Moving the database location for Dynamics CRM Outlook Client

When you install the Outlook client for Microsoft Dynamics CRM version 4 it asks you if you want to make it "Offline capable".

If you choose yes it will create a SQL Server Express edition database in the following folder in windows XP.

C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Microsoft\MSCRM\Data

If you work for a large company and the IT dept has implemented roaming profiles for your domain login account its is likely that they have set a limit on the disk space that you can store on your desktop and "Application Data" folders. If so I feel your pain, my limit is currently 50MB which is minuscule and when you go over that limit you can no longer logoff until you clear down the space.

When I first sync the outlook client with CRM it creates a database file called MSCRM_MSDE.mdf which is approximately 40MB in the MSCRM\data folder mentioned above.

I first thought there may be some registry entries that I could change to point these files elsewhere but alas no.

If you want to move this file elsewhere then follow these steps:

• Shutdown Outlook
• Open SQL Server Management Studio (if you don't have this there is a free express edition available)
• Connect to the database by using your machine name with \CRM appended to it (i.e. LAPTOP1\CRM)
• Browse to the database name and click "Detach"
• 
• You can then move the files elsewhere anywhere on the file system outside your profile locations i.e. c:\files\outlook crm\
• Then right click the MSCRM_MSDE database and reattach in the new location.

When CRM starts up it will be blissfully unaware of the new location of the database files and you will have all your profile space available again.

MWG Atom Life phone on the Three 3G network

I have been using Windows Mobile based phones
for a good few years now. My first was a Compaq iPaq and then an i-mate JAM all of which ran Windows Mobile 2003 SE.

I picked up one of these Mobile Wireless Group (MWG) Atom Life phones. First of all for the features it provides at €230 ex VAT its a bargain. I paid around €500 for the iMate JAM when it first came out. Windows mobile 6 is a BIG difference to windows 2003 but still not as slick as the iPhone which i got to play with for a while. This is the same phone as the o2 atom life. The headphones have an o2 logo on them and there is a MWG sticker covering the o2 logo on the front of the phone.

Everything I had trouble with on WM2003 "just works" now with Windows Mobile 6. Some nice new features too like calling contacts via Bluetooth headsets by setting a voice recording for the contact (very handy in the car) etc.

It has 3G connection coverage using the HSDPA network which can potentially provide 3 Mbps data transfer but I suspect in reality its much less. I have no real stats on this yet

Anyway, I dumped my pay monthly o2 contract and signed up with 3 Ireland to try and reduce my bill. Its early days but my experiences so far are :

1. 3 do not support any windows mobile devices on their network so your out of luck getting network setting for it.
   
2. WiFi access is simple and easy to setup, detects the network, enter security key and then your connected. Usual battery drain applies. I have noticed some problems reconnecting to the WiFi network in work after the device has gone into standby.
   
3. By setting up a network connection for the "Celular line (GPRS)" called "3ireland.ie" it allows data access to the HSDPA network. This provides
   
   1. Windows Live Messenger access (free)
      
   2. Skype access (although the device or connection is too slow to properly talk even when connected via WiFi) (free)
      
   3. Web browsing (data charges apply)
      
   4. POP3 and IMAP email support (data charges apply)
      
   5. Exchange and Hotmail access (data charges apply)
      
4. Vodafone and o2 have the push email access and charge €20 per month with it. As a result they block people that are not signed up to it from connecting to POP/IMAP servers directly to download their email the old fashioned way. I assumed that connecting to POP and IMAP servers would be blocked on Three but there are no such restrictions so I have mine scheduled to connect every 5 minutes which is close enough to instant.
   
5. Live Messenger IM's come in the same way SMS messages do which is cool and gives a consistence approach and standard interface.
   
6. Battery life with "everything on" is not great, need to charge nightly if connected to 3G network all day, otherwise you can get 3 days before charging.
   
7. Three have a website accessible for free called "Planet 3", this has downloads of TV shows, none of these work with windows mobile, you get a message saying that "This service is not available on your device. Please use your 3 handset to access this service".
   
8. You can get access to the My 3 section of planet 3 by using the following URL on your device http://mobile.3ireland.ie/837_sc I tried lots of different URLs for different devices found on the internet but this is the only one that worked
   
   1. This allows you to "check my usage" in terms of flexiunits uses so far this month
      
   2. View your price plans and change roaming settings
      
   3. Buy Add-ons for your price plan
      
   4. Other handy stuff…
      
9. I'm missing the iMate/HTC phone pad input method. I tried to install the Resco Keyboard but after a reset the device failed to boot and required a Hard reset and wipe of all the data. I tried this a few times with no success.
   
