Obligatory Moniker's Blog

How to copy a function in Dynamics NAV C/Side

obligatorymoniker — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 05:34:20 +0000

From the Functions list right click on the bar to the right and click copy, select a new blank line, and click paste.

I know, dead simple right? Some times it helps to have these things out there as it’s easy to miss that this is possible in C/Side.

Dealing with multiple parameters passed to exe in powerhsell

obligatorymoniker — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 05:27:58 +0000

If you have ever needed to call an exe application from PowerShell and needed to pass multiple parameters to the exe then the technique I outline here will really help you out.

Declare a variable that holds the executable name as a string and any other variables you might want to use

$pfm = “pfm”

$MountPath = “T:”

As a side note the application I am calling is Pismo File Mount which is by far the best free (even for commercial use) software I have ever used for mounting ISOs

Declare all your parameters as an object array

$Mount = “mount”,”-m”,”$MountPath”

Now in your code you can do the following

& $pfm $Mount “$MSDNIsoPath\en_visual_studio_2010_premium_rc_x86_dvd_489527.iso”

If I wanted to write out all my parameters every time I could always write in PowerShell:

Pfm mount -m “$MountPath” “$MSDNIsoPath\en_visual_studio_2010_premium_rc_x86_dvd_489527.iso”

I can’t say as I have figured out why this works this way and if anyone has an explanation I would love to hear it in the comments.

How to Fix the Disk Signature Collision Problem in Windows 7

obligatorymoniker — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 13:57:27 +0000

In case I need to find this again, here is the link that will walk you through fixing VHD Disk signature collisions using Windows 7/Server 2008 R2.

http://www.howtohaven.com/system/change-disk-signature.shtml

Fix to get push e-mail notifications on iPhone with OS4

obligatorymoniker — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:37:00 +0000

I have an iPhone 3GS with OS4 and have been struggling to get push email notifications from our companies exchange account. Chanan, a co-worker of mine, has an iPhone 4 and was experiencing the same issue. All of our phones settings were configured to receive push notifications but unless you opened the mall app it wouldn’t get any new email.

He found this blog post that outlines a solution if you are trying to get your iPhone 4 to stop getting email notifications when you don’t want it to which incidentally happens to be the same solution for this issue.

The problem is caused by a bug in the iPhone software that will hopefully be resolved by Apple but here are the steps for the temporary fix that you can use to get push notifications again:

Open up your running apps menu but pressing the home button twice to get this menu:

Now press and hold your finger on the Mail icon until it starts to shake and shows a little red – in the top left corner of the app

New press the little red circle in the top left corner to close the mail app so that it is no longer running in the background and doesn’t show up in running apps menu

Now as long as your other email settings are configured for push notifications you should now be getting push email notifications for your Exchange account again. You will have to perform these steps after each time you open up your mail app as it is the mail app running in the background that somehow breaks push notifications from working properly. Hopefully this will be resolved in a future release but this is the problem I am experiencing and I am using OS 4.0.2 (8A400).

How to rebase differencing disk VHDs (or how to change the parent of a differencing VHD when the parent has moved)

obligatorymoniker — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 20:06:00 +0000

I am a big fan of differencing VHDs as the provide tremendous power when working with large database but they also come with their own set of complications.

One of those complications that can arise is when due to files being moved or folder structures being reorganized the parent VHD of your differencing VHD is no longer accessible. After you try and attach your differencing VHD you may see an error message like this one:

We can use the following power shell from a Windows 7 PC with the latest version of Microsoft Virtual PC that comes with Windows XP Mode installed to take a look at the parent property of our differencing disk to see if something is wrong

$vpc=new-object -com VirtualPC.Application
$VHDChild = $vpc.GetHardDisk("C:\NAV2010.06.10_Diff")
$VHDChild
$VHDChild.Parent

In my case I recently changed the IP address of a NAS that was storing the parent VHD and assigned a DNS record to the NAS so that I wouldn’t have to keep track of it’s IP address but now the path to the parent VHD that is stored in my differencing VHD is no longer valid.

