Samuel Haddad » Software

Bypass Symantec Endpoint Protection

Samuel Haddad — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 16:39:59 +0000

So recently I had bypass Symantec endpoint protection. Instead of having to stop services and delete registry keys like my other Trend Micro Post it is worth trying the default password of Symantec which worked for me.

Uninstall TrendMicro OfficeScan

Samuel Haddad — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 22:06:59 +0000

This procedure work as of June 5th 2010

The problem:

When trying to uninstall TrendMico Office Scan you are prompted for a password.

Solution:

Start -> run and type MSCONFIG
Under services and uncheck TrendMicro Unauthorized Change Prevention Service
Restart the computer
Start -> run type Regedit
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\TrendMicro\PC-cillinNTCorp\CurrentVersion\Misc
Changing the AllowUninstall value to 1

Creating a Single Instance C# Application

Samuel Haddad — Wed, 20 May 2009 00:51:13 +0000

This is something I find myself looking up alot so I decided to put it into a post for easy access, and for anyone else who might be looking for a solution.

using System.Threading;

    static class Program
    {
        /// 
        /// The main entry point for the application.
        /// 
        [STAThread]
        static void Main()
        { 
            bool createdNew = true;
            using (Mutex mutex = new Mutex(true, "SignleInstance", out createdNew))
            {
                if (createdNew)
                {
                    Application.EnableVisualStyles();
                    Application.SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault(false);
                    Application.Run(new Form1());
                }
            }
        }
    }

Download Single Instance Application Source Code

I still don’t get why in Visual Studio in VB.NET one could click make single instance application, but that same feature doesn’t exist in C#? Don’t all .NET languages just get compiled to the CIL in the end?

Visual Studio Tips and Tricks

Samuel Haddad — Thu, 07 May 2009 02:30:55 +0000

Alternate Case/Format selection:

Have you ever been asked to update some code from a long time ago only to find that almost every tag is in capital letters? AGHH!

My Really Old Site

Lots of body test

Highlight all that code and press CTRL + K then CTRL + F and you will format all the code. It would then look something like this

My Really Old Site

Lots of body test

Granted your code may still be far from perfect, but it is definitely a huge help.

Key Launcher (Like Alt + Tab on Windows)

Are you someone that lives by keyboard shortcuts? I know I am. Are you familar with Windows Alt + Tab keyboard shortcut and toggling through all active programs? Well a similar feature exists within Visual Studio press Ctrl + Tab and toggle through your active Windows and Files.

Intellisense

Control + Spacebar will bring up intellisense if you are in code view. Great if you click out by accident or you just want to see what is available in the scope of the code.

Break Points

Have a bunch of break points scattered over a couple of files in a solution. Just want to delete them all and start fresh. Ctrl + Shift + F9 will delete all current break points in a solution. Don’t worry Visual Studio will prompt you with a confirmation first.

Get Visual Studio Professional for free!

Well maybe. If you are a student like myself you can head over to https://www.dreamspark.com/which is run by Microsoft. They offer full versions of some of the newest Microsoft products, like Visual Studio. Why? Because they know we are the future and they think we are an investment. Take them up on the opportunity and get ahead of the competition.

Shortcut key posters:

Microsoft Visual Studio has a bunch of keyboard combinations that can be very helpful, to get a more complete list check out some of the resources Microsoft offers:

Visual C# 2008 Keybinding Reference Poster

Visual Basic 2008 Keybinding Reference Poster

Visual C++ 2008 Keybinding Reference Poster

Visual C# 2005 Keyboard Shortcut Reference Poster

Visual Basic 2005 Keyboard Shortcut Reference Poster

Visual C++ 2005 Keyboard Shortcut Reference Poster

Silly Error Message

Samuel Haddad — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 01:44:32 +0000

The Operation Completed Successfully Error Message

So I am just trying to finish up my new program Twitter Talk when I am running a test and I get the following error message.

Should we start hiring error message checkers?

Any ways if you get this Win32Exception was Unhandled “The Operation Completed Successfully” error message my workaround was to uncheck the check box in the project properties that says: “Enable Visual Studio hosting process”. In the menu: Project -> Project Properties… -> Debug -> Enable the Visual Studio hosting process.

Hope this helps someone this solution came from: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/globalhook.aspx?msg=2427545#xx2427545xx

Overwriting an Excel file destination using SSIS

Samuel Haddad — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:57:57 +0000

This was a problem I racked my brains over for a while when I first started using SSIS. I found a few possible including using a File System task to copy a “Template” Excel file over the existing on, or generating unique files by appending the date. I simply wanted to overwrite the existing data just like the Flat File Destination gives you that option.

My work around was as flows:

Create the Data flow the way you normally would, then go to the Control View Then add two Execute SQL Tasks before your data flow is called so it looks like this

Step 1: Add Execute SQL Task 1 to Control Flow

Set both Execute SQL Tasks to use the Excel file

Step 2: Set Connection Manager

Set your first Execute SQL Task’s SQL Command drop your table which is also known as the sheet name of your Excel file.

Step 3: Drop Table

Repeat step 3 on the second Execute SQL Command this time create your tables.

That’s it. Good luck.

