If you are running out of disk space on your system partition (disk C) with Windows Vista, there is a way to free up large amounts of disk space with Disk Cleanup utility. First of all, you should get rid of all temporary files such as Temporary Internet files, Recycle Bin and files in Temp folder. But most disk space is occupied with shadow storage which keeps all of you restore points. To investigate how much space is allocated by shadow storage, open up command prompt and type:
vssadmin list shadowstorage
You will get output like this:
vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool
(C) Copyright 2001-2005 Microsoft Corp.
Shadow Copy Storage association
   For volume: (C:)\\?\Volume{xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx}\
   Shadow Copy Storage volume: (C:)\\?\Volume{xxxx-xxxx-xxxx}\
   Used Shadow Copy Storage space: 951.301 MB
   Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 1.172 GB
   Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: 4.394 GB
Allocated Shadow Copy Storage is actual disk space that is occupied with shadow storage. If you don’t need all restore points and are quite satisfied with most recent one, you can delete all previous points and free up most of the disk space. In order to do so, click Clean up button and then click OK. Then check again how much free disk space is there on your system partition, you should notice a great change :). Please make sure that you know what you are doing since deleted restore point can not be restored once you cleaned them up.

When creating a copy of fully installed Virtual PC image with Windows XP Professional, there is a couple of tasks that has to be done in order to be able to run both VPC-s in the same workgroup or domain. These tasks are:

1. Genereting a new Security ID for a VPC (New SID) on a running VPC
In order to generate new SID, download NewSID program onto your VPC from this address: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897418.aspx. Make sure to read instructions carefully. Stop IIS before using this program with the following command line: net stop iisadmin /y. Use this program to get a new SID for VPC. Please note that VPC will be rebooted during this process.

2. Renewing a MAC address (so that DHCP can give you VPC new IP address)
To get a new MAC address, shut down your VPC, then backup your .VMC configuration file. Edit .VMC file with the Notepad and remove MAC address (xxxxxxxxxx) from the following line:
<ethernet_card_address type=”bytes”>xxxxxxxxxxxx</ethernet_card_address>.
After removing the nubmer the line should look like this
<ethernet_card_address type=”bytes”></ethernet_card_address>.
After you remove the number, save the .VMC file.

3. Restarting VPC
Now reboot your VPC. Virtual PC will create a new MAC address the next time you start the virtual machine. DHCP should dedicate a new IP address to your VPC. Check it by typing following command line: ipconfig /all and check Physicall Address (MAC address) and IP address.

Disclaimer: I don’t take any responsibility for possible damange or loss of data. You do it on your own risk. Make sure to have latest versions of Virtual PC and NewSID programs.
More reading:
http://www.aspdeveloper.net/Virtual_PC/rn-739-36343_How_to_generate_new_MAC_address.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2005/02/15/373366.aspx

If for some reason enabling CLR in SQL Server 2005 does not work from within SQL Server Surface Area Configuration GUI, there is a way to enable it through good old T-SQL. Just open SQL Server Managment Studio and type in:
sp_configure ‘CLR enabled’,1 
GO
reconfigure
GO

If you get blank screen when you click Network and you have “red X” on you network icon in system tray and you just can’t establish any network connection then probably some of the following services isn’t started well:

Function Discovery Provider Host
Function Discovery Resource Publication
Network Connections
Network List Service
Network Location Awareness
Network Store Interface Service

Usually Network List Service is not started because of missing security account:

1. Right click ‘Computer’
2. Click ‘Manage’
3. Under the ‘System Tools’ section, double click ‘Local Users And Groups’
4. Click ‘Groups’
5. Right click ‘Administrators’
6. Click ‘Add to group’
7. Click ‘Add’
8. Click ‘Advanced’
9. Click ‘Find Now’
10. Double click ‘Local Service’
11. Click ‘Ok’
    ‘NT AuthorityLocal Service’ should show up in the list now
12. Click ‘Ok’
13. Close computer management and reboot

To find more about this problems check out this: http://forums.techguy.org/windows-vista/688972-solved-networking-gone-crazy-vista.html and http://8help.osu.edu/3618.html

You’ve got your ASP.NET application working just fine and you have nothing changed but “all of a sudden” you get this exception on your data binded form: “Failed to enable constraints. One or more rows contain values violating non-null, unique, or foreign-key constraints“. Off course, you’re sure that’s everything fine with your database. So what to do? First you should check out your DataSets and TableAdapters. Probably this error is caused by MaxLength property of one of fields in problematic TableAdapter. It happens if your field isn’t big enought for the data provided by  user. For example, if string fields MaxLegnth property is set to 50 and then user enters 60 characters, I’m pretty convinced that you’ll get this error. So, solution is to make MaxLenght big enough to accept user input. I hope this helps.

Depending how lucky you were after installing Vista SP1 there was a great deal of chance that you’ve stumbled on the problem where you weren’t able to create and establish VPN connection on your Windows Vista. Well, I had this problem for quite some time and after fair amount of  internet research I still wasn’t able to find apropriate solution to fix this. Symptoms were typical - I just couldn’t create and save VPN connection for later. I always get this error: “The Wizard cannot connect”. I don’t use any 3rd Party VPN software or firewalls, so I’ve tried with uninstalling AntiVirus Software (AVG 8.0 Free), disabling Windows Firewall etc. Some guys even reinstalled Service Pack 1 which actually helped. But solution is far more simpler. You just have to make sure that Telephony Serivce and Terminal Services are stared. Now, start your VPN wizard again, create a new VPN connection and establish it. Now everything should work just fine.

Even if I use Internet Explorer 7 professionaly on daily basis, I consider FireFox being an excellent browser, and in some areas, far superior to IE. There are few tweaks and turns that can be made in FireFox’s configuration to make it even faster. There are two ways in achieving this. One way is to open prefs.js file in text editor and edit it manually. If you have standard FireFox’s installaion from Mozilla, then this file could be found in folder C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default folder where UserName is your account name and xxxxxxxx is some code generated by FireFox for your particular profile. Another way is to use FireFox’s built it kind’a registry editor which shows up if yout enter about:config for the URL in the address bar and then hit enter. To make things more simple just download this PDF tutorial: How to speed up Firefox. Thanks to my good pal Mario for info regarding this topic. If you decided to edit file prefs.js manually, just add this lines to the file: Continue Reading »

Have you heard about great FLAC format ? It’s a losless compression for audio with lower compression ration that MP3 and Ogg Vorbis, but it keeps original masters untouched giving full spectrum and sonicness of sounds. Those who are interested in getting my albums in FLAC format, send me an e-mail and I will respond ASAP with direct download link. Depending on your requests probably I will release this link here, but for now, this is how it’s going to be for a while. Full albums in high quality MP3 format are still available here http://www.ocvirek.com/music.

My music is being broadcasted on stillstream.com internet radio: http://www.stillstream.com/artists.php?s=t along with Brian Eno, Steve Roach and others. Hooray.

Lately I’ve been playing with Google’s Picasa 2, so I’ve uploaded couple of hundred of photos orgaized into albums and published them. There are some photos from our family roundtrip in Germany back in 2005 and some photos from my last year’s visit to the states. Maybe you’ll find them interesting, so here they are: http://picasaweb.google.hr/ocvirek