Solving technology problems, one at a time
If you have change the IP address that an IIS website is pointing to, then find that when you try to restart IIS services you get the error:
The network location cannot be reached.
…you may need to use a utility called httpcfg to tell IIS to listen specifically to the new IP.
Continue readingFor a recent project I created several sets of Windows scheduled tasks that generate iCal files and FTP them to another server. Each file-generator task executes an ASP script that creates the customized iCal file.
Continue readingWhen installing Windows 7 in VMWare Fusion or Parallels, if you get the following error: The unattend answer file contains an invalid product key” simply open the VMWare Settings or in Parallels, select Virtual Machine
Continue readingMost of the users I work with with are unfamiliar with the concepts of FTP transfer or compressed archives, primarily because they never have to use them. These days, there are other options for transferring files than FTP, with a fast network and various cloud sharing services, and documents rarely have to be compressed, even for email purposes.
But occasionally, we run into something that really has to be zipped to get to the destination in working order, or where FTP is the only method available for transfer. So here are some tips and suggestions for those who have never used zip or ftp before.
Continue readingI often use the command console.log() to trace the execution of my javascript functions in Firebug’s or Safari’s consoles. The only problem is, Internet Explorer doesn’t understand console.log() and moreover, it doesn’t error out gracefully.
Continue readingWe are using an ASP script to create iCal files from a database, so another department can display the events on their web-based calendar.
Their calendar page is outside the corporate firewall. The ASP script needs to reside on and IIS server within the firewall. I needed a fool-proof way to transfer the ical file nightly out to an external web server so it could be accessed by any calendar applications that need to use it. The best way I’ve found so far is to create a batch file with command-line FTP instructions, and add it to a Windows scheduled task.
After a server containing a SQL Server database is restarted, you may get the error
Connection Error: (provider: Shared Memory Provider, error: 0 - No process is on the other end of the pipe.
Or you may get an error like the one below:
Continue reading"A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connection.s (provider: Shared Memory Provider, error: 40 – Could not open a connection to SQL Server) (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 2)”
If you work with Windows servers, then you have probably gotten used to doing without the many opensource web applications taken for granted outside the enterprise environment. Drupal, WordPress, phpBB, Moodle, etc. were all out of reach. Yes, it was possible to install PHP and mySQL, but it took a level of commitment and dogged troubleshooting persistence that few people are willing to undertake.
Well, now you can have your enterprise cake and your opensource software too! Microsoft’s Web Platform Installer, introduced a couple of years ago, makes the process of installing all those LAMP-style web apps easy. When I say easy, I really mean easy! It just works!
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If Firefox won’t launch java applets, but Internet Explorer will, you may need to change some settings in the Java control panel to turn on Applet support for Firefox. (Expert users: One sign that this is the issue rather than some Java security exception is that the Java console will be completely blank when you try to launch the applet in Firefox. _
Unfortunately on many PC’s, the Java control panel can be a challenge to find. First, check in the control panels area for “Java.” If it is not there, you may have to look in
C:Program FilesJava
for JRE (Java Runtime Environment) folders.
In the image below there are several of them. Usually you should pick the most recent one, as that is the one that is probably in use.
After installing “Umbraco,” you may get the following error:
The virtual path ‘/install/steps/welcome.ascx’ maps to another application, which is not allowed.
This is because you have installed Umbraco in a virtual directory (not at the web root of the “Default Web Site” in IIS terminology). It is a path problem, easily corrected by fixing the paths in the web.config file.
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