Category Archives: Tips and Tricks

Exceed Windows Server 2008 R2 Trial Period

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Windows Server 2008 R2 does not ask for a CD key in setup, and it can be run for 30 days for free before needing to be active. You can continue to use it after 30 days trial but the system will reboot every 2 hours and run with reduced functionalities.

If you really want to evaluate or run testing on a server with Windows Server 2008 R2 installed. There are two workarounds.

Re-arm windows

Type in the following from an elevated command prompt:

slmgr.vbs –rearm

This will reset the activation expiration and the machine is good for another 30 days. You can do this up to 3 times and get 120 days free trial in total.

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Limitations you need know before installing Hpyer-V on laptop

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If you are thinking about installing Hyper-V on laptop, you need to put following into consideration. Some of Hyper-V’s design will limit laptop’s functions, these limitation are reasonable for a server operation system but would be a pain when you consider installing Hyper-V on a laptop.

You cannot connect a virtual network to a wireless network adapter

As a result, you cannot provide wireless networking capabilities to virtual machines. if you mainly use wireless NIC or all communication between the VM and the outside world would have to be through the Wireless NIC, this will turn out to be a great deal.

Power-saving features are disabled after Hyper-V role is enabled

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CopySourceAsHtml for Visual Studio 2010

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CopySourceAsHtml is an add-in for Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 that allows you be able to quickly get your code as HTML from Visual Studio, just like being able to save it as a HTML file from the Save As dialog. It’s very helpful if you frequently post code to blog or send code in email.

I recently switched to Visual Studio 2010 and noticed this plug in is not ready for Visual Studio 2010 yet. Here is how you can get it work for Visual Studio before CopySourceAsHtml owner releases an official update to support Visual Studio 2010.

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OneNote System Tray Icon Reappears

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System tray icon reappears every time OneNote is started, how to turn it off?

Turn off OneNote System Tray Icon

Go to File, click options, and then click display tab, uncheck Place OneNote Icon in the Notification Area of the Taskbar.

OneNote System Tray

Note: Turn of OneNote icon in taskbar also turn off  OneNote Snap Tool, if you wish to use Windows key + S to bring up OneNote Snap Tool to capture screenshot, you will need to have option Place OneNote Icon in the Notification Area of the Taskbar marked.

Update 5-22 The equivalent in OneNote 2007 is Go to Tools, and click Other and then uncheck Place OneNote Icon in the Notification Area of the Taskbar

Turn on OneNote System Tray Icon

Change Place OneNote Icon in the Notification Area of the Taskbar option back to marked will get OneNote System Tray Icon back.

Manage Hyper-V remotely from windows 7

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Once Hyper-V role is enabled on windows server 2008/R2, Hyper-V manager will be installed automatically. However, you don’t need to log on to Hyper-V host server to use Hyper-V manager. Instead, you can manage Hyper-V machines remotely from you Win7 desktop.

To manage Hyper-V machines remotely from Win 7, following these steps:

  1. Install Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7, download here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7d2f6ad7-656b-4313-a005-4e344e43997d&displaylang=en
  2. Go to Start > Control panel Under Programs, click on Get programs
  3. On the left panel, click on Turn Windows feature on or off
  4. On the feature list, expand Remote Server Administration roles > Role Administration Tools, mark Hyper-V Tools, then click OK
  5. Go to Administrative tools > Hyper-V Manager, launch it
  6. Now you can manage Hyper-V virtual machines from your windows 7 box. Continue reading →

Find Dead Code

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Dead code means block of code that is not reachable in application. They can cause noisy in code debugging and confuse developers. Sometimes I might spend a few hours to figure out why a breakpoint never hit.

Most of code defect is result of old function no longer used and referenced. Remove them will prevent developers from wasting time investigating wrong code. Thanks to FxCop in visual studio, now finding dead code is pretty straight forward. Continue reading →

Span Remote Desktop Across Multiple Monitors

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To span remote desktop across multiple monitors, launch an RDP connection using mstsc /span from the command prompt on your machine. This works on Vista/Windows 7. If you have a Win2K3 machine then you need have Terminal Services Client 6.0 installed. You can download it here.

Update

If you use Remote Desktop Client 7.0 connect to Window 7 or Windows server 2008 R2 remote machine, you can simply check "Use all my monitors for the remote session" to do this.

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Forget WordPress Admin Password

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After setup local WordPress environment, WordPress will generate a password for admin logon. The password is so strong that forget the password can easily happen. The easiest way to get admin password back is reset it again in database.

Here is the SQL command that will do it:

UPDATE ‘wp_users’ SET ‘user_pass’ = MD5(‘PASSWORD‘) WHERE ‘user_login’ =’admin’ LIMIT 1;

Note you need update red PASSWORD to the real password you want reset.

After the command succeeds, you will be able to login to WordPress with new password.