Finding Long Lost emails super fast with Outlook Plug-in Xobni

Have you ever had trouble finding a particular email with standard search from Outlook?

I had until I found this great tool. It basically builds a cube with all the information from outlook, and makes it ultra fast to find all emails from a contact, a particular email from some contact, and the feature that I like most to find a specific attachment you remember someone sent you.

This plug-in is excelent, although when you open the outlook it can be a little slow indexing all the information from your email.

The only real drawback I could find is that it doen't work in Windows 7 yet.

The great thing about it is that is free! You can download it here
And you can know more about it here

There is also a paid version with more features such as unlimited pst search, but for me this works just fine

Web.Config: Using a proxy with bypass list

Sometimes when we are developing some application, we do it in a particular location where there's a proxy to access internet.

To build some websites with the capability to integrate information from internet sources we defined the proxy in the application's web.config like this

<configuration>
 <system.net>
  <defaultProxy>
   <proxy proxyaddress ="http://localproxy:8080" bypassonlocal="True" usesystemdefault="False" />
   <bypasslist>
   <add address="somelocaladdress.com" />
   <add address="someotherlocaladdress.com" />
   </bypasslist>
  </defaultProxy>
 </system.net>
</configuration>

Producing a timestamp in a batch file log

Every now and then is necessary to log some command line output. If you need to recursively do it every in a automatic way it's good that you timestamp the log file with the current date.

So to do it use a batch file with the following instructions


set startDate=%date%
set startTime=%time%

set sdy=%startDate:~10%
set /a sdm=1%startDate:~4,2% - 100
set /a sdd=1%startDate:~7,2% - 100
set /a sth=%startTime:~0,2%
set /a stm=1%startTime:~3,2% - 100
set /a sts=1%startTime:~6,2% - 100

somecommand > logfilename%sdy%%sdm%%sdd%%sth%%stm%.txt

Event Id 59: Generate Activation Context failed for <...> Reference error message:Access is denied

For some reason, I came across this error on a sql server machine.

Generate Activation Context failed for C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.2\OLAP\bin\msmdctr90.DLL. Reference error message: Access is denied.

To solve this problem I had to give the "Performance Log Users" List Folder Contents permissions

c:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.2\OLAP\bin


Credits to this website more specifically Max Ustinov

Quickly view free space on your computer: Space Monger

Every now and then my hard drive starts to be almost full and for some reason I long forgot or for some unneeded files that lays around.

There's was a time where I checked folder by folder for those files that were eating up free space, the I found out this free tool that quickly displays what and how much space is being used

Download here

Theres is also a more recent but paid version here

TFS and MCMS Template Explorer

Opening an Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 project in Visual Studio 2005 with the MCMS 2002 SP2 installed when trying to checking in files in TFS gave me the following error

Unable to cast object of type 'Microsoft.ContentManagement.DeveloperTools.VisualStudio.Documents.TemplateExplorerDocument' to type 'Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Interop.IVsHierarchy'.

Apparently it's a known error. To solve this problem, disable the MCMS Template Explorer when you use the Team Foundation service.

To do this open the Vwd.webinfo file located at the project's root with notepad and set the value of the CmsEnabled property to 0.

Check the microsoft link for more info:
FIX: Error message when you try to use Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server to check in files on a computer that is running Content Management Server 2002: "Unable to cast object of type"

MCMS 2002: create new page leads to "channel not found" error

Working with Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 when trying to "create a new page" in the console it gave me the erro "channel not found" when it was suposed to show me the page where I choose the template for the new page.

After some trial on error, I found out that for some reason the authentication in the web.config file was set to windows authentication, after changed it to forms authentication every started to work correctly.