   1. What I was really missing was the keypad T9 predictive text input that was available as a HTC application on the JAM, turns out other people think it's the best way to input using a touchscreen device too. Here is a good overview of the different types of input options under windows mobile. He comes to the same conclusion I did, the T9 input panel is the best.
      
   2. You can get a customised version of this from those dedicated people at xda-developers.com
      
      
      
      

      
      

I will post other comments as I experience them, including phone bills.

Update: 3 Ireland have just added their 1^st windows mobile device the HTC Tytn II so perhaps some of their online services will start to become compatible with windows mobile devices.

Windows Mobile 6.1 support:

This phone comes with windows mobile 6 but there is a newer upgrade to version 6.1 which has some nice new features including a windows messenger like threaded message view for SMS's

There does not appear to be any official ROM upgrade for this yet on the MWG site but there are some unofficial builds from XDA-Developers.com if you fancy risking your phone with them.

Update on 4GB RAM upgrade

In a previous post I described how contrary to Sony's spec I managed to upgrade to 4GB of RAM on a Sony Vaio AR 21s.

A small but annoying issue. Vista still thinks that there is 2GB of RAM every time to put it to "sleep"/"Hibernation". This gets tricky when it tries to put 3.1GB of memory available to windows into a 2GB disk hiberfile.sys file. The hard drive does not like this and I ended up having a system that wouldn't boot and had to be repaired using the Vista recovery tool from the Vista DVD.

Running the "Disk Cleanup wizard" on this laptop and choosing to delete the hibernation file forces Vista to recreate it after a reboot or two.

I know this blog is starting to become the "Craig's problems with his laptop blog" but I want to try and help anyone else going though similar difficulties. That is one of the main reasons I post here, to try and solve tricky problems that defy rational explanation in software development and IT.

I promise to move onto other topics soon…

The Long Road to 1080p with Vista on Sony Vaio AR Laptop

Please excuse the following post, I'm going on a rant here….

You buy a laptop with HD bluray drive and a HDMI port, then buy a HDTV with HDMI but can you get them to work ? Oh dear god no, not if you are running Vista. I upgraded my laptop from XP to Vista and that's when the problems started. Don't get me wrong I wouldn't go back to XP but the time I have wasted on this has been huge.

When I got my AR 21s laptop it has windows XP on it, everything worked, proper drivers, cool. This was the best laptop that Sony sell on October 2006, and the newer Sony AR series are still the best equipped today, you'd think they would provide A grade support. So they provide 1 set of Vista drivers after Vista ship which only partially work, a nice 1^st step, but after they have released a few newer models in the AR series the driver support stops for the older models. Its like they stopped testing driver releases from their equipment manufacturers like NVIDIA etc.

For example the latest graphics drivers for Vista don't support 1080p HD output through the HDMI port. I was about to repartition and reinstall XP to get this back so I could enjoy the bluray discs I bought when a random search brought back this Club VAIO community article.

It tells of how to install NVidia 158.43 beta drivers but it seems NVIDIA has forgotten about this 7600 GT graphics card so you have to edit the nv_disp.inf file to put in your own hardware IDs to get the drivers to install. The article kindly supplies the necessary file edited for you. This was great and after 4 reboots I have 1080p on my HDTV. Only problem is that whenever I launch the WinDVD BluRay player I get a blue screen of death (BSOD) in the nv4_mini.sys file.

Well I got it working finally, there is a newer beta driver called 158.45 which I could not find on the NVIDIA site. I got them from SoftPedia. I had to figure out what the edits were (using WinDiff) and insert the lines myself in 2 places (shown in bold)

[NVIDIA.Mfg.NTx86.6.0]

%NVIDIA_G80.DEV_0191.1% = nv_NV3x, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0191

%NVIDIA_G80.DEV_0193.1% = nv_NV3x, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0193

%NVIDIA_G80.DEV_0194.1% = nv_NV3x, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0194

%NVIDIA_G73.DEV_0399.1% = nv_NV3x, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0399

%NVIDIA_G84.DEV_0400.1% = nv_NV3x, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0400

%NVIDIA_G84.DEV_0402.1% = nv_NV3x, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0402

And

; Localizable Strings

NVIDIA = "NVIDIA"

NVIDIA_G80.DEV_0191.1 = "NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX"

NVIDIA_G80.DEV_0193.1 = "NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS"

NVIDIA_G80.DEV_0194.1 = "NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra"

NVIDIA_G73.DEV_0399.1 = "NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 GT"

NVIDIA_G84.DEV_0400.1 = "NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS"

NVIDIA_G84.DEV_0402.1 = "NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT"

NVIDIA_G86.DEV_0421.1 = "NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT"

NVIDIA_G86.DEV_0422.1 = "NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS"

NVIDIA_G86.DEV_0423.1 = "NVIDIA GeForce 8300 GS"

This is to tell the NVIDIA setup program that the 7600 GT hardware applies to this installation. If anyone wants the edited nv_disp.inf file please let me know.

