Category: Microsoft

Shutdown or Restarting Windows 8 in a Remote Desktop Session

In a remote session the normal shutdown button only allows you to disconnect or log off. After a bit of research I found 2 easy ways of restarting a remote desktop session.

  1. Go to the Desktop
  2. Close all open desktop apps
  3. Type ALT+F4 (this is the shortcut for closing apps and programs too)
  4. Up pop a new ‘Shut Down Windows” Windows 8 dialogue
  5. Then select the command of you desire.

If you are commend line oriented then,

  1. Type Windows logo key+ R to open the ‘Run’ dialog
  2. Type either ‘shutdown /r’ for a restart or ‘shutdown /s’ for a simple shutdown and click OK.
  3. If you want to see a UI or do this remotely, you can always try ‘shutdown /i’ on your local machine and do a remote shutdown.

Handy Windows 8 and 8.1 Shortcut Keys

Shortcut Keys

Here are few handy Windows Key shortcut keys I find useful

Windows logo key+ D Go to desktop
Windows logo key+ W Search settings only
Windows logo key+ F Search files only
Windows logo key+ C Show the ‘charms’ menu (the one on the right)
Windows logo key+ Tab Switch between recently used apps and programs (left apps bar)
Windows logo key+ L Lock the screen
Windows logo key+ E Opens windows explorer
Windows logo key+ R Open the Run dialog
Windows logo key+ S Opens the Search everywhere. Also do this by pressing the Windows key and just start typing
Windows logo key+ X This opens the ‘Quick Link’ menu. Very useful for the power users out there.
Windows logo key+ SHIFT + (left or right arrow) Move an app or window from one monitor to the other if you have multiple monitor.

For a full list of Windows 8 shortcuts see http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows-8/keyboard-shortcuts

IISRESET and Microsoft Azure cloud services don’t mix well!

I recently performed am IISRESET on some production Azure cloud servers and found to my horror that the website died. A restart resolved the issue, but I had just discovered a little too late that IISRESET is not an option on a Cloud Services server.

This blog (http://www.morestuffabout.net/2012/01/game-over-on-azure-dont-iisreset/) explains some of the alternative options, such as using a utility called ASPRESET which you can find info about at ASPRESET – Jon Galloway blog. This can help avoid needing to do an IISRESET.

The type or namespace name ‘xxxx’ does not exist in the namespace ‘yyyy’ (are you missing an assembly reference?)

If you suddenly find your Visual Studio solution falling to pieces with loads of error messages like the title above when you build. You also know that the project libraries are being referenced correctly and they build OK. Then check that you do not have an uninvited app.config file lurking at the root of any of your projects.

I have spent lots of annoying wasted hours trying to figure this out only to have found that a NuGet installation has added an app.config to the projects.

Delete this and do a rebuild and all should be OK.

The moral of this story is make sure you build and check-in before adding any NuGet packages. Then immediately rebuild after. If this scenario occurs, you know what to do.

WCF Test Client – Maximum message size quota exceeded

If you get

“The maximum message size quota for incoming messages (65536) has been exceeded”

in the WCF Test Client, the easy solution has been nicely documented here

http://ralessi.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/wcf-size-quota-exceeded/

Thanks

Making your My Documents folder sync with the New SkyDrive app

Microsoft have in their wisdom now decided to scrap Live Mesh (after scrapping Mesh and then Live Sync previously) and let hope settle on SkyDrive as the method for synchronising files and folders between devices.

You can get the new SkyDrive app from http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/skydrive/download-skydrive

Unfortunately, this version of the application does not allow the synching of folders from any location. It will only synchronise data that is in a predefined location!

When you install SkyDrive you get a chance to select a location of the SkyDrive folder. If you choose the default it will create it in your profile folder. If you miss this, as I did, you need to do the following:

  1. Right-click on the SkyDrive otification icon in the bottom right and select Settings
  2. Then ‘Unlink’
  3. …and now re-link the SkyDrive and this time choose the preferred location for the folder.

Normally to get files and folders to sync you are expected to move them to this new folder. Frankly that’s just irritating, as you may have established a nice folder structure by now in you My Documents folder already.

So I decided to go the full hog and purchased 50GB of SkyDrive space for £16 per year and then proceeded with the following steps to move the entire My Documents folder to SkyDrive.

  1. Created a folder in the SkyDrive folder called Documents
  2. Right-click on My Documents and select Properties
  3. Then select the ‘Location’ tab
  4. Click move and now select the new SkyDrive\Documents folder you just created.
  5. You will be prompted to move all your files. I suggest you select yes.
    (Watch out for folder and file path names that are too long. I had to move some stuff out of ‘My Documents’ for this to complete. Mainly because Visual Studio projects are deeply nested and can have huge names for files and folders.)
  6. When that completes you now have an actively synched ‘My Documents’ folder. You can follow this procedure for the other ‘My’ folders too, if you have space.