Windows Media Player Plug-in

Have you had the problem win Mozilla FireFox 2.0 - "Install missing plugin", regarding the Windows Media Player?
Well, this link will solve your problems.
It is a stand-alone Media Player plug-in for Mozilla Browsers (NetScape, FireFox)

Command-line tips & tricks

Ever wander how to automate specific services starting and stopping ?
Well, at first the easiest part:
How to start or stop windows service from command-line ?use the tool "net" provided by windows:
net start [name of the service]
for example:
net start "SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER)"
We can also, stop the service with this tool:
net stop "SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER)"

Now the tricky part - how to START / STOP IIS site using command-line?
(Tested against IIS 6.0)
Microsoft provides some useful scripts that automate this work, and we can use them with the command-line tool cscript.exe. Let's assume we have the "Default Web Site" configure on the IIS and we want to start / stop it. Then open a command prompt and write down:

cscript /nologo %SystemRoot%\System32\IIsWeb.vbs /start "Default Web Site"
to start the site
or
cscript /nologo %SystemRoot%\System32\IIsWeb.vbs /stop "Default Web Site"
to stop the site.

You will find a number of other useful scripts and manual here.

All this helped me to make a batch files (.bat), which I use to start / stop services on my machine (I do not always need the services running and consuming memory and resources).

Windows SharePoint Services problem

Did you know that Windows 2003 Enterprise R2 is shipped along with Windows SharePoint Services 2.0? Well, it is. The SharePoint services components is located on the CD2 of that windows distribution, and is accessible to add/remove from “Add/Remove programs -> Windows components”.
What I want to share with you is another wired and strange problem I had with it. So, I installed the WSS 2.0 on my machine. It made several virtual directories on my IIS and apparently changed a lot of other things.
What happened?
First, it was installed on the default web site of the IIS. Then all virtual directories I had on this site stopped working. It was just saying “Error 404 Not Found”, although the virtual paths were there – at the IIS administrative console. I said “OK”, and I made another website on the IIS and moved the virtual paths there – they were working just fine. Until …
Until I found that the “Forms Authentication” is not working anymore. I had the “”, I had the required “” in my web.config for the applications under the virtual folders, but none of them worked. The authorization was not working anymore! You could open every page you want without being authorized. I looked in the machine.config, I looked in the web.config under Microsoft.Net folder in windows root folder, but I did not find anything wrong. After wasting a couple of hours I decided to remove the WSS 2.0 from my PC. Guess what – everything was working fine again. Really wired (at least for me) …

SQL Server 2005 and Office Web Componenets 11 (OWC11)

Recently I tried to install MS SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition (well, the same problem came with Standard Edition, too) and I got strange problem. At some point the install wizard came up with an error “Could not install OWC11” (OWC11 - Office Web Components 11). After that another error came – “Could not install Database services”, and at the end I had only Client components installed, not even the management studio.
I began to wander what the problem might be. I tried several different ways and options in the install wizard, but the same problem was appearing again and again. Then I put a fresh copy of Windows XP SP2 on a MS Virtual PC and run the SQL Server installation there – everything was fine, as expected. So I came back to the host and looked over the installed software I had. It appeared that I already have had the Microsoft Office Web Components installed, which surprised me even more – why the SQL Server does not check for it before trying to install it. What I did is remove the OWC from Add/Remove Programs and run the SQL Server setup once more. Guess what – success! Wired …

My First Post

Hi there,
here I would like to start posting interesting things from the world around us. Mostly from the programmers point of view ;)