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

If you are looking to download openvpn 2.1.1 with enable-password-save you should check this post.
I have added a few updates on how to build openvpn 2.1.1 on this post

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:

Restoring an sql 2000 database from mdf file only

A few days back, a pc’s hard disk got infected with bad sectors. Old disks tend to do so. Anyway, I had to recover all the SQL server 2000 databases because nobody was keeping backups. Looking around the net I found the following steps which worked just fine for all my sql 2000 databases but not for the 2005 ones. So let’s get started. We do have the mdf file only. I assume the log file (ldf) is either corrupted or we couldn’t even recover it. That’s ok if you follow the next check list:

Code navigation in visual studio

Those who developed with the 2003 version of visual studio, one thing that they seem to miss in the newer versions of vs is the Navigate Back button that used to exist right next to the redo button.

Well Microsoft didn’t remove that feature but based on case studies, not so many developers tended to use it, so they removed it from the out-of-the-box menu configuration. So in order to get access to them, you’ll have to press the “Add or Remove Buttons” option of a toolbar, select “Customize…” and then drag and drop the “Navigate Backward” and “Navigate Forward” buttons that are located under the “View” category.

And since I got some time to blog about toolbars configuration on visual studio, I also tend to add the “Solution Configurations” located under the “Build” category. It’s really helpful especially during the after sale service period when you debug the changes and then build a release for the client. I also enable the “Build” toolbar (right click in the toolbar area and select the Build option) which is helpful in order to cancel a build if F5 or build solution was accidentally pressed.
Happy coding!

Sql Reporting Services and A4 paper size

I recently run on a problem trying to set the default paper size of my reports to A4. Although I was setting the paper dimensions to 2,1cm width and 2,97cm height, when the end user was printing the report, the default page size on the page setup dialogue was Letter.
Searching the net someone mentioned that the Sql Reporting Services of sql server 2005 do not “like” the paper dimensions in cm but rather prefer inches. Changing the dimensions to 8.3in × 11.7in fixed the problem on my computer but not on the clients’ machines.
Finally, I read somewhere in the MSDN forums that in order to default the page size to A4 one must set the report’s page width to 8.27in and the height to 11.69in. Believe it or not, this fixed my problem. Everyone is printing in A4 paper size without having to set it in the Page Setup dialogue.

PS: If you want to set the orientation to landscape, you’ll have to switch the values of width and height, obviously...