Tips and Tricks

Installing PHP on IIS 6

Lou Vega — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:38:21 GMT

One project I'm working on now requires the use of an application written in PHP though newer portions of it are written in .NET - they wanted to host both together and I figured it would be easier to configure PHP on IIS than it would be to configure .NET on Apache :)

I was right - it was dead simple to get PHP installed and running on IIS. I simply followed the guide written here by Peter Guy. The guide he wrote covered everything I needed and I was up and running quickly...sweet!

Neat feature with Google Translate

Lou Vega — Wed, 20 May 2009 10:56:39 GMT

Maybe I'm late in noticing this, but it was a pretty handy feature so I though I would mention it.

Recently I was working with some obscure scripts that had comments written in another language. Though I had a pretty good idea what the author had intended just by reading the script logic, I wanted to see what the author's comments might have to add.

I fired up Google Translate and having traveled quite a bit I thought I would guess at what the language was. Then I noticed a choice from the drop down list that said "Detect Language" and thought to myself "Now that's a handy feature!".

I pasted my text in and hit "Translate" and Google's translate tool handily detected the source language (Dutch in this case) and spit out the English translation. Nice!

Just a tip for me about SQL Versions...

Lou Vega — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 11:15:44 GMT

Working on a database project today I got the latest drop from a co-worker to test on our deployment machine. The process had gone on without a hitch for the past few months but today the SQL 2005 database backup file he gave me would not restore on the deployment machine...gave an error during the restore saying it was "INCOMPLETE". A quick check of SQL Server versions using MS KB 321185 showed us that he was on SQL 2005 SP3 and I was on SQL 2005 SP2. Thankfully that 2 minutes worth of checking saved lots of time trying to hunt down a problem that wasn't really there. Hopefully this posted here will save someone else time and trouble too.

Minor "Gotcha!" TFS 2008 Workgroup Edition

Lou Vega — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 11:42:48 GMT

After getting used to the full blown version of TFS (first 2005, and then 2008) I ended up doing an install of TFS Workgroup Edition to play around with to see if it would work for some smaller home projects. After setting everything up, imagine my surprise when I went to access it using a named account rather that the "TFS Setup" account. I received an error:

TFS 3011: domain\user is not a licensed user

Doh! A quick check of the global group membership settings and I discovered a "licensed users" group. I put my named account in there (the TFS Setup account was already there) and my problem was solved.

Hopefully this will help someone out who's exploring the TFS 2008 workgroup edition!

Installing VS 2008 SP1

Lou Vega — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 12:38:56 GMT

After my experiences with installing VS 2005 SP1, I decided I wasn't going to get worked up over a long install for this one. So I actually started the install process before I left the office yesterday and then (gasp!) left the laptop there to go home and enjoy the evening. Came in this morning, checked the install log (it went well) rebooted and I now how an updated VS 2008 with less stress :)

On looking at the logfile it did take nearly over an hour and a half to install so I'm glad I didn't try to "do work" while it was going and now I know also to just let it install the same way when I update my VPC's later.

Notes from the field - InitializeError error #2104 in control 'Xaml1': Could not download the Silverlight application.

Lou Vega — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:07:09 GMT

So I got this yesterday as I went to do a test deployment to a clone of our production server and couldn't for the life of me figure out what was wrong...until I remembered getting this months ago when we first started developing this app on VPC.

The fix in this case was pretty simple - assuming the XAP file is named correctly and doesn't have any non-DOS friendly characters in it, just remember to add the new MIME type to IIS to handle the XAP extension. I must have scratched my head for about 20 minutes before I realized that was my only problem on the new server. Hopefully this saves someone else a little time.

A neat trick with Windows Mobile Live Search and Community Megaphone

Lou Vega — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 20:08:36 GMT

Glen Gordon just posted an entry on his blog about this and it's pretty neat. He can explain it far better than I can, so just read his blog post on this.

31 Days of Visual Studio 2008 Tips & Tricks

Lou Vega — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:19:11 GMT

Fresh from the successful completion of his "30 Days of .NET Windows Mobile Applications" (quite an impressive feat I might add), fellow Mobile Geek Chris Craft has started a new series based on one of his well received Code Camp presentations focusing on Visual Studio Tips & Tricks...he now presents "31 Days of Visual Studio 2008 Tips & Tricks". Check it out if you haven't had a chance to catch him at a Code Camp near you!

Visual Studio 2008 Performance Analysis Tip...

Lou Vega — Tue, 06 May 2008 20:20:57 GMT

If you're used to working with the VS 2005 Performance Tool (Dynamic Code Analysis) and you're starting to work on projects in VS 2008, you may have been a little surprised as I was running the VS 2008 version on existing code and getting different results than you get in VS 2005.

By Default in a VS 2008 profiling session there is a check box called "Exclude Small Functions from Instrumentation" which is checked. You may need to uncheck it in order to get more complete results on your code. An example of this option is shown below (after I unchecked it):

Then again - maybe it's selected by default for a good reason...all I know is in the initial tests I ran I noticed quite a difference in the results until I unchecked this option.

Virtualize an existing physical server using Acronis and Virtual PC

Lou Vega — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 20:47:44 GMT

So the experiment I was working on the other day was successful and now I'm in the process of applying it to other selected servers. In short what I set out to do was to take an existing server I had running, and virtualize it so I could change things as needed and move the "server" to other physical network environments as needed for testing. To do this I've taken an HP DV9000 laptop with 2GB of RAM and am using it as the virtual PC host. The other steps are outlined below:

Create a blank VPC with a new VHD that has roughly mirrors the existing setup. In my case I created a blank Windows 2003 VPC with a 70GB VHD.
Using Acronis I created a disk image of the existing physical server. I then copied that image over to my HP laptop and put it in a shared directory so I could later access it using the Acronis Boot Media.
Start the blank VPC and immediately go to CD and select to use your physical CD Drive (provided that's where you placed your Acronis Boot Disk).
Acronis Loader will fire up in the VPC session and from there you navigate to your shared folder under "Computers Near Me" to select the image you want to restore.
Go ahead and restore the image to the VPC - my images took between 30 mins to an hour to restore (12 and 13 GB images)
Once the restore is complete you won't likely be able to boot the VPC due to driver changes, different HDD, etc. Don't panic - go to step 7 :)
Restart your VPC but this time either go to CD and select to capture an ISO image or stick a Windows 2003 (in this case) install media in your drive.
Let the Windows 2003 Install Media boot and select to do a Repair Installation.
The Repair Installation is going to rip out a bunch of stuff from the existing Windows Install and plug in a new Windows Install - but all your other program settings (IIS, SQL, Etc.) will still be there.
Once the Windows Repair Install is complete you'll likely need to re-activate Windows. In my case I wasn't able to use the web based activation, so I had to call in to activate. FWIW the call-in based activation runs a lot smoother these days than it did a few years ago (when I last tried it).
Once you've re-activated Windows you'll need to hit the Windows Update site as you're going to need to re-apply a number of critical updates.
Once it's all updated you should be good to go - a virtual clone of your existing physical server.

Now granted this may seem like a lot of pain to go through but in my case I had a number of specific web sites and web services set up as well as a number of custom created Windows services deployed to this server so in the end it was easier to do this (roughly 4.5 hours) than doing a complete fresh install of Windows to a VPC, Get IIS installed, Get it updated, and then start deploying web sites, web services and custom Windows services (in the past over 8 hours to do) - and in the end I have a more flexible version of my server that I can now rather easily (it's hosted on a laptop) move to a new physical location for some of our testing (it's a weather project which requires testing in some remote locations).

Hopefully this will help others who have a similar need to virtualize existing servers!