This is a useful little tip if you wish to print a list of files in a directory.

To print directly, type the following at the command line:

To print to a text file, type the following at the command line:

To print a list including subdirectories, type the following at the command line:

If you want to print using a shell extension (context menu) type the following into notepad and save it as print.bat and place it in the windows directory (usually c:\windows\).

Then add “Print Directory Listing” to your context menu. Open the Folder Options tool in Control Panel, select the File Types tab -> In File Types column select File Folder. Click on Advanced -> New -> Specify a name for the action and the point it to the print.bat file you created.

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On a few sites I run I have vBulletin and / or Photopost installed. Upgrading from MySQL 4 to MySQL 5 is simple because these programs are 100% compatible with both (as they should be). Except for one issue. When installing MySQL 5 it defaults to asking to be installed in “Strict Mode” which is how a database should work. Strict Mode behaves in a way that when a malformed statement is entered into the database, it aborts the operation. This is great for helping to provide a structure and predictability to the data in the database. However, some scripts are not programmed in a way that would allow it to work well with strict mode. In vBulletin, this error will show up:

I would disable strict mode if possible over forcing vBulletin to use it, as some add-ons don’t play well with it.

If you are using the MySQL Administrator, go to startup variables -> advanced -> sql mode and note the options in the field. If there are no options stated, you are NOT in strict mode. If you see any or all of the following, the database is operating in strict mode:

STRICT_TRANS_TABLES, NO_AUTO_CREATE_USER, NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION

Just remove all 3 statements to disable strict mode. If your server has been operating in strict mode previously and scripts have been designed around it, be sure you can disable it without any adverse effects.

Here is an explanation from the MySQL manual on the above options:

STRICT_TRANS_TABLES

If a value could not be inserted as given into a transactional table, abort the statement. For a non-transactional table, abort the statement if the value occurs in a single-row statement or the first row of a multiple-row statement.

NO_AUTO_CREATE_USER

Prevents GRANT from automatically creating new users unless a non-empty password is specified.

NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION

Control automatic substitution of the default storage engine when a statement such as CREATE TABLE or ALTER TABLE specifies a storage engine that is disabled or not compiled in.

With NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION disabled, the default engine is used and a warning occurs if the desired engine is known but disabled or not compiled in. If the desired engine is invalid (not a known engine name), an error occurs and the table is not created or altered.

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Windows Vista comes with a great new feature: Windows Search. It differs from previous versions in that it constantly indexes the hard drives. When you do search, the results are instant instead of the 5 minutes it takes in Windows XP. The downside is that your computer is indexing your hard drives for hours at a time during the day, robbing it of performance. You can see the files: SearchProtocolHost, SearchFilterHost, SearchIndexer in the task manager humming away eating up memory and cpu %.

If this new searching method isn’t important to you or you simply want the best performance all the time, you can disable it!

Type Services in the search/run bar in the start menu. Right-click “Windows Search Service” -> Select “Properties” -> Choose “Disabled” under start type. Then click “stop.” Once it has stopped, click OK. It will no longer start when Windows starts. You can always start it back up by doing the reverse.

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This error in the Exchange System Manager is a generic MAPI error code, but not necessarily a MAPI error.

Unfortunately there is no clear cut cause to this error, but performing the following steps should fix the problem.

1. Check the version number of w3svc.dll on your Exchange 2000 Server. It should be 5.0.2195.1600. A higher version of this dll was used in a post Windows 2000 SP1 hot fix, but broke PF in Exchange Manager. The easiest solution is to copy the w3svc.dll file from the Windows 2000 SP1 CD.
2. You may also try the following:
   Open IIS Admin Manager, Expand “Default Website” or whichever website Exadmin is under. Right-click and select properties of Exadmin. Go to the Directory Security Tab. Click Edit under “Anonymous Access and Authentication Control.” Check “Integrated Windows Authentication.”
3. Also check to see if the Exadmin directory is set to use only SSL. This has been known to cause the error as well.

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I put together some information on creating scheduled tasks in Windows. This will actually be very useful for Windows 2008 Core, which only has the command line (great for performance!) So it’s time brush up on your command line skills.

To create a scheduled task via the command line, the command takes the following form:

SCHEDULETYPE is anyone of the following, /mo being the optional modifier with the numbers beside it being the range that is acceptable. For multiple values behind the optional modifier, use a comma separated list:

Below are optional modifiers that can be used with the schedule types and optional modifiers listed above.

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