Thankfully this is fairly easy to fix. All we need to do is add the following code so that we get a new $VHDParent object using the corrected path and then assign that object to the Parent property of our differencing disk

$VHDParent = $vpc.GetHardDisk("\\devnas\Data_Backups SQLCluster1\NAV2010.06.10.vhd")
$VHDChild.Parent = $VHDParent
$VHDChild.Parent

Now we can attach our differencing VHD without error and get back to work =).

How to attach a VHD like a regular hard drive in Windows 7

obligatorymoniker — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 19:48:39 +0000

Click Start Menu
Right Click Computer and click Manage from the context menu
Click Disk Management and wait for the right hand pane to load
Right click on Disk Management and select Attach VHD
Browse to the location of your VHD and then click OK
Now you should see a light blue disk drive in the right hand pane that represents your attached VHD
Now you can access this drive like you would any other hard drive.

How to create a differencing VHD that refers to a parent VHD that is on a network share from Windows 7

obligatorymoniker — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 15:36:46 +0000

I love the fact that Windows 7 can attach VHD disks as if they were local hard disks. This allows me to pull off some very interesting stuff that I will blog about later but one pain point has been that through the UI with only Windows 7 I cannot create a differencing VHD from a parent VHD that is stored at a UNC path on the network.

The solution to this is to install the latest version of Microsoft Virtual PC which can be downloaded form the Windows XP Mode website. After installing this you are now able to create differencing disks based on parent VHDs that are stored on your network at a UNC path as shown below:

$vpc=new-object -com VirtualPC.Application
$vpc.CreateDifferencingVirtualHardDisk("\\devnas\Data_Backups\SQLCluster1\NAV 2010.08.20 Differencing.vhd","\\devnas\Data_Backups\SQLCluster1\NAV 2010.08.20 Full.vhd")

Note: If you still have the parent VHD attached to a machine this command will silently fail. Make sure that the parent is not being used and is not attached to any machine before running this.

In a future post I will talk about some of the use cases for this technique that make it invaluable.

Hint: Multiple 300GB+ database development from a laptop with only an 120 GB hard drive as if all DBs were local

How to Learn Something New Using the Internet

obligatorymoniker — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 00:06:09 +0000

Many people are limited in what they can do because they don’t know how to learn to do something that they haven’t been taught already how to do. Well I have news, you can learn to do most anything without having to interact with a single human being. This is important because of the chronic unavailability of the human beings that would know how to do what you want to know how to do or the cost involved in soliciting those human beings to teach you. Granted many of us have been given a great many gifts throughout our lives represented in the things that people have taken the time to teach us that we may never have learned otherwise and to all those people who have helped us, Thank you.

For many things though there is a way for you to learn on your own if your willing.

Wikipedia your topic
1. Do this to refine exactly what it is that you want to learn and establish relevant terminology in your topic area
Search ITunesU for your topic and any related terms
1. You will often be able to come up with a couple of college classes and some free podcasts that are related to your topic
Search Youtube for your topic and any related terms
1. It’s amazing how much information is out there on youtube
Google your topic and related terms
1. Good old google, probably not the best place to start but once you have exhausted the others then this is where you go next

How to Access Your Computer Remotely for Free

obligatorymoniker — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 23:58:24 +0000

Many services exist out there that offer go give you access to your computer over the internet for free. GoToMyPC.com offers such services for a monthly fee. There are many services available that allow you to do this for free if you know how to use them.

Services

mesh.com
- Microsofts offering that allows you to sync up to 2 GB of data to the internet and then to as many machines as you add to your mesh
- Along with the data sync you are also able to control each of the computers in your mesh from the mesh.com website effectively giving you access to your whole computer for free
- You have to have a windows live account to use this service but that is a small price to pay for free internet browser based remote desktop
VNC (Virtual Network Computing)
- This is a server based product that you can install and configure to allow you to control your computer from any computer as long as it has a vnc viewer installed on it
- You will have to install the viewer on whatever computer you want to use as the client
Remote Desktop (RDP, Terminal Services)
- This is only an availible option on Windows XP Pro\Vista Buisness\Ultimate\Win 7 Business\Ultimate but it is the fastest option if not the easiest to configure.
- You will need to setup your router appropriately

Understanding ASP.net Applications Life Cycle

obligatorymoniker — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 23:42:55 +0000