C# .NET and LyricWiki to lookup lyrics

Samuel Haddad — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 03:03:32 +0000

Music is everywhere with today’s high speed internet is most home it is no wonder that music is even moving to the World Wide Web. Many radio stations allow you to stream their stations over the internet. Many websites have been developed around music, like www.jango.com, www.pandora.com, and www.last.fm. I recently released my second version of Jango Desktop and one of the features I implemented was the ability to look up lyrics. Before I started I was thinking about all the ways I could parse the lyrics out of an existing lyric’s websites database. During my searching I stumbled upon http://lyricwiki.org/. Here is a small description of LyricWiki from the website:

LyricWiki is a free site which is a source where anyone can go to get reliable lyrics for any song, from any artist, without being hammered by invasive ads.

At this point you are probably thinking to yourself the same thing I did “Great, but where do I start?” So today I am writing a step by step tutorial on how to use Lyric wiki in your .NET program.

Creating a simple lyric demo program:

Step 1: Create the Form

Open visual studio and setup your form to look similar to mine.

Adding the web service:

Because LyricWiki offers a web service, you will want to add it to your program as a web reference. Right click on your solution and select add a web reference, or in .net 3.5 add a service reference -> then go to advance and add a web reference. The service’s URL is http://lyricwiki.org/server.php?wsdl you will want to add it like below if you press go you should see the available methods.

Adding a Web Reference

Writing the code:

Double click on your button on the form and let’s right some code to handle the lookup.

Add this to the top of your code:

using LyricsLookup.org.lyricwiki;

Then add this to the button clicked method:

private void LyricsButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
LyricWiki wiki = new LyricWiki();
LyricsResult result;
string artist = artistTextBox.Text;
string song =   SongTextBox.Text;
if(wiki.checkSongExists(artist,song))
{
result = wiki.getSong(artist, song);
Encoding iso8859 = Encoding.GetEncoding("ISO-8859-1");
LyricsRichTextBox.Text = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(iso8859.GetBytes(result.lyrics));
}else{
StatusLabel.Text = "Lyrics not found in database";
}
}

Then run and test.

Download the full solution of LyricsLookup

Making Netgear SC101 Work with Vista SP1

Samuel Haddad — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:04:01 +0000

So you my have noticed that if you upgraded to Vista or have Vista that it took Netgear over 6 months to release drivers for there Zetera SC101 NAS.

The Problem:

When installing the latest SCM utility and drivers you receive an error “Failed to install the Z-SAN SCSI miniport driver” or similar.

The Resolution:
If your installation already failed and the setup software tells you to restart, you must do so.

Next restart the installation. Select Customchange the default installation directory to anything but the default and then continue. The software should install perfectly now.

You can get the latest software from Netgear’s support page.

This fix came from scouring the comments from
http://www.kowitz.net/archive/2007/09/11/netgear-sc101-finally-does-vista.aspx

Skinning Pidgin – Sick of Pidgin’s Look and Feel

Samuel Haddad — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 02:36:36 +0000

Pidgin is a multi-protocol Instant Messaging client that allows you to use all of your IM accounts at once. It can be found at http://pidgin.im/ I have been using it for a while now when AIM started putting advertisements into there software. Pidgin was formally GAIM which changed its name due to legal reasons and started to rewrite their software. My friends and I have been using it for a while now and really enjoy it. However there is one complaint I hear a lot and that has to do with appearance and themes. It is for this reason that I am putting together a little guide of steps I have taken to make pidgin more my style.

The Original Buddy list is depicted below.

One thing that I do not like is that the icons each name takes up so much space. This is because the idle time and buddy information is being displayed under each buddy name. I started by disabling this feature.

Go to buddies
Show and un check buddy details, idle times and enable protocol icons to a style of your liking.

By doing this I can easily see more buddies online at any given moment, my buddy list looks something like and all those details I disabled are still available just by hovering over a buddy with my mouse.

Another complaint I often here is the lack of themes. Well actually there is support for themes. I will admit its a little hidden, but I am going to walk you though it now and show you where you can find hundreds of free themes.

Pidgin uses the GTK+ orThe GIMP Toolkit for creating its graphical user interfaces. This is because it is cross platform and so is Pidgin. While my tutorial is geared towards windows users I am sure its very similar to other operating systems.
We need to start by enabling GTK+ control in pidgin. To do that go to Tools > Plugins> and check Pidgin GTK+ Theme Control.
Press Configure Plugin.
Everytime you change your theme press Re-read gtkrc files to apply the theme.
To select a new theme go to Start > All Programs > GTK+ > Theme Selector. Select a theme and press ok, then Re-Read gtkrc files to see the theme applied to Pidgin.
Download new themes at http://art.gnome.org/themes/gtk2/
Unzip themes and store them in the C:\Program Files\Common Files\GTK\2.0\share\themes folder.
I used the Litoral theme, without spending hours searching.
Make sure you adjust the GTK+ Interface Font so it looks good with your theme. I ended up using Arial normal styles size 10.
Now chagning the Pidgin default icons, by default they are located in C:\Program Files\Pidgin\pixmaps\pidgin
I started picking an Icon set I liked. I found a few pre-made sets with some Google searches here some links

Ubuntu Style
Pidgin_neu Theme
Pidgin_osX

Pidgi_osX2
A search for pidgin on this site will bring up even more.

Make sure Pidgin is not running when you make this change and make sure you backup your original icons. If you can not find any you like, you can Google search for more or make your own.

* Originally found on this forum

I settled on the Glossy Theme
In the end my pidgin looks a little something like this, I plan on tweaking it out some more though, I will keep you posted. If this post helped you in anyway please leave a comment and let me know.