Ahhh, IIS, gotta love it. Nothing can ever be easy.
So, as I am trying to install IIS on my Dell that I just reformatted, I get this:
Cannot find the file STAXMEM.DL_ in my C:i386 dir. hmm….
well, after a little looking, if you run this command
esentutl /p %windir%securitydatabasesecedit.sdb
If you then retry the install, it should work
Ever have one of those weeks where everything is a crisis or you are in “alert” mode all week? It is pretty draining. The worst part about it is, nothing else gets done, things fall behind, etc. Lesson learned: if you have a sql database and you are seeing tons of connections and cannot find the root cause, do not run sql profiler – it just makes it worse.
As for working with databases, especially SQL, you need to monitor connections, cpu, db size, transactions, IO and you also need to reorg your indexes and update your statistics. That along with verified backups, and you should be off to a good start. Also logging failed logins and even successfull logins (sometimes) is a good thing.
There are alot of tools to assist as well (Qwest, Idera, Sql Delta, Reg Gate’s Suite, etc) – but first you need to know how to use the built in tools and things that come with SQL Server itself (profiler, watching processes, dbcc commands, and more).
Back to the burnout – if you get to the point where its non-stop crisis mode, once it’s over – go and party 🙂
So, a while back I installed Microsoft Vista Beta2 on my Dell machine. Seems that it must have overwritten the master boot record (MBR). I wanted to revert back to Windows XP Media Center Edition that came on my box, so I fired it up, and hit F12 to goto the boot selection. Where is system restore? not there – wtf. So i look online, you need to hit ctrl+F11 to get the restore partition – even though that isnt stated anywhere when booting, or the sheets that came with the PC. Do they expect everyone to have 2 computers so they can figure this out? Anyways, ctrl+F11 – not working at all. So I hop on dell.com, get on live chat, and talk to not 1, but 2 different techs – they tell me I am screwed – need to get the cd’s (which, btw, they dont ship by default anymore with new systems). I think to myself, there has got to be a way to get to that partition – i never deleted it, so it is still there. More spelunking on the internet, and I find this site. Seems that someone has created a utility to fix your mbr and get to your restore partition.
Ok – seems that I have what I need, right? Well, next step – find a old win98 cd so I can boot it up. Copy the utilities on the restore partition site to my flash drive, and boot to the cd. I run the utility, and I have one alert – easily fixable. I run the fix, reboot, and ctrl+f11 works, and I am in the symantec ghost restore partition – two clicks later – its restoring and a few minutes later I am back into winXP MCE.
My biggest gripe/question with all of this is, why didn’t dell
#1 – create this utility themselves
#2 – steer me in the right direction
#3 – ship the cd’s with my system
Now it maybe just me, but you would think they spend more $$ on support than it would cost to ship the cd’s in the first place. Anyways, I’m back to my old system, so I am happy 🙂
If you setup a intranet or internal site, and setup the security as Integrated Windows Authentication – and you still have Anonymous Access on as well, but are still getting a prompt, it is most likely you are using a domain name for your site (like intranet.myinternaldomain.com) – The way to avoid getting a windows login prompt when hitting the site is to add the site to your trusted sites in your local zone in your IE tools->options, security tab.
debacle with a capital D – IIS Admin service just doesnt work haphazardly.
if you get this error, you will find many solutions, and maybe one that works – here is what worked for me:
– stop and put in manual start mode all non-Microsoft services (using msconfig)
– Downloaded the AUthdiag tool, ran it and fixed all problems found;
– follow steps in KB article ID 271071 at
– Set the “Remote Procedure Call (RPC)” service to Log On as “Local System account”;
– reboot (because RPC can not be restarted;
– IISAdmin now works correctly.
Glimpse of Google Night at Agile 2006. Google threw a huge bash, and all I got was a lousy tee shirt. But it was still cool. Thought maybe there would be more Google stuff, or a presentation, but they just put on the party.
I attended the Agile 2006 conference this year, and it was a good conference. Information overload, as usual. I still need to go through all my notes and powerpoint slides and make heads or tails of alot of things. Two of the most intriguing speakers were Scott Ambler who talked about Database Refactorying and Agile Database Design, and Michael Feathers, who talked about Agile in general, Coaching, and Dealing with Legacy Code. Other good talks from Ward Cunningham, Ron Jeffries, and the like. A few of the sessions I started out in, I ducked out as they werent what I expected, but overall the sessions were good and gave good info. Ill look to post up more info on Agile and things I find useful in the future.
Blah – I hate stupid error messages. Basically everywhere you look to see what causes this, it has something to do with cacading drop downs. I have ran into this error twice and the fix is – change a “=” to a “#”
if you have in your aspx page
it will throw that error if it is in a repeater or data control. Change it to
and viola! it works 🙂
What does your Google search history tell about you? (if you have it turned on). Over the last year, here are my top sites. Pretty intresting.
Top sites
1. msdn.microsoft.com
2. http://www.codeproject.com
3. http://www.microsoft.com
4. blogs.msdn.com
5. http://www.codeguru.com
6. en.wikipedia.org
7. http://www.experts-exchange.com
8. weblogs.asp.net
9. support.microsoft.com
10. http://www.dotnet247.com
This is why I love computing, you learn something new all the time. WMIC (Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line tool) is something I have never even heard of until yesterday. It always seems when I am looking for a solution I find something in the blogosphere around the same time, but this is crazy. With this tool, you can query WMI info straight from the command line, this pretty much makes getting info on your machine 1000% times easier, especially from batch files, or programming interfaces. As an example, to go along with my “NumLock Debacle Fixer” in my previous posts, I used this
wmic SystemEnclosure get ChassisTypes
on the command line, and it throws me back a number. With a little research, I found what that means
10 = Laptop
12 = Docked
5 = Pizza Box (wtf??)
Anyways, I tested it and yeah, it gives me the correct info, so in my program, I shell out, get the output back, parse it out, and I have what I need, but the cool thing is, you can query any WMI info from the command line, which opens up a ton of options, especially for sysadmins and network guys. Along with utils in XP like reg.exe, you pretty much can write some powerful scripts/programs without using anything but windows utils. Of course there are API’s for programmers to do these things in code, but sometimes its more headache then it is worth, especially when you want to just write a quick batch file to do something.
What other tools or tricks have you found in xp? (shutdown -i, tasklist /s, etc)
Steve Novoselac's Blog 