Deleting Offline Folders with Vista

Posted on 17/02/2009 by Alistair Hunt

How do I delete offline folders from a Vista machine when there is no connection to the server?

There was an issue with Vista that it would not allow you to delete or rename folders that were cached by Offline Folders when you were working offline. The fix to this issue is available here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942845/en-us. I found that since I was already using Vista SP1 the actual hotfix was not required I just needed to insert the relevant registry entries and reboot my machine.

SQL Server 2008 And Dundas Charts

Posted on 10/02/2009 by Alistair Hunt

Using Dundas Charts with SQL Server 2008 Reorting Services

Looking at SQL Server 2008 and in particular Reporting Services I have been interested in the new functionality that has been added and things that have changed since 2005. In particular I wanted to know which bits of the functionality within Dundas Charts that Microsoft had included with 2008. Fi you want a quick summary of whats not included take a look at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/956028. Basically if you have any existing Dundas charts in SSRS 2005 that use code then the 2008 charts that are shipped with SSRS will not be transferable.

Since Dundas did not sell everything to Microsoft the solution is to use Dundas’ own 2008 version of their charts. You can download evaluation edition, Version 2.2 is currently available at the time of writing and can be installed with SSRS 2008. Just to make things interesting, when I tried to install this version on a Windows 2008 Server running SQL Server 2008 the Wise Installation would hang whilst determining the disk space. To try and solve the problem I ran the installation again with logging using the following command line “C:JunkDCR22SQL10EVAL.exe” /L*v “C:JunkInstallLog.txt” /I and this time the installtion completed without any problems. I didnt even need to review the log file.

Having got the control installed successfully my next task is to import a SSRS 2005 chart that uses code and see if it runs with the next version on SSRS2008. Stay tuned for more details….

Beeping Computers !

Posted on 10/02/2009 by Alistair Hunt

Disable the anoying system beeps within Terminal Services

Whilst I have been working on a Windows 2008 Server remotely using RDP I found that even though the Windows Audio service is disabled and I chose not to play my remote computer sounds from the RDP settings (see below) I was still getting the system beeps passed through to my machine.

To solve the problem requires a little registry hack. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlTerminal Server and set the DisableBeep (REG_DWORD) key to 0x1. A quick rebbot later and the system beeps are gone.