Showing all posts tagged: 'Windows'

A 4-post collection

Configure a RunOnce task on Windows

Today was one of these days. Faced with a new problem I've never come across before. I was trying to configure a task to run once and only once on the server was provisioned for the first time. Something like a bootstrap script. In my quest to solve that problem, I came across a thing called Run and RunOnce registry keys! What are Run(Once) registry keys? Who knew that these things even existed, but here we are. So what do these keys really do? Let's grab the definition from the official documentation on [MSDN](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/ …[read more]

Generate ASCII folder structures on Windows with Tree

I was reading through Adron Hall's post yesterday about generating ASCII trees on Linux and Mac OSx. This is a handy feature if you want to include a project/folder structure to your documentation and don't wish to copy paste screenshots. What is an ASCII tree you may ask? There you go: Say hello to the tree command. This MS-DOS command has been around since Windows XP (YES really) but it's not well advertised. I only found out today and that's 14 years late! This is how to use it: Open your favorite command line editor (I jump between Powershell …[read more]

Fixing error: "Cannot generate SSPI context" after changing SQL service account

Everyone knows that it is good practice to use a domain or service account to run the SQL service. I’m sure you do too! However, once you do the right thing and change the SQL Service account, you may start getting the following error message when attempting to connect to the sql server: “The target principal name is incorrect.  Cannot generate SSPI context.” The explanation, as given by Microsoft in this KB article If you run the SQL Server service under the LocalSystem account, the SPN is automatically registered and Kerberos authentication interacts successfully with the computer that is …[read more]

Windows Azure Review

Windows Azure has been a godsend for developers. I have been using Windows Azure over the past few weeks and I have to say that the overall experience is amazing. I've used Amazon's Web Services in the past and one thing that always marred the experience was the convoluted and often confusing website. What Windows Azure has achieved is miles better than any other cloud service I've tried before and I explain why below. Overall Experience The site was redesigned from the ground up and it is now using HTML 5 which is a big departure from the old Silverlight-based …[read more]