Category Archives: Tools

Run Visual Studio SLN file shortcut as Admin in Vista

Tools

Dominick Baier posted this 3 months ago, but I only needed it for the first time today. It’s quite handy having the SLN files as shortcts when doing conference presentations, and I am preparing my new Vista laptop for next week’s DevConnections.

Dominick created a little tool that you can use to run as admin from a file shortcut (not an default option in Vista). I added the tool as a SEND TO option which, while not being as great as having the shortcut run as admin on it’s own, is still very helpful.

If you havne’t discovered how to have application shortcuts always run as admin (so that you don’t have to remember to right click and choose that option each time), there’s a checkbox to force this in the shortcut’s properties on the Compatibility tab.

Quickbooks OnLine Banking – Still crazy after all these years

Tools

I have been using Quickbooks since it’s DOS 1.0 version. I kid you not.

My pet peeve with this software is online banking. When I download my AmEx bill, it takes me a horrrrrrrribly long time to get the transactions into my register.

I paid $200 to upgrade from QB 2004 (?) to the newest version and even though there are some minor improvements, I’m still here looking at a few hours to deal with the many months of AmEx bills I have avoided getting in to QuickBooks. Every time I download and start working on it, I give up. So now they are piled up and of coruse I MUST get through them because it’s tax time.

I think it will take less time to just sit here with my paper statements and enter them by hand.

Why can’t they figure out a better way? I don’t need a vendor account for every random gas station I go to in my travels. Maybe I’ll try the aliasing and set up a “GENERIC GAS STATION” payee account and others.

Update: Now I see the benefit of the aliasing. The more info you have in there, the smarter it gets. It’s not perfect, but at least I got through it a little faster than before.

SQL Server 2005 Maintenance Plan problems – and some solutions

Tools

I have SS2005 on my development machine. Normally, I don’t need to back up test data, but now that I have started using SourceGear Vault, the source gets stored in the database and therefore I definitely need to do the backups.

I’ve set up backup maintenance plans before for a client, so even though I’m not a DBA, I felt okay doing this.

A week later, I looked at the folder for the backups and was dismayed to see that there was nothing but my initial tests from the week before. I checked to make sure SQL Agent was running, as I remembered that was a problem for me in the past.

I played further with the maintenance plan and today realize that I must have gotten distracted because I didn’t address en error message that is blatant and the reason my backups weren’t happening.

The error is “GUID should contain 32 digits with 4 dashes (xxxx….”. Clearly something internal.

So this time, before I got distracted by an email or a phone call, I googled the error and quickly found that this is a known issue. Here’s a forum thread about the problem which shows a few workarounds and has a pointer to a KB article. Apparently, the SP fix should have meant that I have to install some other tool and not Integration Services, but I don’t see what that is, so I just installed Integration Services anyway, which was quick and easy.

The maintenance plan requires the Integration Services to be installed. If you install them retroactively, as I have done, note that you may need to clear out the jobs and delete and recreate your maintenance plan(s).