Now I finally have 1080p appearing on my HDTV, it looks cool. I played Casino Royale movie on it briefly. However I can't hear it because the sound does not go through the HDMI cable (even though its supposed to support it) and I can't use the remote control because Vista recognises the Infrared port but doesn't seem to accept any signs in media centre or WinDVD. Its getting ridiculous at this stage.

Firefox 3

In case you haven't heard, today is Firefox 3 download day, they are trying to set a world record for downloads.

My first impression to this was a new record in the number server crashes due to the demand but the download was as zippy as ever from the Mozilla site

Do you part...
Spread Firefox | Download Day 2008

Check out Paul Thurrott's review of the new features in Firefox 3

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4 event for the Government sector

In association with PMI we recently held the first Dynamics CRM event for the public sector in the Microsoft Atrium building in Sandyford, Dublin.

My colleague John Thompson demonstrated how to use CRM version 4 to perform the following tasks using a fictional freedom of information (FIO) system.

• Capture the information from multiple sources
• Route to the relevant user / team
• Process the Request
• Associate emails, tasks, appointments and other activities
• Integrate with a Document Management System
• Auditing
• Security
• Searching, Viewing and Analysing the Data
• Managing a Citizen Database
• Extending the Application
• Workflow
• Form builder customisation

Afterwards I talked about the CRM product from a developers perspective. How to integrate with it using web services, .Net code, windows workflow foundation (WWF) and SQL reporting services.

I then followed up with demonstrations of possible integration options such as:

• Telephony integration to show the CRM contact details when an incoming call is received by looking up the "caller ID" of the persons phone number
• Using CRM on mobile devices (using a windows mobile 5 XDA Exec device blown up on the big screen) 
• Mapping integration with virtual earth to show "CRM Account" company locations on a map and perform spatial searches to show other organisations nearby  

The entire event was recorded so we may publish some or all of it in the coming weeks as a Webcast.

It went very well with excellent feedback received from all participants so another event for the private sector may well be organised.

Windows Vista Feature Pack for Wireless

If you have Vista SP1 you should be able to get this feature pack from your PC manufacturer. Microsoft do not seem to be providing a download directly yet.

This software update includes the following components or features that improve wireless support in Windows Vista:

• Bluetooth version 2.1 support
• Unified Pairing user interface
• Windows Connect Now updates

More Info on Windows Vista Feature Pack for Wireless

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Virtual Machine available

New CRM v4 Virtual Machine is out. This is the final released v4 product, not a beta pre-release VM that was only available until now. It expires in April 2009.

A word of warning, if you are still using the v3 CRM VM it will expire in April 2008. Type Start-->Run-->WinVer in the VM to get the exact date.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Virtual Machine

These VM machines are excellent as the requirements for setting up a fully functional CRM environment with AD controller and Exchange Router would take quite some time. Used with Virtual PC undo and differencing disks it can get you up and running quite quickly and usable for multiple projects.

I am in Microsoft in Sandyford for "whats new in v4" course tomorrow so I could be ranting on about the new features in v4 in the coming days. I have started to come across a lot of limitations with v3 during the few CRM customisation projects I have been involved with so hopefully v4 will make life a lot easier.

While I am on about VMs here is a link to the Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite VMs.

Run Johnny Run

Ok, I ran a marathon last year, great achievement, well done etc.etc. but this guy is running 50 of them over the next 50 months.

I heard him on the Ian Dempsey breakfast show on Today FM radio station, he is a ex-member of the band the SawDoctors and has a few marathons under his belt already. Quite an inspiring story about his son becoming ill and being close to death so he wants to change things for other people in unfortunate circumstances by giving them MicroCredit of say €20 to buy seeds or equipment. They have to pay back the loan but with no loan shark rates.

Nice site too. Fair play

Run Johnny Run, moving to end extreme poverty

Upgrade of Sony Vaio RAM to 4GB

I have a Sony Vaio AR Series laptop (exact model Sony AR 21s) that Sony says comes with a limit of 2GB of RAM. I wanted to upgrade this to 4GB of RAM but was not sure if it would work. The reason for the upgrade is that I am using Virtual Machines for CRM and Test environments more often and the "host" operating system has been struggling to keep up with these VM memory hogs in addition to running Visual Studio, SQL Server and all the other development tools.

