_PublishedWebsites missing when using MSBuild

Had some issues with msbuild this morning. The build was successful but when I looked into the drop location, there was no folder _PublishedWebsites only a list of all the bin dll's.

This was the most useful link I found which explains how to change your projects csproj file in order to force msbuild to create and dump website files and folders into the drop locations _PublishedWebsites directory. (Basically so that msbuild knows the project is a web application)

All you need to do is in the csproj file is to include this line:

<Import 
Project="
    $(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\
    Microsoft\VisualStudio\v9.0\
    WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" 
Condition="" />

Vista wireless internet connection not working

I noticed periodically that my wireless connection to the internet was being dropped on my Windows Vista laptop, which only would work again after a restart.

After googling around a bit, the common problem seemed to be that Vista try’s to manage your power and one of the features is it will turn off the wireless adapter to save precious power.

So here are some simple steps to disable this feature, and allow yourself to freely browse the internet wirelessly from your vista PC.

• Select start -> Control Panel -> Network and Sharing Centre
• Then under tasks on the left click Manage Network Connections
• Right click your wirless network connection, and select properties. (Click continue to ensure you allow Vista permission to continue)
• Click configure, then click the Power Management tab
• Untick Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power

Disable the Microsoft Application Error Reporting (DW20.exe)

Hi

We have a web application that writes to a network path, and to cut a long story short that path changed because of a hardware failure. This however brought up some strange behaviour...

On the machine that hosts the web application that is trying to write to the network share, we noticed it started to run very slowly. After looking at the task manager we found a few instances of DW20.exe hogging the memory.

Google told me that DW20.exe was actually Microsofts error reporting process. I then found this very useful link which tells you how to disable it.

After killing the DW20.exe processes however the machine had then run out of disk space??? I ran windirstat on the machine to see where all the space had gone. Turns out it had been used by some .dmp files in windows\temp directory. These files were generated also by DW20.exe.

So in summary I'm not so sure why Microsoft's error reporting tool would use so much memory and create dump files that big, however my solution was to disable the error reporting, and kill all the DW20.exe processes and delete the .dmp files.

Inversion of Control (Ioc) alternative to spring

Came across this dependency injection framework called Winter4.Net which claims to be quick and lightweight.

I've messed around with it a bit today and it is very easy to use.

Check it out here: http://www.winter4.net/

Reading files into byte[]

Thought I'd share this: http://www.yoda.arachsys.com/csharp/readbinary.html

Some cool JS stuff from google

Google has open sourced some of their internal tools for JavaScript development, which they are calling "Closure".

You can find more details here

I particularly like their compression tool Closure Compiler

Getting Toad 9.7.2.5 to work on x64 XP machine

Once you've installed Toad into C:\Program Files (x86)\, then copy the entire Quest Software directory from C:\Program Files (x86)\Quest Software to C:\Program Files\Quest Software

Lastly create a desktop short cut to C:\Program Files\Quest Software\Toad for Oracle\toad.exe

Toad should then work correctly.

How to get ASP.NET 2.0 app on an x64 development machine to work with Oracle 10.2.0.2 32 bit client

I had a problem where I got a new machine. My previous workstation was XP 32bit OS, and my new machine was XP 64bit. I had installed the 32bit client, and the ODP.NET data access components, but was still getting the error:

ORA-12154: TNS:could not resolve the connect identifier specified

Even though the tnsnames.ora and sqlnet.ora files were 100% correct. I then came upon these two URL's:

1.http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/dotnet/col/odt_faq.html (search for ORA-12154)
2.http://joeydotnet.com/blog/archive/2007/01/24/19.aspx

After that I create a metalink oracle account and my manager authorised it. I then download this patch:

10.2.0.1.0 Patch 6 (10.2.0.1.6P) 32-Bit Patch 5059238. URL: http://updates.oracle.com/ARULink/PatchDetails/process_form?patch_num=5239698

After unzipping it I made a backup of C:\oracle\product\10.2.0\client_1\bin and then copied the patch files (p5059238_10201_WINNT\5059238\files\bin) into the bin folder and overwrote the dll's already in the client bin folder

Then fired up VS 2008 and executed my web app locally and it all worked.

Let's hope this helps some others.