GoldenNugets – Page 7 – Just trying to help someone out there :)

Windows 8 God Mode

I had come across article on Tech Republic which outlines a set of steps that allow you to get to some internal Windows 8 settings normally not visible. Basically you need to first enable hidden files visibility in Windows File Explorer as well as filename extensions. Once you do that you then create a folder on your desktop that is called GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} exactly like this. Once you do that open that folder and now you will see lots of extra settings. You can also pin it to the Windows 8 Start Screen.

Anyway details come from Tech Republic .

Cheers

SQL server date format issue – kind of

So you find yourself that your software was written for say UK English but the system is installed from US English. This can happen in numerous cloud migration projects. Well the issue can be overcome in several ways but one way that I liked in particular is to alter the user’s default language. This assumes something like web site project that uses SQL server as it’s DB store.

All you need to do to alter one users language is:

use master EXEC sp_defaultlanguage 'fred', 'British' GO

What this provides is for various sites using the same SQL server but providing various cultural date inputs (plus associated other functions) to be valid. Thus one web site could use US from of MM/DD/YY while another site using differnt DB logon could now use UK format that allows dates to be input as DD/MM/YY.

Cheers!

Exchange 2010 Web Outlook image issue

This is something that lots of people I deal with want disabled. By default MS Exhcnage 2010 Web Outlook will display a warning about displaying images. This is part of enchanced security that is very good for lots of people, however some users who understand the risks but want to disable this warning and display images in web based Outlook generally strugle to find the middle ground – that is enable this for some users but not others.

Unfortunately Microsoft does not seem toprovide individual settings, still worse you have a choice of either disbale it totally, enable it all the time or just live with the default of warning message and related clicks.

In any case there is also a not so easy way to disable this setting – like it or not you must use PowerShell for Exchnage to reconfigure the related web server. Thus there is a command that needs to be issued to enable or disable the filter:

Set-OwaVirtualDirectory -Identity "ServerName\owa (Default web site)" -FilterWebBeaconsAndHtmlForms DisableFilter

Obviously you will need to replace the virtual directory and server name with whatever you system uses/is.

Conversly to enable the filter back on:

Set-OwaVirtualDirectory -Identity "ServerName\owa (Default web site)" -FilterWebBeaconsAndHtmlForms UserFilterChoice

or lastly to force it on all time with no prompt (that is disable images and maximize the security):

Set-OwaVirtualDirectory -Identity "ServerName\owa (Default web site)" -FilterWebBeaconsAndHtmlForms ForceFilter
Hope this helps someone out there.

Some related links that may be of help:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb430788.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124901.aspx