I got the specs of my laptop and confirmed them with Crucial.com and they are as follows

# Maximum Memory: 2048MB * (*Not to exceed manufacturer supported memory.)

# USB Support: 2.x Compliant

# Standard Memory: 1024MB removable

# Slots: 2 (2 banks of 1)

# Chipset: Intel 945PM

Hmm, the "Not to exceed manufacturer supported memory" but got me thinking. I checked out the Intel 945PM chipset specs and it should support 4GB of RAM. As I am running Vista Ultimate as opposed to XP I thought that it all should be accessible from the operating system.

The reason I thought this will work is because there are different VAIO AR series models that use the same chipset and DDR2 memory types that officially support 4GB. I think it could be Sony trying to make differences between their product models to charge different prices. This was pure conjecture however so I went with my hunch and I bought the RAM from my friendly supplier MemoryC.com in Kildare that has a good returns policy.

Actual Memory Modules Spec is: 4GB DDR2 667MHz memory kit for laptop computers. Two matched 2GB modules, guaranteed to work in dual-channel setup. 200 pins, 1.8V, CL5, covered by G.Skills lifetime warranty. PC2-5300 notebook memory kit.

I installed the RAM last night and it worked ! There is now 3,143,323 available to windows Vista 32 bit. But what about the 4GB ? Well according to this Crucial Article not having the full 4GB is normal in 32 bit windows.

<

For instance, when you install 4GB of memory in a 32-bit Windows system (the most common version; 64-bit systems are typically used only by high-end users), your system will see (and utilize) only 3GB or 3.5GB. Is the problem bad memory?

Relax, there isn't a problem with the memory. Windows allows for 4GB of memory to be addressed, but this isn't 100 percent the same as having 4GB of physical memory.

What happens is that some of the addressable memory (regardless of how much you have physically installed) is reserved for use by page files or by some of the devices that you are using, such as a graphics card, PCI card, integrated network connections, etc., so it's unavailable for use as normal main memory.

The amount of memory needed for these devices is calculated by your system at startup; if you haven't maxed out the memory in your system, it's invisible to you, and all your physical memory (the RAM that's installed) is available for use. However if you've maxed out the DRAM in your system, this amount will be deducted from your physical memory, so you can't use 100% of your DRAM.

>

Upgrading to a 64 bit Vista would make the full amount available but that's a job for another day.

The memory upgrade did not improve the Vista score though, it stayed the same at 4.5.

The old 2GB of memory will be going up on eBay shortly to recoup some of my costs. There is a noticeable speed improvement from the additional memory though when running multiple apps, especially the Virtual Machines.

HD DVD Vs Bluray battle is over

With all my new found love for my laptop this article came as a relief

Armistice: Toshiba Ends Hi-Def DVD Format War, Halts Production of HD DVD

I firmly planted myself in the Blu-Ray camp when I bought my Sony Vaio laptop in October 2006 and more by fluke than any insight on my part it looks like the Blu-Ray camp has won.

There is a amusing youtube video with Hitler in his bunker getting bad news in subtitles about Warner Bros switching from HD DVD to BluRay

Now, if Blu-Ray becomes mainstream hopefully the price of the re-writable media will start coming down and I can start burning 25GB Single layer and 50GB dual layer work of data onto one disc. They are €60 quid for 5 single layer discs at present.

The bad ambassador

My favourite blog is now The Bad Ambassador, its new, its entertaining and yes, he is "really spoiling us"….

Vista Home premium edition not good enough for .Net developer

I recently wrote a blog entry about upgrading my laptop from XP to Vista home premium which I received free from Sony from the Vista Express upgrade program. I thought that the Home Premium edition would be sufficient for development of software as I do not usually connect to a windows domain.

This proved to be wishful thinking however and I recently upgraded to Vista Ultimate edition to allow me to be able to do my day to day development. This has simplified things greatly.

The main reason I had to perform this upgrade is because of the lack of Authentication options in IIS web server. With the home edition you do not have the option to enable "Integrated Authentication" as a result I could not accurately test a lot of the web applications that I am developing and maintaining. I was able to get so far using "Basic Authentication" on the home edition but there were still problems even trying various impersonation settings. When working with SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) 2005 it would not work for me until the "Integrated Authentication" option was used.

In addition to this connecting to network shares and networked printers has become simplicity itself. Even though I am not logged onto the windows server domain when I first enter a username and password to connect to these network resources Vista then remembers this and never prompts me for this again. There is a new "manage your network passwords" option in "User Accounts" section of the control panel that looks after these passwords for you. With Home premium I had to repeatedly enter these passwords again after every reboot of the laptop.

