Devang Gandhi

I was pretty annoyed with my computer which would lockdown if left idle for 10 minutes, and then ask for the password to log back in. This behavior is actually caused by the screensaver settings. Right click on the desktop, select Personalize, select Screen Saver from the next screen. In the Screen Saver Settings windows that appears deselect the checkbox that says “On Resume, Display logon Screen”. This should fix it.

I had tried to hook up two monitors to my Vista machine but it didn’t work. My computer has just one DVI port so I am using a Y DVI splitter. I tried a couple different ideas that I could find online but still no solution.

I figured the problem is with the display card since it would not even detect that there were two monitors connected to the computer and would just use the monitor connected to the primary end of the Y splitter. So I go to Control Panel -> Device Manager -> Display Adapters -> right click on my Display Adapters -> click Update Driver Software. I selected the option to let the computer “Search automatically for updated driver software“. Turns out the display adapter driver was outdated and the computer updated it. I restarted the machine and it detected both the monitors. Now I have nice dual display set up.

A nice quote that fits here: “People are always neglecting something they can do in trying to do something they can’t do.”

If you are using MSMQ for your asynchronous communication needs then the following resources will be of great help.

1. Motley Queue blog
2. John Breakwell’s blog (guy knows MSMQ like no one else)
3. Queuing in WCF
   

Something really bizarre happened just now. I was typing in the address bar of firefox 3.0 and all the letters started appearing backwards so devang appears gnaved.

After googling, I figured others have experienced this before too. So I did what they did. I disabled the addons like Google toolbar and firebug and shut down firefox. I actually had to kill the firefox process from the task manager window.

I got firefox back up, enabled my addons and everything was fine.

Microsoft PDC 2008 is here. This year, it is in Los Angeles, CA at the Los Angeles Convention Center, October 27-30. If interested, you can register for the conference here.

What exactly is the PDC?

PDC is the technical conference organized by Microsoft for developers and architects. It gives professional developers the opportunity to meet Microsofties, get the first scoop on forthcoming products and provide valuable feedback about how they feel about Microsoft’s products.

Who should attend?

If you are a developer or an architect using Microsoft technologies, this will be an event where you can find out new tools and services that can make you more efficient in your job or improve the design of your solution. If you are in a decision making position in your company on technological strategy then this event becomes all the more important to keep your self updated on the latest product offerings.

Why should I attend?

• Keynote presentations from the likes of Ray Ozzie (Chief Software Architect), Rick Rashid (Senior VP, Microsoft Research), Bob Muglia (Senior VP, Server and Tools).
• About a 160 technical PDC sessions on various topics.
• Hands-on labs for those who like to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty with straight-out-of-the-oven code.
• Get to know the best practices and useful tips from the insiders.
• Interact with the experts and the Microsoft staff in the lounges and get all your questions answered. Make sure to ask all your how-to questions about Vista. If you haven’t already switched to Vista, this is a good time.
• Check out the detailed agenda.

PDC highlights

• Windows 7. Check out windows 7 news.
• Cloud Computing Platform
• Oslo – Model-driven development platform
• Visual Studio 2010 and .net framework 4.0

This morning, I had a problem with the remote desktop client. The problem – I could not get the remote desktop client window to go in full screen mode. It would maximize to a window size smaller than my monitor. I restarted both the machines – no use. Then digging through the internet, I finally figured it out. The solution – pressing Ctrl+Alt+Break while in the remote desktop client.

Another piece of advice for remote desktop sessions, to restart your remote machine type shutdown /r at the command prompt.

I visited Leavenworth, WA with some friends last Sunday. We went there for the Oktoberfest but were disappointed to find out that it was on Friday and Saturday. Nonetheless the trip was worthwhile. It was a gorgeous sunny day, which will become rare going forward here in the Pacific Northwest.

Leavenworth, an alpine Bavarian village is about a 100 miles east of Seattle. It has an interesting history. The land was settled by pioneers in search of gold, furs and fertile farmland. The town began to prosper with the arrival of the railroad towards the end of ninteenth century. However in the 1920s the railroad relocated and the sawmill and the logging industry fell apart. Fast forward to 1960s, the community remodeled their town in the form of Bavarian village.

We tried some danish pastries which were really nice. The Ohme garden was closed by the time we reached there but gives me one more reason to go back. Christmas may be a good time for a revisit since their Christmas Lighting Ceremony is very popular.

We all have had to archive our old emails as we run out of email server space. You can set up autoarchive but sometimes you might need to archive that one folder manually. Here’s how to do just that.

1. Select the folder that you want to archive from the side panel.
2. On the File menu click Archive.
3. Select the option Archive this folder and all the subfolders.
4. Enter an appropriate date in the Archive items older than field.
5. Click OK.

The folder contents are moved to a folder with the same name under Archive Folders which you can browse from the side panel.

While working on WCF, I came across this error. It occurs due to Http namespace reservations and I believe it only affects Vista and later OS. This article elaborates steps to resolve this issue.

[Update] This issues does affect older versions of windows and not just Vista. The problem occurs when a service with less privileges is trying to start. It tries to register the URL but since it does not have admin privileges, the OS denies the request. This is called namespace reservation and because of it only a particular group of users have rights to HTTP URL namespace.

A couple of days ago, I needed to create a bootable windows XP setup disk from an iso image. I came across this nice article which did the trick. Note that this article primarily deals with creating a bootable setup disk from a preinstalled system. You can however follow the instructions to create a bootable disk from the iso image as well once you extract all the setup files from it. The main trick is to include the boot sector on the windows setup cd.