring=%%string:~%start...

Keynote: HOLY SMOKES!! Now this is why I came to PDC! Announced today: Silverlight 4 Beta. Printing? Yep. Access to Local File System? Yep. Want to share your assemblies between SL and native .NET assemblies? No Problem. Want access to the clipboard? COM Interop? Web Cam & Micrphone? Done and Done. SketchFlow.. Wha!?!?! OMG thats a cool prototyping tool. Sharepoint 2010 is looking like a tour de force. The ease of development, integration and deployment. Debugging and sandbox support. Solutions...

My thoughts and observations of this year’s Microsoft PDC conference in LA. Day 1: Just registered for the conference. They had many reps available to move attendees through the registration process. We arrived early, and had to stand in line for 15 minutes, while all the reps stared blankly back at us; “We don’t open until 7.” Wow.. Great Customer Service. Let me take this moment to comment on the Conference bag this year. ITS A CHEAP PIECE OF CRAP. Literally, it looks like a “reusable” grocery...

Looks like I’m heading to LA. I’m really excited to be attending the PDC this year. I went to the PDC in 03 (where they announced WCF, WF, WPF) and it turned my brain to mush by the middle of day two. ANyone else going? Anyone like to share a RSVP promo code to save me some $$$? I’ll buy you a drink or two! Hope to see you all there

I've been using Google Desktop Search for some time now. Most of it however, I don't find useful. I never search my desktop, and store my mail on a different server, so I miss out on a lot of the Google Desktop value proposition. So why use it at all? The answer is Google Quick Search. Google Quick Search is the little dialog that pops up whenever you press Ctrl twice. I enter a phrase and hit enter and the phrase is automatically sent to the Google search page, rendering the search results in my...