Oh, and on the gimmick front, you get Texas holdem poker and DreamScene, which allows you to have small looped video clips as your desktop wallpaper, such as a waterfall or clouds moving.

Dublin City Marathon

Well I did the marathon on the monday, and feel every bit of it today. The day started with an unnatural 6am start. Then because I didn't know when the traffic restrictions were going to kick with road closures in I left about 6:45 to get into town. They say you should be there 1 hour early but I have no idea why they want to you stand around for an hour beforehand in shorts and a t-shirt in October weather. It only took me 15 minutes to get into St. Stephens green car park. So I was there 2 hours early. Anyway, stayed in the car to keep warm then off to the start to stand around Fitzwilliam square for an hour, managed to get a spot between buildings where the sun was peaking through and got chatting with a lady from Boston who looked like a storm trooper with a utility belt of water bottles around her. She was in great form and had good fun slagging off the "serious runners" that where doing pre-race stretching. She was waiting at the end of the pack so I moved up a bit further in an effort to stay warmer and keep out of the wind in the huddle with all the others. By coincidence the Irish comedian Tommy Tiernan was standing beside me, he was hoping to do it in 5 hours and lots of people recognised him and wished him well, I think he finished in 5:45 in the end. Must be tough being famous and in pain.

The weather was cool with a clear sky, enough to keep warm when the sun hit you but the wind was strong-ish. Thankfully it was nothing like a few days earlier when it was gale force so I counted my blessings.

So after the elite women and men we were off at 9:10am. Great feeling to be finally under way, everyone throwing away their bin bags, gloves and fleeces into the air, I kept trying to run slowly and keep it to 9 min miles. I was laughing at the amount of men going to the toilet at the 1^st turn at Holles street maternity hospital, it would have made a great picture. Then up O'Connell street and on to the north circular road, then into my old training ground, the phoenix park. Here I met a friend Mike Scally who had come out to cheer me on (he did a 3:20ish marathon 2 years before). He ended up running along beside me to chat for a few minutes. It was great to see a friendly face and help break up the distance, he had a whopping hangover though so didn't run beside me for too long.

Dublin looked spectacular on the day, the autumn sun lit the leaves on the tree lined streets and the phoenix park looked beautiful. It was really stunning and I spent the first half of the race taking it all in and feeling incredibly fortunate. The reception we got from the supporters along the course was amazing. There were people out everywhere clapping, cheering us on, handing out biscuits and jellies and sliced oranges, there were kids lining the roads with their hands out for high fives, to which I duly obliged, there were home made signs and whistles and bells and clappers. It was a terrific atmosphere and I was amazed how quickly the first 14 miles flew past. My wife Denise and brother in-laws Ian and Kevin met me near the KCR at mile 15, my children Conor and Hannah had made signs "go dad no. 1" which gave me a great lift to see them caught up in the occasion too. I grabbed some much needed supplies, a nutri-grain bar, 2 bottles of sports drink and had a quick chat before running on again. I felt great at this stage and it was nice easy running at sub 9 minute miles after this down Templeogue road, into Terenure and through Rathgar and Milltown. Then the long gradual uphill at Clonskeagh, this went on for a few miles with the last big hill at 20.5 this is where everyone hit a bit of a wall, a lot of people dropped into a walk, others stopping to try and stretch cramp out of their legs. It really was a race of 2 parts, 1^st up to 20 miles ok, then 20-26 varying levels of pain for everyone. It is as if the human body can do 20 but the last 6 are beyond it. My legs and hips where murmuring to me to stop around 20, this built up to a scream around mile 23 to stop. When I had to lift my legs to run up on the kerb at one point I realised how tight my leg muscles had become. Everyone at the side of the road is shouting, "come on, only 3 to go" but 3 seemed like a mountain at this point. I was determined not to break into a walk because I didn't think it would help all that much anyway and I would be disappointed afterwards so I kept plodding on, the mile times had gone right down at was doing 9:40+ for these miles. A lot of people were shouting at themselves either in pain or to try and motivate themselves to keep going. I found myself muttering "keep running, just to the next corner" etc. which only vaguely helped. I can only imagine what the spectators thought of us at this point in the race, everyone must have looked a right state. I would highly recommend Hal Higdon's training plans because sticking to it (as much as possible) was probably the reason I did not suffer from cramp and prepared me well for the day.

