ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise Licensing Error

Came across an interesting error today when attempting to Enter the license information for ShadowProtect Image Manager Enterprise (4.0).

To configure a license, you simply load Image Manager, click on Agent Settings, then select the Licensing Tab, and choose Activate.  When you enter your licensing information, I was getting the following error:
"The constructor to deserialize an object of type 'StorageCraft.Licensing.LicensingException' was not found."

Turns out there is a relatively simple fix for this, you can simply obtain an updated licensing.dll from StorageCraft, via this KB: http://www.storagecraft.com/kb/questions.php?questionid=240

Basically, all you have to do is Stop the StorageCraft ImageManager Enterprise License server, rename the old licensing.dll file from the %program files%\StorageCraft\ImageManager directory, place the new licensing.dll file in there, and then restart the services.

Voila, you can now enter the updated license information and your product will activate.  What's interesting is that you can't find this out by "googling" for the answer, as the KB in question doesn't actually contain any serchable text.  Hopefully this should start showing up in search results and save you guys a bit of time next time!

Cheers

PracticeWorks Update (7.0.13.185)

Just a quick one here, I've been battling for the last few hours with an update to the PracticeWorks Software.  Long story short I've figured the upgrade process out, it's a little different from the documented steps.

1. Perform the Pervasive SQL 10 SP3 update (from Autorun menu) on PWORKS server
2. Restart PWORKS server
3. Install PWorks update on server
4. Run through PWorks client install (part of the same install)
5. Rename the WSetup folder in your PWORKS data folder (say WSetup-olddate)
6. Copy the WSetup folder from your C:\PWORKS folder (this assumes data directory is different from install directory)
7. Launch PWorks on a client workstation
8. You're going to be told that you should not run different versions of BTRIEVE
9. Continue, then you'll be prompted to update the installation of PWorks
10. It will detect that Pervasive SQL is out of date, allow it to update
(Note at this point I kept getting told there was another copy open, when there wasn't on the network, so I just ignored the error)
11. Restart workstation
12. Run PWorks again, and choose Yes to update
13. When the upgrade has finished, you should be able to launch PWorks.

More notes to come after I work out the HICAPS updates a little better

Finding "illegal" filenames within *nix/OSX

So, this might seem quite obvious to some, but it took me a bit of searching and manual reading to work out.

Say I'm preparing a Mac File Share to copy over to a Windows File Share... In the process I know that Mac allows a bunch of characters that are illegal within Windows (such as * ? / \ | etc...).  What I want to do is track down every filename/directory that is going to cause my file copy to fail.

So the obvious command would be something along the lines of:

find . -name \\
when I want to find a filename with a \ in it.  OK fair enough this works fine.for most of those characters.  However I found that when I used ? or * in the search path, I regularly got returned results that I was not expecting (ie. All files/folders or Single Character files)... So whats the trick?  Really really simple, just use an extra \ to escape the search term.  So for example:

find . -name \*\\*\* will find any filename with a * in it.  Simple, but frustratingly difficult to discover!

Hope that helps someone a bit of time in future

Windows 7 Network Adapter Ordering

Anyone else noticed that Windows 7 for some reason seems to ignore Network Adapter Ordering?  At work we explicity block our Wireless Subnet from traversing our VPN's to reach clients sites.  My ordering says that LAN takes higher priority than Wireless, yet if I have Wireless turned on, it takes precedence. 

As you can see the LAN NIC has a higher priority yet I can 100% confirm that the Wireless NIC always takes priority.  It's not the end of the world, i can disable the Wireless Adapter (& have been doing so) but I have to wonder if this is going to find itself fixed with SP1.

On another side note, I find myself needing to disable/reenable NIC's on a regular basis.  It seems to happen when the workstation is perpetually put in sleep mode when switching between multiple sites.  Again, not the end of the world, just a minor annoyance.  Symptoms are usually: awake from sleep, and can't obtain a lease.  Disable/Reenable and voila the lease is obtained (interestingly an ipconfig /release and ipconfig /renew still fails to obtain a lease until the NIC is disabled/enabled).

Access 2003 Runtime vs Win 7 and Office 2007

One of the beauties of taking on a new client at work, can be the legacy environment you inherit when you start. In this case, I had a customer who we were providing brand new infrastructure for (new server, several new worksations and a new SOE). As part of that process, we made the transition from Windows XP to Windows 7, and Office 2003 to Office 2007.

I did due dilligence and checked up on their workflows, and apart from the obvious bout of training on how to use the new versions of the products, all looked like it was going to be reasonably smooth. They had a Line of Business custom app which was written with Access 2003 in mind, however after reading up on Sandboxing, I figured I could get it going no problems. My internal testing seemed to indicate the App ran as expected, and unfortunately as they were located in another state, my UAT was somewhat limited to "Does the app load, and look normal", which I concluded was yes.

Long story short, did the rollout and the customer was very happy with the results.

However, a few weeks after the fact, when the client had a chance to settle in, and get back to normal operations, I was informed that a few functions within the LOB app were not working as expected, namely Invoice Generation and Date Field entry (strange I know, but it hadn't been noticed till that point).

At this point, naturally you get back in contact with the developer, however as is often the case with these custom apps, they had long since moved on from the original product and had never intended the application to be run on this platform. The developer did mention that there were problems with references when going from 2003 to 2007, especially when installed on the same machine, and particular problems around Sandboxing on Win Vista++.

By this stage, I had already figured out that in order for the App to work as I was expecting, I needed to Add/Modify the following keys:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Jet\4.0\Engines]
"SandBoxMode"=dword:00000002

and

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Access\Security]
"Level"=dword:00000001

I had to do this, to get the App to properly launch (as it was not digitally signed) in the first place.

When I first heard about the problem, I jumped onto a reference computer, and spent hours trying to figure out what tweak was required to get these references correct. As you can imagine, it's a difficult term to search for, and I got a great deal of responses bemoaning a migration from XP->Vista, or 2003->2007 but not a great deal of help. After a few hours of tinkering, I resigned myself to wait for a call from the developer to see if we could get this sorted out.

Lo and behold, about a week later, the client called me to let me know that the reference machine was working exactly as expected, and to thank me for what I had done. Problem was, I know it wasn't working when I left it that night!

Another few hours doing Registry Diff's, and checking for any custom config that had occurred, the only thing I could note was a difference in file versions for Access 2003 on the workstation. Eventually it dawned on me, Ofice 2003 SP3 had applied, even though I was only running the Access 2003 runtime. A test run on another machine in the office, and I could confirm that the app was working exactly as expected.

I'm not 100% certain what the Service Pack took care of, but I know the list of fixes is huge. My advice to anyone experiencing a problem porting a 2003 app to Windows 7/Office 2007 is to check your service packs (and note the sandboxing/security settings above) and you should be all good.