Unlock-Code-Express.com

If you’re into unlocking your own phones and don’t mind paying a few bucks, I do _NOT_ recommend these folks: www.unlock-code-express.com.

I bought a code from them, it didn't work on my handset.  So, that’s lie #1:

Lie #2, from the instructional email you get when you purchase:

I raised my ticket with them Monday, and still haven’t heard back.  I also sent a direct email to support on Monday, no reply there either.  I raised another ticket to them Tuesday night asking for a refund, still haven’t heard back on that one either. 

So, don’t use these guys.   Instead use gadgetrepair-canada.  He’s good people: 

That is all.

Microsoft Surface RT Tryout

I've used several different tablets - Apple iPad 2, Google Nexus 7, and now I'm playing with a Microsoft Surface RT.  I'm one of those apparently unfortunate people that use Outlook/Exchange Tasks functionality (and I use it religiously as my primary GTD tool).  I kind of expect to have to buy a supplementary app for this on Android and iOS platforms.  It's nice that Blackberry supports tasks out of the box.  But I can't even begin to tell you how disappointed I am that the Surface RT out of the box will not support syncing your tasks with your Exchange account.  Out of all of the upsides and downsides of the RT (which you can read about all over the web), this one may end up becoming a deal breaker for me.  I just don't think I should have to pay for _another_ third party for an app do this, on a fucking Microsoft device.

I guess I get it...Surface RT is not a business device, Surface Pro is (ha, bullshit).  It makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong for using "edge" features of Outlook and Exchange.

(For the record, I use TaskTask HD on iOS and they also happen to offer an RT version.  On Android I use  Tasks for Microsoft Exchange.  I happily bought these because I expect other platforms to not bother with the "intricacies" of Exchange, or, you know, whatever.)

So if anyone has a _free_ alternative for Surface RT tasks until the mythical Outlook RT (or 2013 or whatever) hits, let me know in the comments.  Otherwise, that is all.

Plug: PRTG

Great tool, very handy, works exactly as advertised.  Know what's happening on your network.

http://www.paessler.com/prtg

Debug a running VM when it's crashing without a memory dump

This is mainly just a link dump. I was getting STOP 0xc0000135 errors with no other clues, and I used these resources to properly troubleshoot it.

Live debugging a VM in Hyper-V: http://mikemstech.blogspot.com/2012/01/live-debugging-hyper-v-virtual-machine.html

Troubleshooting 0xc0000135: http://mikemstech.blogspot.com/2012/01/troubleshooting-0xc0000135.html

Make sure you are properly loading symbols in your WinDBG workspace or you won't get enough detailed information to proceed.

SQL Server Browser Service

Doing an upgrade from SQL Express 2005 to SQL Standard 2005 using the SKUUPGRADE=1 option?

Once the process is done and everything appears to be running okay, but isn't, try restarting your SQL Server Browser service. It could save you a day of troubleshooting and planning a server rollback. Or just reboot the box, that would have been helpful.

That is all.

Connecting Drives via SBS RWW 2008 / RWA 2010

This info is _fairly_ easy to find, but I thought I'd post it along anyway to make it a tiny bit easier. If your users need to be able to connect network drives via their Remote Web Workplace or Remote Web Access desktop sessions, check out this document from Microsoft:

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=180370

Test Disk = Good

Test Disk, from the guys over at CGSecurity, gets a huge thumbs up from me today. My son had a school project due this week that I helped him with yesterday involving pics from our old digital camera. All the pictures were taken and we get to the part where we need to print them, and the SD card isn't recognized in my laptop. Figuring it was a problem with my laptop, I reboot and try again, still nothing. Placing the card back in the camera results in:

"Hey cool, a new SD card. Want me to format it?"*

*Error message paraphrased.

I'm not about to spend money on this, but I'm definitely hoping to save some time. Lifehacker had done a bit on the "best recovery tools" a while back that I checked out. I tried "Recuva" first, but was disappointed. Turns out, even though Recuva won their little showdown, it's not actually good for any sort of failure situation where the card won't mount or the partition is screwed. It's really just an undelete tool. But next in line was Test Disk. It's cousin is called PhotoRec and that's what I used to recover everything we needed off the SD card, and then some. It also pulled off some old MP3 tracks and some videos that used to live on that card.

So, it worked really well, and I highly recommend it!