On the 25th mile we turned back onto Pearse Street and I started to get some white clouding appearing in my vision in the sunshine. I knew this was a bad sign of dehydration and could mean that I was nearing passing out so, I slowed down a bit and it eased off. Then we turned the corner at college green and onto the final straight at Nassau Street. It's a pity the finish line was hidden around a corner in Merrion square because it would have been a great morale lift to see it off in the distance. About half way down the street I started to get a buzz and almost visualise finishing, the pain seemed to go away briefly and I was able to accelerate again so I was nearly sprinting by the time I turned to corner to see the finish line, thank god it wasn't too far around the corner or it could have been embarrassing as I ran out of steam. I wasn't able to see anyone at this point the crowds were a blur as I tried to focus on the finish and mask out the pain, I knew I was close to being under the 4 hour mark, but not sure how close, then relief as I crossed the line and broke into a hobbling walk something akin to a John Wayne swagger. I was hoping to finish under 4 hours, the chip time in the end was 4 hours and 34 seconds, damn, but I didn't care, I could not have run those last few miles any faster, my overall place was 3,282 out of the approx 11,000 participants.

You get the medal and finisher t-shirt and are then herded through baggage collection areas. I could not find Denise, Ian and Kevin anywhere so I walked back to the car and rang them from there. I was fairly hobbling at this stage but I think the fact that I kept walking has probably aided by recovery in the subsequent days. The spectators standing around were congratulating me on the street as you hobble past them which adds to the sense of achievement. I did sit down for a few minutes on a bench in the Merrion square park and the relief of taking the weight off my legs was like a warm blanket. I met up with the family in Sinnotts pub under Stephens green where I ordered the best pint of Guinness I think I have ever tasted, it was a poor choice of pub though given the 3 flights of steps to get into it and more steps to get to the toilet. Stairs are not your friends after running that distance. There were several other marathon runners there obviously with the same idea I had. We all looked pretty smug with our medals on and pint in hand.

Apparently now that I have done a marathon it is quite addictive and a lot of people go on to do other marathons in subsequent years travelling around the world doing the iconic London and New York marathons. I heard quite a few people along the way listing off other marathons they had done that year and how they compare to the Dublin one. I am not even considering this yet though. I have heard the experience likened to childbirth, you would not even consider doing it again until the memory of the last time has faded away.

I saw Tommy Tiernan interviewed on RTE news after he finished, they asked him "Would you do it again?", his reply was "yea, sure, I'd do it again now if you keep the roads closed til Christmas", fair play Tommy, quick thinking on tired feet.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the whole day, the last few miles were tougher than I expected and it was certainly nothing I experienced during my training plan. This did not take away from the overall enjoyment it though. As a nice added benefit of it all I also raised over €1000 for Parkinsons association of Ireland, many thanks to all the friends, family and co-workers that sponsored me.

Detecting if JavaScript is enabled in a browser

A project I am currently working on has just had an accessibility review performed by cFit and one of their suggestions was to cut down dependency on JavaScript or at least tell the users that the website requires it.

In ASP.Net you have a great feature to detect the "browser capabilities" and determine if it's a mobile browser, supports javascript etc.

Unfortunately this will only tell you IF the browser CAN support it and not if it is currently turned ON or OFF. As a result all versions of IE and Mozilla will always return YES to javascript even though the user may have turned JavaScript off.

When looking for a solution there were a number of options such as getting the browser to redirect using javascript on the page load and if the redirect works then you know its enabled etc.

As I only want to display a warning to the user to enable javascript I went for a low tech solution. Simply putting

<noscript>To use this site you must have Javascript enabled, please enable javascript to continue...</noscript>

In the master page will show a warning to non-javascript enabled users and nothing to everyone else.

Using Nike sport iPod Nano accessory with any trainers

I was looking into getting this accessory for an iPod nano that wirelessly transmits from your running shoe to your iPod nano which is small enough to bring on runs with you.

Apple Store Nike + iPod Sport Kit

I like the idea of being able to track my running progress with a Nano. I was not impressed with having to switch to Nike running shoes from my Asics to use it. There is a notch that's cut into Nike's new shoes for the transmitter to fit into. Since the Sport Kit transmitter is just an accelerometer there is an easy way to attach it to shoe laces instead.

I have seen some home made Velcro versions of sticking the transmitter into your laces but I wouldn't fancy its chances of staying in there during a long run when marathon training. After a bit of searching there is a product to do this called Shoe Pouch

 

Microsoft Posts 2 major vista patches for download but not via windows update

Two major Vista fix packs are now available for download which I can highly recommend downloading. The 2nd of these fixes a "insufficient resources" bug which I have encountered MANY times and nearly made me go back to XP where you can not copy large files from a network share regardless of the amount of free space you have. Extremely annoying for copying video files and Virtual Machine Hard disks. After installing these patches things started working as expected again.

