BioCIO

Solution: Outlook Changing the sort order changes the currently selected item

2010-01-27T11:15:00.003-05:00

Here's the problem: suppose your inbox is sorted by "Received." You select and email and then want to sort by "Subject." Normally, doing so, sorts everything and groups it by subject and the item you had originally selected is still selected. Sometimes you may find that this behavior is no longer the case. Instead, after sorting by "Subject" Outlook selects the first item in the list.

Solution:

Click on View->Current View->Customize Current View
Click on Group By
In the lower right hand corner of the Group by window, you may note that "Expand/collapse defaults:" is set to "As last viewed." If this is the case, change it to "All Expanded"
Click OK and OK
You're finished.

Blackberry: How to delete the address book or calendar database from your handheld without using Desktop Manager and without wiping your entire device

2009-12-17T14:32:00.006-05:00

If you want to resync your address book or calendar with data from the server without wiping your entire device (that is, you want to resync just the address book/contacts or just your calendar):

On the Blackberry handheld, open your address book or calendar (whichever you're doing this procedure for)
Press the menu button or click on the track wheel
Choose Options
Once in options, don't go into any submenus; just type rset. You will be prompted "This will erase your [Desktop] contact list, and reload it from your server. Continue?"
Select Yes
Go back to your address book or calendar and you'll notice that it's initially empty
Over the next few minutes you'll note that entries will start to trickle in
You're done.

Screen Caps of Microsoft Office Web Apps on iPhone/iPod Touch Mobile Safari

2009-09-19T23:39:00.012-04:00

In case you're curious, here is what the Excel Web App looks like on an iPod Touch. Note: when rendered in mobile Safari, you do not have the option to view/edit the file in Skydrive, but if you click on its icon, it opens the file as follows:

Unlike on the various desktop browsers (including Safari), there is no ribbon--no UI at all really, except for the contents of the worksheet.

Here is a Word doc in Safari 4.0.3 on Windows:

Here is the same document on the iPod in landscape

Here is the same document on the iPod in portrait:

I also thought I'd test one of my favorite new features of Office 2010: Sparklines! Here's an Excel worksheet with sparklines rendered in Safari 4.0.3 on Windows (note: the Excel Web App does indeed support both sparklines and conditional formatting):

And here's a screen cap of the same worksheet on Mobile Safari (sadly, no Sparklines and no Conditional Formatting/Heat map):

Completely unrelated, but while we're on the subject of conditional formatting and sparklines, the Excel Web App does supports editing these as well. That is, on the above worksheet, if you change the value in cell A1 to 50, A1 will turn green and the sparkline in F1 will redraw with a peak at the beginning like so:

Microsoft Office 2010 Web Apps Technical Preview: Excel File Size Limit

2009-09-19T00:37:00.006-04:00

Interesting observation: the Excel Web App has a file size limit. I don't know the parameters (it may just be the number of rows or the physical file size itself, but when trying to open a 19.9MB file to view or edit, it received the following error (which is something of a bummer, since with server-side rendering, the Excel Web App could be a great tool for very large datasets):

Norton Technical Support Phone Number: (800) 695-0678. Norton Customer Service Phone Number: (800) 695-0678

2009-05-14T14:27:00.000-04:00

Norton Technical Support Phone Number: (800) 695-0678. Norton Customer Service Phone Number: (800) 695-0678

Lenovo ThinkPad S Drive and Q Drive (aka How to remove or hide the S Drive and Q Drive on a Lenovo ThinkPad X200, X200s, X300, X301, T400, T500, etc.)

2009-05-01T16:21:00.009-04:00

If you purchased a Lenovo ThinkPad lately, you will have noticed that there are now Q and S drives for the recovery and boot partitions. Historically these were hidden. Now they're probably conflicting with your network drives. You can remove the Q drive (it's just the recovery media and you'll automatically reclaim the partitioned space on your C drive) but without lots of work , you cannot remove the S drive. (By lots of work you could use bcdedit to install the bootloader on the C: drive and then edit the MBR to make it bootable, or you can roll the dice, delete the S drive and use a Vista CD to "repair" the OS--this should work but not guaranteed).

