Note: you might need to register at SQLServerCentral.com to gain access to the site to read the above linked article.

Turns out that it is super simple to remove that email address.  Just compose and email and start typing the address.  When you see it appear, just use the arrows to select the one that is incorrect and press the Delete key.  It will be gone forever.  Quick and easy.

If you want to clear the entire email history, you can do the following:

• Exit Outlook
• Run Windows Explorer
• Navigate to the C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook folder (substitute username with your username)
• Find the file with the NK2 extension and rename or delete it.

If you have two (or more) monitors that are the same height, you could issue the following command:

mstsc /span

When the Remote Desktop application starts up it will ask you what Computer you want to connect to.  Just enter the name or IP address of the computer and you will be connected in full screen mode across your two (or more) monitors.

Some notes from the Microsoft Help about what the /span option does and its limitations:

Matches the remote desktop width and height with the local virtual desktop, spanning across multiple monitors if necessary. To span across monitors, the monitors must all have the same height and be aligned side by side.

In order to save the /span option into the .rdp file you will need to manually edit it:

• Open Windows Explorer, and browse to the folder containing the .rdp file you want to edit.
• Right-click the file > Open With > Choose Program > Notepad (or any other text editing program you have installed on your computer)
• Once the file is open in Notepad go to the bottom of the file and add the following command: span monitors:i:1
• Save the file.

Now your rdp file will automatically span monitors when executed.

If you have any questions about them, drop me a comment here.

Creating an alias all depends on which client tools are installed on the computer you are using.  Here are the common methods for running the SQL Client Configuration Tool:

• If SQL Server 2000 client tools are installed, use the SQL Client Network Utility and select the Alias tab.
• If SQL Server 2005 client tools are installed, use the SQL Server Configuration Manager and expand the SQL Native Client Configuration node to find the node for Aliases.
  
• If you do not have any client tools installed, you can still get at the Client Network Utility by executing “cliconfg” from any command prompt.

Aliases are useful in the following scenarios:

• Create an alias that is a friendlier name than the server name itself.
• In a Development/QA/Production environment.  Using aliases allow you to keep the code base across your servers the same without having to change source code (sort of related to the last bullet).
• Enforce the use of a particular protocol.  If you get the “Cannot generate SSPI context” error you can try creating an alias to force the use of the Named Pipes.
  
• A distributed environment with multiple servers that reference each other using the Linked Servers feature.  You can define the linked servers with the aliases instead of the actual names.  This makes future moving of databases and such much easier since you will not need to chnage the linked server names in your code.
• In a high-availability environment to allow you to quickly change the server without changing all your code (such as web applications and such).

I’m sure there are other useful reasons to use aliases, but that covers a few of them that show the power of the alias function.

If you have any other good ideas, please comment on the post.

Thanks David!

http://www.quirksmode.org/dom/inputfile.html

Here is a sample of what I did (this would all go on a single line)

c:\”program files”\”log parser 2.2″\LogParser -iCheckPoint:myCheckPoint.lpc -o:SQL -server:localhost -database:IISLogs -createtable:ON “SELECT * FROM ex0810*.log TO IISLogs”

This short command line will read in all log files that start with ex0810 and import them into a table called IISLogs.  It will also create a checkpoint file so that if you run the command again it will not import records that have already been imported.

How cool is that?

Once all the importing is done you can leverage the SQL tables using whatever methods you need to.

If you need any help with stuff, send us a note at support at quarksoft.com.

During my search for such a feature I ran across a great utility from Gil Azar (and in his post gives credit to lots of others for their help). You can download the ultimate Outlook 2007 preview handler from his site.

If you are interested in some of the technical details Gil discusses them on his page and provides some really great links.

I’ve included parts of Gil’s original post just in case his site disappears one day.

A self-extracting installer, which silently installs Stephen Toub’s MSDN Magazine Managed Preview Handler Framework and Gil’s small addition, can be downloaded here

In trying to figure out a solution to this issue I ran across NcFTP.  This is primarily a *nix based FTP tool (both server and client), but it has a Windows command line version of FTP that proved to be just the tool I needed.  You can download the Windows version of the client or if you prefer they have lots of *nix flavors.

An example of the command to recursively download a web site is shown below:

wget -l2 -r -k http://www.siteyouwanttoget.com/folder1

• The -l parameter tells the software how many levels to download (I only needed 2 levels deep in my example)
• The -r parameter tells it to download recursively
• The -k parameter tell is to convert non-relative links into relative ones so that there will not be any dependencies on the original site.

So there you have it. One simple, small 162Kb EXE that does exactly what I needed (it also does ALOT more than this). Have Fun!

For example if you want to get session persisted across SQL Server reboots you can issue this command:

aspnet_regsql.exe -ssadd -sstype p -E -S <servername>

The sstype p is the option that allows for the state to be persisted. You can execute aspnet_regsql.exe -?

The way to accomplish this is to use the DBCC CHECKIDENT command.