There are a number of other fixes that are essential for laptop users to do with hibernation. Full details below, why these are not being available via windows update are beyond me, I checked a number of times on "update tuesday" just gone and no sign.


938194 Vista Compatibility and Reliability Pack
This update resolves a number of individual issues which may be affecting some computers running Windows Vista. These issues have been reported by customers using the Error Reporting service, product support, or other means. Installing this update will improve the reliability and hardware compatibility of Windows Vista in a variety of scenarios. Some examples of the improvements contained in this update are:
* Improved reliability and compatibility of Vista when used with newer graphics cards in several specific scenarios and configurations.
* Improved reliability when working with external displays on a laptop.
* Increased compatibility with many video drivers.
* Improved visual appearance of games with high intensity graphics.
* Improved quality of playback for HD-DVD and Blue-Ray disks on large monitors.
* Improved reliability for Internet Explorer when some third party toolbars are installed on Vista.
* Improved Vista reliability in networking configuration scenarios.
* Improved the reliability of Windows Calendar in Vista.
* Improved reliability of systems that were upgraded from XP to Vista.
* Increased compatibility with many printer drivers.
* Increased reliability and performance of Vista when entering sleep and resuming from sleep.



938979 Vista Performance and Reliability Pack
This update resolves a number of individual issues which may be affecting some computers running Windows Vista. These issues have been reported by customers using the Error Reporting service, product support, or other means. Installing this update will improve the performance and responsiveness for some scenarios and improves reliability of Windows Vista in a variety of scenarios. Some examples of the improvements contained in this update are:

* Improves performance in resuming back to the desktop from the Photo and Windows Energy screensaver.
* Resolves an issue where some secured web pages using advanced security technologies may not get displayed in Internet Explorer on Windows Vista.
* Resolves an issue where a shared printer may not get installed if the printer is connected to a Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 system and User Access Control is disabled on the Vista client.
* Resolves an issue where creating AVI files on Vista may get corrupted.
* Improves the performance in calculating the ‘estimated time remaining' when copying/moving large files.
* Improves performance in bringing up Login Screen after resuming from Hibernate.
* Resolves an issue where synchronization of offline files to a server can get corrupted.
* Resolves a compatibility issue with RAW images created by Canon EOS 1D/1DS Digital SLR Camera which can lead to data loss. This only affects RAW images created by these two specific camera models.
* Resolves an issue where a computer can lose its default Gateway address when resuming from sleep mode.
* Improves the performance when copying or moving entire directories containing large amounts of data or files.
* Improves the performance of Vista's Memory Manager in specific customer scenarios and prevents some issues which may lead to memory corruption.


This graph gives an idea about the performance improvements available from TechPowerUp.com ...

Vista Upgrade of Sony Vaio AR

I did not want to have to reinstall all my applications and do a Clean install of Vista Home Premium which would involve hours reinstalling Visual Studio .Net, SQL Server and all the development tools and programs.

Preparation

Ran the vista upgrade advisor and it told me to uninstalled McAffee virus protection, Toshiba Bluetooth stack and Sonic Solutions Software. It didn't tell me to uninstall ZoneAlarm but the upgrade failed a few times until I figured out the DLL that was causing it to fail was from ZoneLabs.

Then I ran the upgrade to Vista Home Premium that I got from the Vista Express Upgrade program. This was because I bought my laptop between October 2006 and January 2007 so was entitled to a free version of Vista.

Vista's first boot

Nothing worked, the screen was in the default 1024x768 mode and very few devices detected.

Went through the Driver installation CD and Applications CD received from Sony. You can also get these drivers and apps from

http://support.vaio.sony.ie/downloads/updates/updates.asp?site=voe_en_IE_cons&c=0&s=VGN-AR&m=2418&os=7&osl=1

The Sound drivers were the most problematic. I have to uninstall all drivers from the windows device manager and then run the "SigmaTel" installer in "XP compatibility mode" before it would install correctly. Now I have sound working from the headphone ports etc (which the default windows sound driver knew nothing about). When I was using the new "Media Centre" (which is a big improvement on the MCE 2005 version) to play tunes at a poker night I was having at home the audio kept breaking up maybe once every 3-4 tracks.

