I'm running Windows Server 2008 R2 as a non-admin user with User Account Control turned on. The stupid Adobe Reader update thing pops up in the corner saying "Update available" and when I tell it to install, I get: Error 1625: Update failed. Update not permitted by system policy. Last time I fixed this by using Autoruns and removing the Adobe Updater thing from the list of programs to run. Of course, that means no updates unless I apply them manually, either. Today I found this forum thread with the actual answer: ...

It's taken some time and a couple of long Google Groups threads, but with a kick in the right direction from Nick Blumhardt, I've got multitenant dependency injection working with Autofac and available as a contributed library. The basic usage pattern is: Determine a strategy by which tenants are identified. That is, which tenant is making a given request? This might come from an environment variable, a request parameter, a role on the user's principal, or wherever. Build up your application container with the default dependency set. For tenants that don't...

I went looking for a list of YouTube URL hacks so I could send a link to a video and have it start at a particular time. I ended up coming across a couple of great posts that have some neat tricks. 10 YouTube URL Tricks You Should Know About 10 Useful YouTube URL Tips and Tricks My favorite two: View high quality videos: Add "&fmt=18" for stereo 480 x 270 resolution or "&fmt=22" for stereo 1280x720 resolution. Start at a specific time: Add...

That headline sounds a little foreboding, but this is important: If you are expanding your storage at home, be careful of choosing WD Green drives - only certain model numbers are good. A while ago I upgraded my Windows Home Server storage with an eSATA port multiplier and some 1TB WD Green drives. A few months later I added more storage in the form of a 2TB WD Green drive. During this time, I had installed PerfectDisk on the Windows Home Server and was using that to defrag my drives. When running it, I'd get all sorts of...

Now that I've got my calendar/contact sync issues pretty much resolved, I'm starting to think about moving to an Android-based phone. You know, because I can't leave well enough alone. Apparently Amazon has opened a new wireless store, which is interesting, and looks like, at the very least, a sort of vendor-neutral place you can see what's out there. My current leading choice, since I'm on Verizon now, is the HTC Droid Incredible. The speed and screen are appealing, and the camera is hands down better than my crappy Blackberry Curve camera (even if the Incredible gives things a...

It's not my only problem by any means, but it's a big one. I'm a perfectionist. I admit that. I'm also an engineer, the side effect of which means I'm always trying to make stuff better in some unquantifiable fashion. I've blogged before about my media center setup and some of the issues I've run into. I've also wondered aloud at how non-geeks survive and all the fiddly shit that comes along with getting all of these devices and things to work together. Recently I've moved my DVD library off my Windows Home Server onto a Synology...

I've been having some trouble with my Windows Home Server involving some potentially misbehaving hardware when put under load. This really only manifests itself when I run PerfectDisk to defrag it, but I'm gathering it's really a hardware or driver issue and not PerfectDisk's fault. When you defrag the server will entirely hang up until you reboot it. Occasionally I'll get file conflicts or lose my backup database. Not great. Anyway, I have a lot of data stored on that Windows Home Server - terabytes of DVD rips (from discs I own) - and with the problems I'm having,...

When you download a file from the internet and save it to your Windows computer, it "knows" where it came from and you have to right-click it and click an "Unblock" button to allow it to run. It's a security thing, and generally it's a good idea. What happens if you have 10, 100, or even 1000 different files you need to unblock? You don't want to do that manually. Go download the SysInternals "Streams" utility. Run it on the files you want to unblock using the "-d" option...

I'm using Google Calendar Sync to keep my Outlook calendar and Google calendar synchronized and I've noticed a couple of meetings that don't quite get synchronized right - the error message being "Participant is neither attendee  nor organizer." (Yes, there are two spaces between "attendee" and "nor."). I haven't figured out what the problem there is but I did find this interesting nugget to help you troubleshoot issues: Go to your Google Calendar log folder. On WinXP that'll be like C:\Documents and Settings\YOURUSERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Google Calendar Sync\logs Put a text file in there called "level.txt"...

I had a problem this morning where my D-Link DAP-1522 access point had to be reset to factory defaults. After clicking the reset button on the back and having it reboot, I was unable to go to the configuration page following the instructions (visit 192.168.0.50 and log in). Totally inaccessible. I ended up calling D-Link support and they explained how to do a more manual connection to the access point. Basically the DHCP server wasn't enabled so I wasn't able to get an IP address when connecting directly to the access point so I had to mangle my network...

This whole thing started out because I was trying to get Logitech SetPoint to use the built-in Windows Aero Flip 3D task switcher rather than the built-in one (I like the Aero one better). SetPoint doesn’t have an option to use the built-in one, so I thought I might be able to use the “keystroke assignment” function. (I didn’t figure out how to get SetPoint working, but I learned a lot of other things.) The first thing I discovered was that while Winkey + Tab brings up Flip 3D, Winkey + CTRL + Tab will bring it...

I develop on a daily basis on a Windows Server 2008 R2 machine. I do that because that's my target deployment environment and it's really helpful to be able to actually run the full product and debug right there on my "workstation." As such, I have the full "desktop experience" enabled - Aero, themes, the whole bit. One problem I noticed was that the drop shadows under the icons on the desktop... they just don't stick around. I set my visual effects settings to "best appearance" and everything looks correct, but if I log out and back in, the...

Around the middle of last year I reviewed ASP.NET 3.5 Enterprise Application Development with Visual Studio 2008. In a nutshell, I thought it was a good entry level book to multi-tier app development, but I didn't think it really showed what "enterprise" dev should be. Since then, I've gotten a lot of questions asking what book I would recommend to learn enterprise application development. Unfortunately, I didn't really have an answer at the time... and I still don't. The problem is that, for a dev who's never done anything much larger than a fairly simple web site or...

As part of our contract renegotiation with Verizon, we upgraded our network speed to 35/35 (35Mbps download and upload). When we did a speed test, however, we were only seeing about 20/15. I did some research and found out a few things that, well, it "would have been nice to know yesterday." You may need a new ONT. Some subscribers have old ONT (optical network terminal) boxes on the side of their house that can't actually support the faster speeds. This wasn't the case for me, but affected folks actually need someone to come out from...

To date my favorite desktop client for Twitter has been Twhirl because it's so simple. Since Seesmic took it over it seems to have been abandoned, though, so I have been trying out new clients to see if I can find something with new features like support for the new, weird ReTweet feature. I haven't found anything I like yet. First, let me tell you how I use Twitter. It seems that I must use it differently than everyone else or something because my needs seem to be different. Again, this is how I use it; your needs/uses/opinions...