For example:

DBCC CHECKIDENT (SalesForce, reseed, 0)

This assumes your table is called SalesForce and you want to start the numbering at 1.  If you wanted to start the number at 2000 you can substitute 0 with 1999.  There has been some discussion that has said if the table never had records added to it the reseed value itself will be used instead of the reseed + 1 value.  You should not need to use this statement for a “new” table.

Credit for this post is given to Pinal Dave over at http://sqlauthority.com/.  The specific post this I am referring to is the one at this page.

If you complete the following steps you can get a backup copy of the database on your local workstation (assuming you have SQL Server installed locally):

1. Get the IP address of your local computer using the ipconfig command or some other method.
2. Make sure you have created a share on your computer in the location where you want the backup file to be stored. For this example I am going to assume there is a share called BACKUP that points to C:\BACKUP (again, this share is on your local workstation, not the remote SQL Server)
3. Connect to the remote database with SSMS
4. Open a Query Window
5. Execute the following command (replace 1.1.1.1 with the IP address determined from step 1 and replace YourDatabase with the name of the database you want to backup)

BACKUP DATABASE YourDatabase
TO DISK = '\\1.1.1.1\Backup\YourDatabase.bak'
WITH FORMAT,
NAME = 'Full Backup of YourDatabase'

Now you can use SSMS to restore the database to your local copy of SQL Server or just keep it around in case you mess up the production database.

Another useful thing you can do is to schedule this and use the OSQL command line tool to execute the script as part of a development release or any other process. There are lots of options.

• Open Outlook
• Click on the Tools menu and then Rules & Alerts.
• Click on New Rule “Start from a blank rule”.
• Click in Step 1 box, “Check message after sending”.
• Next, click on “On this machine only”.
• Next, Click in Step 1 box, “Defer delivery by a number of minutes”.
• Click in Step 2 box, “a number of” enter the number of minutes. 
• Click on OK, click on Finish.

Now, when you click on Send, your message will be held for however many minutes you selected before being sent.  After sending an email if you realize there is something that needed to be changed, you just click on the Outbox, then click on the message to open, make any changes and click on send again.   This technique has saved me numerous times from being “stupid”.

If you ever created a form and had your users click on the submit button multiple times this is the code you have been looking for.  Be sure to check out Robyn Page’s comments for a method to block the whole form during the form submit as well.

Complete details can be found here.

One cool use of Virtual PC is as a ‘backup’ during a physical computer migration.

What I do is:

1. Setup the new computer with Windows, virtual PC, and as many of the applications from the old computer that I know about
2. Take the hard disk out of her old computer and attach it to the new computer
3. Boot up the new computer
4. Go into the Disk Management tool under Windows (Control Panel –> Administrative tools –> Computer Management –> Disk Management)
5. Select to remove the disk letter from the hard disk from the old computer
6. Start Virtual PC
7. Use the Virtual Hard Disk wizard to create a linked virtual hard disk pointing to the hard disk from the old computer
8. Then use the Virtual Hard Disk wizard to convert the linked virtual hard disk to a dynamic virtual hard disk
9. Wait a long time (usually 2 to 3 hours)
   1. Any anti-virus software should be disabled for this step – otherwise it will take a lot longer
10. Create a new virtual machine that points to the new virtual hard disk
11. Boot up the virtual machine and confirm that everything works
    1. There are a few things that can cause this to fail – and I will discuss them in further depth in coming posts
12. Install the Virtual Machine Additions and shutdown the virtual machine
13. Shutdown the new computer and remove the old disk

Once this is done – I can begin migrating data and application information from the virtual machine to the physical computer over the network. But the best thing is that if a program doesn’t work – you can just launch the virtual machine and use it there for now.

You might also run into a problem during this process that can be resolved using the following method (original post can be found here):

This post is going to focus on migrating Windows systems – but there are similar issues with migration of most other operating systems.

Problem 1: “STOP:0x000007B Inaccessible Boot Device”

You image the physical computer to a virtual machine – and now when you boot it blue screens almost immediately with a “STOP:0x000007B Inaccessible Boot Device” message.  What is going on?  Well, Windows maintains a list of ‘critical boot devices’ that are loaded in order to boot the system.  One of these devices is going to be the hard disk controller that you boot the system off of.  Sometimes – your physical computer will be close enough to the virtual machine that you do not see this error message.  However – if you do see this problem – you will need to do the following:

1. Go back to the original physical computer
2. Boot Windows
3. Go to ‘Start’ –> ‘Control Panel’ –> ‘Administrative Tools’ –> ‘Computer Management’ –> ‘Device Manager’
4. Expand the ‘IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers selection’
5. Double click the ‘controller’ entry (not the ‘Channel’ entries)
6. Go to the ‘Driver’ tab
7. Select ‘Update Driver’
8. Select to ‘Install from a list or specific location (advanced)’
9. Select ‘Don’t search. I will choose the driver to install’
10. This should display a list with your specific controller and a Standard / generic controller.  Select the standard / generic controller.
11. Finish the wizard
12. Shutdown the system
13. Attempt to migrate the system again

This is the only problem that I am going to discuss in this series that requires you to make a change to the physical system before you migrate it – but thankfully it is a non-destructive change – as you will still be able to boot the physical system with no problems after this change.