Solution(s)
To Remove the Q Drive:
Just use the built-in recovery media creator program to remove it and reclaim your unused space.

To "Remove" the S Drive:

Don't. Instead follow the directions in the following article: How to work with the Q and S partitions on ThinkPads - ThinkPad X200, X200 Tablet, X301, R400, R500, SL300, SL400, SL500, T400, T500, W500, W700. (http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-71742)

If you're unfamiliar with using diskpart.exe here's a step-by-step:

Download and run Lenovo_Hide_Drive_S.exe available at the link above. You can launch the program by double-clicking it. It has no UI, but if you wait long enough (1-3 minutes) when you open My Computer, you will notice that the S drive is missing.
Open an Administrative command prompt (click on the Start button, enter cmd, right-click cmd and choose Run As Administrator, answer any UAC prompt, and continue).
Enter dispart.exe and press enter.
Type select disk 0 and press enter (this sets the program's context to disk 0 which should be primary physical drive where the C and S drives live. If you'd like to be certain, you can enter list disk to display which disk is the correct one).
Type select partition 1 and press enter (on a factory install it should be partition 1, as above, you can enter list partition to find the right one).
Type set id=7 and press enter (always do this).
Type assign letter=D and press enter (set the drive letter to whatever you like).
Type exit and press enter
Open my computer and look and check out the results.

That's it!

Battery life on the Dell E4200 and E4300 Laptops including battery slices

2009-03-26T14:06:00.005-04:00

E4200

4-cell 3.7hrs 0.2 kg (0.44 lbs)
6-cell 7.3hrs 0.37?0.38 kg (0.82?0.84 lb)
slice 14.8hrs 0.59?0.61 kg (1.3?1.34 lb)

E4300

3-cell 4.5hrs 0.191 kg (0.4211 lb)
6-cell 7.3hrs 0.3366 kg (0.7421 lb)
Slice 13.3hrs 0.59?0.61 kg (1.3?1.34 lb)

How to troubleshoot corrupted virus definitions for Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition (SAV)

2008-05-02T05:32:00.004-04:00

This is really a post for myself as a reminder--I find that every year or so a server out there downloads corrupted definitions and starts kerfuffling an entire network....

Some symptoms:

rtvscan.exe 99% cpu or high cpu utilization
the rtvscan.exe process won't start with the error 7203 - Environment Incorrect

Some fixes

That's all for now.

How to install Windows Vista Enterprise 32-Bit Edition on a Dell D630 Laptop

2008-01-28T20:14:00.001-05:00

If you have problems installing Vista, see my previous post How To Install Vista Enterprise on a Dell m1330. Once you have Vista Installed, here's the order in which you need to install the drivers (depending on what components you have):

Dell Notebook System Software
Intel Chipset (Reboot)
Video (Reboot)
Smart card (Reboot)
Turbo Memory (Reboot)
Broadcom NIC
Wireless
Modem
Touchpad
Bluetooth
(WWAN)
TPM

How to install Windows Vista Enterprise 32-Bit Edition on a Dell XPS m1330 Laptop

2008-01-15T20:08:00.000-05:00

Download the latest Intel Matrix Storage Manager (e.g. via http://ftp.us.dell.com/SATA/R154200.EXE)
Extract the drivers to a flash drive
Boot from your Vista Enterprise CD
When you get to the setup section, choose repair and then cancel and then advanced
Open the command prompt
Type diskpart and press enter.
Type select disk 0 (assuming disk 0 is the internal hard drive on which you want to install Vista) and press enter
Type clean and press enter. This will remove all existing partitions effectively wiping your hard drive clean in order to avoid kb939727.
Type exit and press enter.
Type setup and press enter.
Insert the flash drive you downloaded the extracted drivers to
Load the drivers from the flash drive
Install vista on the blank hard drive or create partitions as you like.
Install drivers in the following order:

