For the last few days, I've been having the problem of "Configuration Error - Access is denied" in one of my web applications that I've been building. Well, today was the breaking point. After restarting my computer roughly 10 times in 45 minutes, I decided to google it. Alas, I found this KB article that explains why its happening and how to solve it.

The "quickie" fix for this is to go to Indexing Services and explicitly exclude the temporary ASP.NET folders from Index Services. Read the article to actually figure out how to do that, I'm assuming you can read more than 1 webpage since you're reading this.

I think this is going to be one of those "Must Do When Rebuild Machine" tasks that I'll forget to do, yes I did say forget. How often do you remember the peculiarities in your setup...

Awhile ago, I had come across an article describing on how to get the current operating system version and name through .NET. While this article was great for Windows XP and prior OSes, it didn't really pan out too much for Windows 2003 Server and Longhorn. So after a bit of digging to determine the version numbers (thanks to Adam for getting me the current Longhorn version #) I was able to successfully map the correct versions/names. Here's my code:

private string GetOSName()
{
  System.OperatingSystem os = System.Environment.OSVersion;
  string osName = "Unknown";

 
 switch(os.Platform)
 {
   case System.PlatformID.Win32Windows:
     switch(os.Version.Minor)
     {
       case 0:
         osName = "Windows 95";
         break;
       case 10:
         osName = "Windows 98";
         break;
       case 90:
         osName = "Windows ME";
         break;
     }
     break;
   case System.PlatformID.Win32NT:
     switch(os.Version.Major)
     {
       case 3:
         osName = "Windws NT 3.51";
         break;
       case 4:
         osName = "Windows NT 4";
         break;
       case 5:
         if(os.Version.Minor == 0)
           osName = "Windows 2000";
         else if(os.Version.Minor == 1)
           osName = "Windows XP";
         else if(os.Version.Minor == 2)
           osName = "Windows Server 2003";
         break;
       case 6: 
         osName = "Longhorn";
         break;
     }
     break;
  }

  return osName + ", " + os.Version.ToString();
}

Adam has also informed me that in Longhorn, or rather .NET 2.0, there is a new property that will return this for you, VersionString.

Exactly how bothered are you by the Olympics already? Well, there obviously is some people who just don't want to see anything about the Olympics.

Go to Yahoo, and over on the right hand column, check the "Hide Olympic results on this page" checkbox. Now, notice what happens, stuff dissapears dynamically. The really funny part is when it makes things dissapear from the bullet list of items just above it.

Thanks to my co-worker for pointing this out...now, back to my non-reading Olympic information only

The naming contest that has entertained me for the last week has finally come to an end. Over 50 name suggestions came through the pipeline, some duplicates, some hilarious, and some just great. However, one name stood out amongst the rest that was just perfect. After having some internal discussions with Jeff, Ryan, and Adam, we all pretty much came to the same conclusion, this was the name.

So, congratulations to Mike Mahon for submitting the winning name. WebDeploy will no longer be called as such, and will be officially known as "Unleash It". I've also been working on a few images for Unleash It, and here is the main logo that I will be using:

While webloggers that love and use Unleash It can support it by using the following image on their weblog/site:

Currently there is no release for Unleash It. I'm working on version 2.0 based off of WebDeploy's source, and won't be out for another week or two. At the same time I'll be launching a place on my site for information on Unleash It so anyone and everyone can see how things are progressing. Linkbacks from the images above should point to the site once it is up, however for right now just link to the Unleash It category on my weblog.

Again, thank you to all who submitted their ideas, and definitely a big congratulations to Mike Mahon for submitting such great ideas.

I just realized that I'll be going out of town this weekend, and as such I won't be able to make my decision until I return. So, because of this circumstance, I will be extending the WebDeploy Naming Contest until Sunday, August 15, 2004 at 11:59 PM CST.

More and more suggestions come in everyday, so don't let your idea get overlooked.

Submit Now! | Get More Info

Err... I mean Community Server :: Blogs...

Anyway, has anyone else noticed the amount of trackbacks in our feedback section of the admin? It looks like every link that goes out from our comments is added as a trackback. Now, I'm not too keen on trackbacks, but I know these are truly not trackbacks because no where on the site listed is a mentioning of my blog post. Anyone have any idea whats up with that?

I picked up Madden 2005 for the Xbox this afternoon after work. I must say, the gameplay is superb, and playing on Xbox live against other people in Madden its just plain, well, awesome. It's almost as if I'm playing against one of my friends, but I don't actually see them. Its a bit more challenging playing against a human than the computer, but definately more fun. Make sure that if you have Xbox Live to look me up whenever I'm on few and far between.

"Game on!" - Wayne's World

Just as a reminder, the WebDeploy Re-Naming contest has just under 3 days remaining. I've gotten a lot of great submissions, but more is needed. Remember, the contest ends at 11:59 PM CST on August 1315, 2004. The winner will receive a FREE 1 developer license for my custom controls, along with their fame in the "About" dialog.

So, what are you waiting for? An idea? Need more info or rules?

So I found another weird quirck with Reporting Services tonight, that is a must share in case anyone else runs across it. My server setup at home doesn't run IIS on the default port 80, but rather on port 8181. This is for security reasons since its publicly open via my Cable modem service (but behind my firewall/router).

On my server, I wanted to get reporting services installed so I can do some reporting against the anonymous usage statistics being collected via WebDeploy. So, briefly - my default website is running on port 8181, and the reporting services installation doesn't prompt you to determine which website you wish to use.

Attempt #1:

I ran the installation CD as well as the SP1 CD. Everything went fine, no errors, nothing. I open up IE, point my browser to http://localhost:8181/Reports and nothing happens. I get a 404 error. Hmm, what could be wrong? Okay, so I open up IIS management, and much to my amazement, there sits 2 websites. The first default one being my main website running on port 8181. There exists another default website (yes they are named the same) which is running on port 80, and guess what...it has the 2 virtual directories Reports and ReportServer.

Okay, so I manually add virtual directories (configuring them the same) to my port 8181 website, remove the port 80 website and refresh the browser. This time it prompts me for a user, however when it does go through its normal ASP.NET startup, it gives me some nasty error.

Okay, so I figured if reporting services installed everything on a port website, it'll look for a port 80 website to uninstall the virtual directories. So I change the ports to port 80 on my port 8181 site. Uninstall went smoothly, and everything was gone.

Attempt #2:

So after the uninstall, I figured I'll just leave the website at port 80 until after install. So thats what I do...I install reporting services and SP1 all over again. This time, the 2 virtual directories are created in the proper website...yay! Okay, so I test things out in the browser using port 80...things look good, awesome! Time to change that port back to 8181...done. Refresh the browser for 8181, and what do I see? Well that nasty error message has creeped back up. Okay, so its gotta be something in the configuration...

I open up file explorer, and browse to c:\program files\microsoft sql server\mssql\reporting services\reportmanager and notice that there are 3 config files. I start with web.config...hmm, nothing looks like what I want there...okay, onto the next config. I open up RSWebApplication.config and what do I see? Well, there's a XML element with a URL to the report server sitting right there...and it had http://<ServerName>/ReportServer sitting there. So, I change that to http://<URL>:8181/ReportServer, save the config file and open up IE again. Refresh the page, and whammo, things are working again.

So, I guess the moral of this story is be cautious on how your server is setup with Reporting Services. I also find it quite odd that URLs are hard-coded within configuration files, and that its highly dependent on those for usability. To me, this doesn't seem flexible for users who didn't know what they were doing.