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A blog of software development, .NET and other interesting things
  • May 2, 2013

    Windows 8 weird errors

    I went to fire up Remote Desktop on my home PC on Wednesday and was greeted with this unusual error:

    mstsc.exe - Entry Point Not Found

    "The procedure entry point could not be located in the dynamic link library C:\windows\System32\WINMM.dll"

    (Yes, there's an extra space between 'point' and 'could' – I think that's where the name of the entry point would normally be displayed). Taking a screenshot was quite tricky as even Paint refused to start, but I managed to get the Snipping Tool to save a .png (despite a few error along the way)

    Very odd, as I had used RDP a few days earlier, and most other things still worked fine (launching IE etc).

    Using the Windows 8 keyboard shortcut of Win-X and choosing the 'Command Prompt (Admin)' resulted in "File system error (-1073741511)"

    This is not looking good. I could use the Refresh option but the downside of that is that you need to reinstall all your non Store apps. So I thought I'd try some of the other options before resorting to this.

    First up, I brought up the Advanced Startup Options menu by Choosing 'Restart' and hold down 'Shift' key.

    After reading Fixing component store corruption in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012, I tried running

    DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

    But that failed with:

    Error 0x800f0906 The source files could not be downloaded

    This might be because this PC uses a Wireless USB NIC which doesn't get enabled when running in safe mode?

    I then mounted the Windows 8 .iso and re-ran DISM with /source:i:\sources\SxS option, but surprisingly that failed too.

    Next, I found a network cable, and rebooted to Safe Mode with Networking, and ran DISM again.. but no luck

    Then I tried sfc /scannow

    This reported corruption that was it unable to repair.

    I had a bit more success using the PowerShell cmdlet Repair-WindowsImage -RestoreHealth and using the -Sources argument to point it to the Windows folder on my laptop (I'd shared this folder). That seemed to update some of the SxS files, but didn't fix the actual problem.

    Back to the Advanced Startup Options to Choosing System Restore. I selected the restore item, but that failed because there was a problem with it!

    Finally, I went back to the Advanced Startup Options and chose the Command Prompt option. This is the one that brings up the command prompt and sets the current directory to X:\Windows\System32. I decided to give SFC one more try, but this time using the offline options. I first ran diskpart and then list volume, which told me that the boot drive (the one with the name 'System Reserved' was C: and my Windows drive was E:.

    I then ran:

    SFC /SCANNOW /OFFBOOTDIR=C: /OFFWINDIR=E:\Windows

    This ran for about 10 minutes and then reported it had successfully fixed some corrupted files.

    For good measure, I then ran a CHKDSK and then re-ran the SFC command. This time it reported not finding any errors.

    Rebooting and FINALLY(!) it looks like everything is working ok again.

    Now to make a good restore point and ensure I have better backups in place in case this happens again. Not sure what the cause was – I'll have to keep an eye on the hardware incase it's an SSD on the way out.

  • Apr 24, 2013

    Weather forecasts on our home phone using BoM data

    C610 IP handset showing weather forecast

    A nice feature of the Gigaset C610 IP phone that we use at home is that you can choose various information services to display on the handset, including during 'screen saver' mode. The default services include the normal news, sport and weather, but as I've noted before, the weather data these services use is invariably quite different to that published by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (and invariably quite different to what I see out the window).

    As it turns out these services are customisable. You can add your own RSS feeds in via a web interface. The BoM doesn't provide such RSS feeds, and the only existing ones I could find were too detailed to be useful on a very small screen.

    So I decided to find out what it would take to grab the forecast data from the BoM and massage it into an RSS feed suitable for displaying on a very compact display. I also thought it was a good chance to try out some shiny new things along the way. In particular ASP.NET Web API to produce the RSS feed and Windows Azure Websites to host the service.

    The results of my efforts can be viewed at - http://gardiner-weather.azurewebsites.net. It's a very basic landing page for the service which lists what areas of Australia are currently supported (eg. only those states for which the Bureau provides XML data). Did I mention it's very basic? 😀

    The feed I'm using for my phone is this one - http://gardiner-weather.azurewebsites.net/api/forecast/SA/Adelaide

    Now all we need to do is to glance at the handset and we'll immediately know the latest weather forecast for today and tomorrow!

    Configuring your Gigaset C610

    1. Log in to your Gigaset's web page: image
    2. Go to the Settings | Info Services section image
    3. Click on the www.gigaset.net/myaccount link and go to the Screensaver tab image
    4. Select the 'News' row and click on the 'Edit' link. Select 'Favourites' from the dropdown and give your weather feed a name and paste in the URL to the RSS feed. image
    5. Click on 'Save' and your settings should soon take effect on your handset.

  • Apr 22, 2013

    SSDT Talk Notes

    Here's a summary of the talk I did at the Adelaide SQL Server User Group last week. Most of the talk was a demo (only a couple of PowerPoint slides) so hopefully this is a useful reference for those who attended.

    Intro to SSDT

    • Evolution of DataDude
    • The new way of shipping BIDS
    • Ships with SQL Server 2012 and Visual Studio 2012
    • Replaces 'Database Projects' from previous versions

    • Updates every 4-6 months (in time for SQL Azure updates)

      • Ships with VS 2012 and with SQL 2012

      • Free tool - use VS shell or integrate with existing
      • Will update frequently to keep up with SQL Azure features

    Connected

    • SQL Server Object Explorer

    • Connect to local or Azure

    • Queries

    • Execution Plans
    • Client stats

    Disconnected

    • Database projects
    • Model-based
    • Edition-aware targeting (project properties)
      • Can switch to azure to check if database is compatible with azure
    • Table designer/code view
      • Synchronised
      • Demo deleting a column
        • Can see errors (even before building) of related objects (eg. Views) that reference column
    • Build creates a 'dacpac' (Data-tier Application Package)
      • 'Upgrade data-tier application' from SMSS
    • Declarative model
    • 'Create New Project' via SQL Server Object Explorer
    • F5 builds and deploys database to localdb
    • Snapshots
    • Import .sql files
    • Code analysis

    Schema Compare

    • Connected, Project, dacpac or snapshot
    • Update changes (defaults to not losing data)

    Refactoring

    • Expand wildcards to column names - SELECT *
    • Semantic refactoring through model - not just find/replace
    • Go to Reference, Find all references

    Publish database

    • Directly
    • Via SQL script
    • DACPAC
      • C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\110\DAC\bin\sqlpackage.exe

    "c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\110\dac\bin\SqlPackage.exe" /action:driftreport /tsn:.\sql2012

    /outputpath:c:\tmp\driftreport.xml /tdn:SsdtSample

    Unit testing

    • Right-click on stored proc to create unit tests

    3rd Party Integration and extensions

    • Red Gate SQL Compare (beta)
    • Version control
    • Laan SQL Formatter (soon)

    Further reading