The built in WebCam is still not working after installing the correct apps and drivers. Getting the latest version of the graphics card drivers was difficult for the NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 GT card on this laptop, I tried numerous installations which failed. I will also keep an eye for updated NVIDIA drivers because currently 1080p playback through the HDMI port is not available in vista (but is under XP). I have yet to get a proper 1080p LCD TV to take advantage of this so it's not really an issue for me yet…

Installing Applications

I installed the FREE AGV virus scanner and an updated free ZoneAlarm for Vista. Photoshop elements which was pre-installed at version 4 was upgraded to version 5 for free to work under vista using the upgrade tools on the applications cd.

Unreal tournament 2004 and Flatout 2 are the only 2 decent games I have installed and they both run under vista without a problem.

To connect my Pocket PC phone worked ok with the new Sync centre but there is an upgrade for the "Windows Mobile Device Center" available for Vista version 6.1 that is worth getting and replaces activesync.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/devicecenter.mspx

Software Development under Vista

Visual Studio .Net Pro 2005 and SQL Server 2005 worked ok for me (when running as an Administrator by changing the shortcuts) but you may need to run the SQL 2005 Vista Provisioning tool after the upgrade the get the security permissions setup correctly.

Built in Windows Firewall, allow IIS web traffic if you want to host web apps. To do this turn on the inbound firewall rule for IIS traffic (port 80). Start à Admin Tools à Windows firewall with advanced security, look in the "Inbound rules" section and turn on the "World wide web services HTTP traffic in" rule. Otherwise your PC will be inaccessible to anyone trying to get to a website hosted on your IIS machine. Better yet, uninstall it and use ZoneAlarm.

The new IIS console takes some getting used to, I had to reconfigure some previously working IIS virtual directories by setting them to use a "classic .Net 2.0" application pool, then they worked fine.

Performance

The performance score I got for Vista was 4.5 with the 2gb of memory being the lowest thing that dragged the other scores down. I have tried putting in a SD card into the built in slot and used it for "readyboost" but have not noticed any speed improvements yet and the additional memory from the SD card does not show up in Task Manager, I will leave it there and monitor its progress.

Java weirdness

I use Firefox as my default browser for both development and general surfing. The main thing I have to use internet explorer for is online banking using AIB Internet Business Banking ( IBB ) and to file company returns using the Revenue On-Line service (ROS) www.ros.ie.

Both these sites worked under XP but neither worked under vista at first. I think IBB uses the Microsoft Java Virtual Machine (VM) and ROS uses the generic Sun VM. To get both of these to work I have to do some trickery. First install the latest Java from Sun this is required to work for ROS this will enable the option under Tools menu, "Internet Options", Advanced in Internet Explorer saying "Use JRE 1.6.????? for <applet> (requires restart)". To get ROS to work this must be ticked, to get IBB to work this must be unticked. Both work now under these circumstances. You have to install KCrypro for the ROS site with Internet Explorer running in Administrator mode.

Conclusion

It took a LOT of time and effort to upgrade from XP to Vista and some things still do not work. I am unsure how much easier it would have been if I went for the "clean" install instead of the upgrade but I suspect I would have had the same device driver issues. I can't help feeling I have taken a step backwards to get this latest whizzbang features.

Vista looks nice, Flip3d gets ohh's and ahh's whenever you show it to someone, I thought this was originally a gimmick but I have actually found it quite useful when switching between similar windows that look the same in a small thumbnail that ALT+Tab would give you. The Windows Explorer enhancements, new start menu etc are all more intuitive. User account control is annoying but I am leaving it on for the time being to see if it actually protects me from a stupid decision at some stage.

Update: 23rd July 2007

If you want to get approx 4GB of space back after upgrading from XP then the $INPLACE.~TR and $WINDOWS.~Q folders are left over temp files from the upgrade and can be safely deleted.

If you don't feel comfortable deleting them outright, fire up the Disk Cleanup utility (click Start and type Disk), select the Files discarded by Windows upgrade item, and then click OK.

Forged spam emails from my domain

I was down in Cork for TheWho concert at the weekend which was a great gig at the Marquee, however when I loaded outlook on Sunday evening to catch up on my emails I had over 1000 emails from various mail servers around the world saying that "Your mail could not be delivered" and "Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender".

It appears that someone has used an email address at my spotlightIT.com domain as the forged "from" address in a spam run to quite a lot of people and these mail servers are sending the email address back to me even though I never sent them. They are the usual spams for viagra etc

I did a search and apparently this happens quite a bit

My Short Life As An Unintentional Spammer

My email address being forged for sending out spam

Just in case anyone is trying to track down who send on these spams please realise that no one at spotlightIT.com has had any involvement and if you look at the headers of the email message you should be able to determine this.

It appears that there is little I can do about this but hope that they do not use my email address again.