FettesPS » microsoft

Uninstalling Visual Studio’s Productivity Power Tools

FettesPS — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 04:00:52 +0000

Took me far too long to find this option. Powertools had some annoying quirks that I just couldn’t get passed and I wasn’t using any of it’s good features. Plus either it or the SP1 upgrade has left Visual Studio 2010 in a less than stable state, I find it crashing several times a day. So today I have removed Productivity Power Tools using the following method:

Tools -> Extension Manager -> Productivity Power Tools -> Uninstall

Fixing IIS’s “Failed to start monitoring changes to [...] because access is denied” Error

FettesPS — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 01:01:51 +0000

Ran into a weird error today. I had IIS serving pages on my devel machine and after working out the kinks in my code I went to FTP them to the production server. Since that machine didn’t have FTP I shared the folder and uploaded them from another machine that was on my desk. After that I went to reload the page and got the following error:

Failed to start monitoring changes to [...] because access is denied

I figured it was because I had shared the page and IIS must not like that, so I unshared it expecting that to resolve the issue — it did not. From there I dug through many pages of Google results all telling me to make sure the files weren’t marked Read Only and to make sure the ASPNET user had permissions. Interestingly enough such a user did not exist on my machine, possibly due to a different version of IIS or the fact that I do not have Visual Studio.net installed on that system.

It wasn’t until I compared permissions with another web folder that still worked that I spotted the difference. One had permission granted access to “Authenticated Users” and given it Modify permissions. After following these steps I was once again able to serve pages:

Right Click the Virtual Directory in IIS
Click “Edit Permissions…”
Select the Security Tab
Click the Edit button
Click the Add button
Type “Authenticated Users” †
Click the Check Names button to ensure that it recognizes the name
Click OK
Ensure the Modify checkbox is checked
Click OK until all remaining popup windows are closed

† If a name is not recognized it will pop up a “Name Not Found” box, whereas if it is recognized it will prefix it with your computer name and underline it (e.g.: fettesps\username).
If Authenicated Users is not recognized as a user, try ASPNET instead, which is what most guides suggested (but did not work for me).

After making these changes you should now be able to access your site again. If not, please consult Microsoft’s Knowledge Base article for more possible solutions.

How to Enable or Disable Aero Peek in Windows 7

FettesPS — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 19:33:46 +0000

Aero Peek, which is also known as Desktop Preview, is a new feature in Windows 7 that allows you to quickly hide all the windows open and view your desktop. It can be activated by clicking the Show Desktop icon at the far right of the superbar or by holding the windows key and hitting space.

Desktop Preview is a new feature in Windows 7 which is otherwise also known as AeroPeak (Desktop Preview is a feature enabled by Aero Peek desktop enhancement function). Desktop Preview allows user to temporarily minimize all open windows and make open windows transparent in order to preview what is on desktop when user place the mouse pointer to mouse over the “Show Desktop” bar on the far right end of the taskbar.

Illustration above shows the effect of Desktop Preview, where user mouse over the Show Desktop (without actually clicking on it) on the far end of the Windows Taskbar.

Right click on the Start button and click on Properties
Select the Taskbar tab
Uncheck the Use Desktop Preview checkbox
Click OK

Desktop Preview is now disabled. If you would like to re-enable it, simply follow the same steps again making sure to check the Desktop Preview option this time.

Bing.com Traffic Analysis

FettesPS — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 03:59:49 +0000

Update: If you are looking for instructions on how to get rid of Bing please read the article How To Uninstall Bing

I noticed an interesting trend today when looking at they keywords searched that lead people to my site. The majority of them were regarding Bing, and not one of them was positive. Looks like people just aren’t very happy with Bing.

Search Term
disable bing
i hate bing
bing google
bing sucks
but its not google
ubuntu custom apache2 404 page
how to disable bing
bing … all this hype and it sucks
bing or google
wordpress bing submit
get rid of bing
who is bing.com
bing is stupid
get rid of bing
dont want bing how to remove
i don’t link bing
ubuntu 8.10 upgrade 8.10 to 9.04 is it safe?
is bing any different than google
stop bing window
what i bing
don’t not want to use bing
i hate bing search
bing and google
ftpd ubuntu 8.04
uninstall bing
bing doesn’t list my website
bing pros cons
bing impressions
background of bing.com where is it?
don’t want bing search
ubuntu pure ftp account disabled

bing and google searches
disable bing.com
bing.com background
how to remove bing.com
bing search suggestion link
i hate bing browser
what is bing.com
how to remove bing search
ubuntu 9.04 pure data install
how to disable bing search

3 Reasons to Hate Microsoft

FettesPS — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 18:00:43 +0000

As I develop this site, and others in the past, I have begun to hate Microsoft increasingly more. I used to be an avid fan of Microsoft, and would back all of their products. But then they got too greedy, and most of all, too lazy. One by one, I am dropping their programs for alternatives that do the job far better than Microsoft.
During the summer I finally ditched FrontPage and started developing in Dreamweaver MX. Why I waited so long is beyond me, but I just got sick of having FrontPage rewrite my code however it liked.
Reason #1 – FrontPage thinks it’s a better programmer than you, and will rewrite your code at will.
Since I’ve switched, I’ve openned myself up to a whole new world of webdesign. Just a few days ago I discovered how to arrange element boxes freely within Dreamweaver, which is how I created this new site layout. Sure you can do the same in FP with tables, but come on… tables? Who creates table layouts now that we have CSS?
Turns out that Microsoft really messed up when it came to CSS. Internet Explorer will render CSS pages differently than any other web browser, and many CSS standards are not supported/followed. On top of that, they made up their own! iFrame? C’mon, I thought we got rid of Frames for a reason…
Reason #2 – Microsoft does not follow CSS standards, and think they hold the right to make up new standards.
Speaking of Internet Explorer, nearly every time I have a friend or family member ask me to fix their computer for them, it is INFESTED with spyware, malware, worms, dataminers… You name it, they’ve got it. Where does all this crap come from? You guessed it, IE and its ActiveX support.
Reason #3 – Internet Explorer is insecure, and vulnerable to the vast majority of malicious code.
So what’s the alternative? Well there are many products available to you, there’s still Netscape, but I was never a huge fan of it to begin with. There’s also Opera, which I would rate second best. But the one that stands above the others is Firefox. Perhaps in the future I will write up a detailed comparison of the three alterntives vs IE, but I’ll say that for another day.