Windows 10, Date formats and Excel

Since installing Windows 10 I noticed that the date formatting in my Excel spreadsheets had become inconsistent. It turns out that even though I had selected my location as UK and my keyboard layout as British, the system still had the system locale and associated settings as U.S.

Something to watch out for...

Mutual Authentication (2-way SSL)

I had to look into this today for a project I am working on. I found this blog which I think explains the concept very nicely.

One Way and Two Way SSL and TLS

Clearing Windows Media Player cache

During an MP3 re-tagging session I was becoming frustrated that WMP wasn't refreshing and showing the tag changes I had made to the files on my NAS. The NAS is a uPnP server for media around the home and WMP is just one of the clients that render from it.

Restarting WMP didn't help, nor did re-starting the machine, so after a bit of Googling I found this post that help me crack it. Essentially you have to delete the WMP databases (local cache) which forces WMP to reload from the uPnP server.

NB: I had to stop the Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service for this to work (it has a read lock on one file)

Link Here

A copy of the text is reproduced here in case it goes missing ...

Hi,
Method 1: To resolve this problem, clear the Windows Media Player database. To do this, follow these steps:
a. Exit Windows Media Player.
b. Click Start, click Run, type %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Media Player, and then click OK.
c. Select all the files in the folder, and then click Delete on the File menu.
Note You do not have to delete the folders that are in this folder.
d. Restart Windows Media Player.
Note Windows Media Player automatically rebuilds the database.

Method 2: If this does not resolve the problem, clear the Windows Media Player database cache files. To do this, follow these steps:
a. Exit Windows Media Player.
b. Click Start, click Run, type %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft, and then click OK.
c. Select the Media Player folder, and then click Delete on the File menu.
d. Restart Windows Media Player.
Note :Windows Media Player automatically rebuilds the database.

Progress

It has been a while since my last post about Project Sputnik and so a quick progress report is definitely due.

I haven't had much free time to work on the project in this last month due to work activities and personal commitments. Same old same old, right?

That said, I have coded up the DAL layer for each database table in a basic form, and tested each unit. So, essentially, I now have a complete DAL for the project that performs the basic CRUD functionality. As I code up the BL and UI layers I expect that some of the DAL functionality will need to be honed in certain areas to provide extra functionality.

From here on in it is a Business Logic focus for me. For the next few weeks at least ...

Upgrading / uninstalling SQL 2008r2

This has happened to me before - sometimes when you want to un-install SQL 2008 (including r2) to clean-up before upgrading or re-installing you get an error message saying something like

Warning 26003. Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Setup
Support Files cannot be uninstalled because the
following products are installed:
SQL Server 2008 R2 Common Files
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 RsFx Driver

 
But these items do not appear in the Control Panel | Add/Remove programs applet. So how do you uninstall them?
 
Here's how:
http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/jnelson/archive/2011/08/30/159139.aspx

JSON success!

<feeling smug/>

It's a simple thing I know, but here's a screenshot from my Android phone. I have written a web service that wraps the Project Sputnik Assets Business Layer and sends JSON data. The screen shot shows the data in my SQL database on my phone. I just need to put an Android UI together now that can consume the service and render it in a user friendly way!

 

Difficult printers in Windows 7

Ok, so here's another reminder for myself.
From time to time I come across systems that have printers "ghosted" in Devices and Printers. You right-click on them, select "remove" and they're gone .... only they're not! Next reboot, there they are again! Varmits!

It seems that Windows wont remove them if there are documents spooled and un-printed (doesn't matter how old) or sometimes if there are ports that have been created and associated with a printer that are still present.

These instructions help you to remove these pesky items!

1. Right-click on the desktop, and create a new shortcut with a target of 'cmd.exe'
2. Right-click on the shortcut and select "Run as Administrator"
3. Run the printui tool with: printui /s /t2
4. Try deleting the printers. If that doesn't work...
5. Click Start > Run > Services.msc
6. Locate the Print Spooler service and stop it (Right-click > Properties > stop service)
7. Open My Computer and browse to C:\Windows\System32\spool\Printers
8. (you will need to say "Continue" or "OK" to get access to this folder)
9. DELETE the contents of that folder
10. Restart the Print Spooler service
11. Go back into the printui utility (might need to restart it using same method as above) and try removing the printers again. This time it should work. If necessary, check the "Ports" tab and remove any TCP/IP ports that are associated with the old printer
12. Finally, check any other computers on the network to see if any have mapped to the printer. Remove any mappings