Intel Chipset (Reboot)
Ricoh
Broadcom
Wireless
Intel Turbo Memory (Reboot)
Dell Notebook System Software
nVidia Drivers (reboot)
Audio Drivers (reboot)
Dell Quickset software
Touchpad (reboot)
Webcam (reboot)
Webcam software
Roxio

References:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=149762 re Matrix drivers
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/939727 re "Windows installation encountered an unexpected error. Verify the installation sources are accessible, and restart the installation. Error code: 0xE0000100"

How to use Config files with Exchange Managed Event Sinks

2007-02-01T15:45:00.000-05:00

If you like C# or VB.net, no doubt you'd like your Managed Exchange Event Sink to be configurable. In .Net 2.0 you'd use the Settings class to wrap your App.config file in a strongly typed class. Alas, you'll find that when you deploy your Event Sink, whatever changes you make to your MyEventSink.dll.config file are completely ignored. Problem: not only is your sink a dll which is hosted by %windir%\system32\dllhost.exe but it is also a COM+ application. You can resolve this problem either of two ways (the first one being a terrible idea):

1. Create a file called dllhost.exe.config, put all of your app.config text in there and deploy it to %WINDIR%\System32\ and pray that no one else has the same terrible idea; or

2. Create two text files, application.manifest and application.config, and point your COM+ application's "Application Base Directory" to whatever directory contains these files. Then add the contents of your pre-existing config file to application.config and the following to application.manifest

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0"/>

Once you're finished, stop and restart your COM+ application and you're all set! Your Managed Exchange Event Sink will read whatever configuration data you've specified in the application.config file and you no longer need MyEventSink.dll.config.

Ethernet Switch Powered by PoE or How to hook up an Ethernet switch without AC

2006-04-03T22:11:00.000-04:00

Recently I needed an Ethernet switch (or at least a hub) to feed a patch panel hidden in a ceiling. Naturally I thought I'd just use a power over Ethernet (PoE) switch. Alas, I couldn't find one (though I suppose there's the 3COM IntelliJack series which didn't meet my requirements for various reasons). Of course there's lots of switches that feed PoE, and if you ask Sales Reps and just about anyone else for such a solution, you'll get, "of course this switch can run PoE." But no--I needed a switch that ran off of PoE--afterall, if a Wi-Fi access point/router can do it (which surely draw lots of power) why can't a switch? (For kicks, check out Keith Lofstrom's page on Power for BEFW11S4 and WRT54G Access points)

Solution: find a PoE splitter and a switch with matching voltages where the switch requires no more than 12 Watts of power. In this case I used a Linksys WAPPOE12 as my injector/splitter and a Linksys SD208 as my switch. I chose the Linksys products because I knew the DC plug on the splitter would fit the SD208's jack and didn't want to have to deal with adapters--seven usable ports for ~$80 retail.

Obviously lots of other solutions exist--as long as the switch draws no more than 12 Watts and matches any of the specified PoE voltages. And by the way, PoE splitters are a very useful tool.

Ethernet over DirectTV

2006-04-03T22:07:00.000-04:00

Lots of times, I find that I, or someone else, needs ethernet in a room that isn't otherwise wired and wireless won't cut it. One solution I've found that works is ethernet over DirectTV cabling. Corinex makes a product, the Corinex CableLAN Adapter, which though only listed as compatable with Cable, works just fine with DirectTV with no degration to the DirectTV signal.

Outlook Contacts... aka Links Collection via MAPI Part 2

2006-04-03T22:06:00.000-04:00

Well, for now I'm going to give up on this post as it effectively requires my reverse engineering lots of old notes, so unless someone requests the code, or I'm hit with a sudden stroke of clarity, it will have to wait for now.

Outlook Contacts... aka Links Collection via MAPI

2005-05-09T18:36:00.000-04:00

I hope to post some unfinished work I performed on this subject a while ago. The objective is to be able to link items without using CDO or the Outlook Object Model, in particular through MAPI using server-side code.