SINERGIJA 09, Βελιγράδι, Σερβία – Ημέρα 0

Ξεκινάει σήμερα το ΙΤ συνέδριο SINERGIJA 09 της Microsoft στο Βελιγράδι της Σερβίας. Το ταξίδι ήταν πολύ καλό και η πόλη ακόμα καλύτερη. Τεράστιοι δρόμοι, τέλεια ρυμοτομημένη αστική περιοχή και άφθονο πράσινο είναι τα βασικά χαρακτηριστικά της άκρως φιλικής παραποτάμιας πόλης στην οποία θα γίνει το συνέδριο.

Η πόλη χωρίζεται σε δύο βασικές περιοχές: το κέντρο ή «παλιά πόλη» και το νέο Βελιγράδι. Στο νέο Βελιγράδι υπάρχουν κυρίως γραφεία εταιριών και από ότι μας είπαν οι ντόπιοι, δεν έχει κάτι να δεις. Το δωμάτιο μου έχει την ακόλουθη θέα από το νέο Βελιγράδι:

Windows Vista Service pack 2 cleanup tool (Compcln.exe)

Recently, I was trying to free up some disk space on my C:\ drive. Back in the windows XP era, I used to delete the hidden blue folders (compressed folders with funky names like $NtUninstallKB975025$) in c:\windows\ that contained the uninstall information of each and every update. In windows Vista SP2, Microsoft provided a cleanup tool to do so. Simply open a command prompt (start+R, type “cmd” and press enter) and run “Compcln”. If you have UAC enabled you will get a prompt to allow the program to run. Click continue and then answer “Y” in the command window that will pop up. This will delete all the unnecessary files that are required to uninstall the SP2 (what’s the point of doing so since SP2 increased tremendously the OS’s performance?), freeing up a lot of disk space.

Enjoy!

PS: For windows vista sp1 you can use the vsp1cln.exe tool.

Automatically Print Both Sides with HP LaserJet P2015dn and Window 7

Since i upgraded my laptop with Windows 7, i couldn't figure out how to automatically print in both sides with my office's HP LaserJet P2015dn. On windows XP and Vista that had "HP LaserJet P2015 PCL5 Plug and Play Print Driver Package" HP drivers installed, there was an easy-to-find-and-understand option (Two-sided Printing) on Print → Preferences → Printing Shortcuts tab. Unfortunately, on Windows 7 the only driver available is the one coming with Windows 7 but there is no such tab and the closest option to it, is to print duplex manually.
Today i tried to fix this, but having spent allot of time using the good old fashion way of trial and error, I decided to call HP's support. They tried to help (not that effectively) but i managed to find the solution by my own while i was waiting for reply...

So here are the steps to fix this:

Towards voice modem and skype integration

I finally made some time to fix up an old pc which has a voice modem installed. I wanted to test the so called skype gateway solutions but without any luck I must say. The closest I got was teleon’s solution (http://www.teleon.net/). Let us suppose we have two skype accounts A and B that both have each other in their contacts. Teleon’s solution promises that if you have Skype opened (with contact A logged in) and you run their server, contact B may sent contact A, an “atd xxxxxxxx” where xxxxxxxx is the desired number to call. Teleon’s server replies to contact B that the request will be handled. After that contact B must make a skype call to contact A. This call is automatically answered by the server while the modem starts (theoretically) dialing the requested phone number and thus contact B can now speak with the requested phone number. In practice, this whole scenario works up to the point the server must dial the phone number. The modem opens the line but never makes the phone call (and I have disabled the wait for dial tone just in case). Any way I lost a couple of hours trying to make it work but I couldn’t and the company seems to be a ghost (since the emails bounce back) so I think I will not be getting any help on that product.

Disabling OMCI free space event notification

My latest laptop is a DELL Precision which comes with OpenManage Client Instrumentation (OMCI). This program informs us in case of raid failure which is good but also annoys us when a disk is running low on disk space. Since running low on disk space is a relative thing (in my case it was 6Gb free space!), I was receiving disturbing message boxes with the following message:

Disk free space has dropped below the minimum threshold. Free up space on your
hard disk drive by:
1. Backing up your data to a tape backup, ZIP or network drive.
2. Delete unused files.
If you are unsure which files are safe to move or delete, contact your Help Desk or consult your software manuals.

Building openvpn with enable-password-save on windows

Although I know it’s against security best practices I have just finished building my own version of open vpn 2.1 RC 13 passing the --enable-password-save option (you may download it from here). Thus I can now save the credentials in a plain text file. If you can’t acquire private keys and you don’t care about security that much or you think that you can trust your credentials in a plain text file in your computer, you may also build your own openvpn following the following instructions.
First of all I acquired a fresh copy of a virtual hard disk containing windows xp (you may find some already installed vhd drives here). In order to open the vhd file you’ll be needing Virtual pc.

Update the report viewer redistributable that comes with visual studio 2005

Microsoft released a Report Viewer Redistributable 2005 SP1 but forgot to update the redistributables that come along with visual studio 2005. So, whenever you create a setup file you get the old redistributable. Thanks to Albert Yen, there is a way to update the redistributable that comes with visual studio 2005. In order to do so you have to follow the following steps: