One of my coleagues has recently been working on a module that uses the easyPDF .Net component to convert Word 2000 documents to PDF format. He had evaluated many third party components and easyPDF seemed to offer the best performance, was straightforward to implement and not too expensive. 

Everything was going well, the module deployed successfully to a windows 2000 server and processed several thousand documents in our test enviroment.

The next step was to ship the server to our colocation facility, we were already running the server on the same domain via VPN so we were confident that this would be straightforward.

When we fired up the server at the colo the module which ran as an NT service started up it then started to produce a document and then it promptly froze and after 50 seconds a timeout error was written to the log. We were puzzled as to what could be causing this and spent the next few days trying to figure it out. To cut a long story short at the colocation facility we did not attach keyboard or a mouse to the server, when these were attached and the server was restarted our application started working!

MS do warn against using Word Automation but in this case we didn't have any choice, we are looking forward to the release Office 12 and the native PDF output capability of Word.

UPDATE: Still not working after a reboot the dreaded freezing has come back! Will update if we figure it out.

Another Update: We have had no problems getting this working on desktop OS's like W2K Pro and XP Pro but on servers it is just hanging.

For the last few weeks my McAfee virus scanner has been reporting the Downloader-zq infection in my system32 folder (I have WinXP Pro SP2). It deleted the file but a week later it would come back. I eventually found what I think is the cause after reading a post on the McAfee forums.

Accoring to the post below this is a rootkit virus that installs itself as a system driver. The recommended removal tool is Ewido (www.ewido.com) , run this in safe mode and it should detect and remove a virus called hijack.small.js detected in the system32 folder with a random name.

There will also be several references to this random name of the file detected in the registry. I have deleted these entries, if you do the same you should back them up first just in case removing them causes your system to become unstable.

It is early days so I don't know if I have completely got rid of the infection if it comes back I will update this post.

McAfee Forums Explanation and removal instructions

We have been using our VOIP only solution now for about ten months and over time the experience has got better as we have learned a thing or two.

Our provider is Voiptalk to begin with they were a little bit flakey but they seem to more stable now. I think their servers are located in a docklands datacenter and there has been four brief outages over the last ten months which is no problem for us.

Our Asterisk server has been rebuilt a few times but now seems to be stable, it is running on a Dell 1Ghz PIII with 512MB of ram, we used fedora core 3 for the os and the standard free version of asterisk.

We have eight phones in the office and are using features like voicemail and out of office redirection to mobiles.

We opted for Polycom IP300 handsets @ £100 each these represent good value over extensive functionality.

For a long time our biggest problem was call quality / calls dropping out, this was remedied by turning on traffic shaping on our m0n0wall router which is our gateway to our 2mbps 5:1 SDSL line supplied by Bulldog.

The Bulldog SDSL line here in Tunbridge Wells has been rock solid, I wish I could say the same about there customer service. BD have blocked port 25 so we relay mail through their server, recently for whatever reason their SMTP server has been causing our outbound email to be delayed which is very confusing / annoying. I have contacted them on several occasions but they have offered no way of resolving this.

Update:
Adam commented below that Bulldog don't port block and he is right. We misdiagnosed that issue, however, when we started relaying mail ourselves we got a lot of NDR's with DNS errors, the errors stated that MX records for the domain could not be found. I can't be sure this is a Bulldog DNS problem but I have my suspicions. Of one thing we are certain, their outbound relay servers do delay messages occasionaly, the delay can be up to a few hours long. Our experience of their customer service is poor.

Next Meeting: 24th May

We have decided hold the next meeting later on in May to leave more time to promote the group locally. A running order will appear here later in the month. As usual email me if you would like to attend (CharlieBarker[At No Spam]RedlineSoftware.co.uk).

It is likely this will be an open mike night so if you have a topic you would like to present then contact me.

How to find us: Multimap

If you need to speak to me my direct line: (0845) 004 2773

We have emailed local businesses to let them know about our meetings so we can increase the number of people regularly attending.

Over the weekend I wrote this function to generate a level meter that could be updated by client side script. I intend to use it as a password strength indicator in one of our old classic asp applications that is being retrofitted with improved password security.

http://www.dualbotic.com/LevelMeter.asp

We have decided to start a Tunbridge Wells Dot Net User Group modelled on the London Dot Net User group. The company I toil for has agreed to provide the Venue & Free Pizza. We trial ran this internally over the last couple of months and now want to open it up to the local developer community to get new ideas.

The next meeting is on Wednesday 12th April @ 6pm at our offices in Tunbridge Wells see the website http://www.redlinesoftware.co.uk/contactus.asp for directions. We are very near to the station. If you would like to come along or even better present a topic then send an email to CharlieBarker[At No Spam]RedlineSoftware.co.uk and I will put you on the list.

Over the next couple of weeks I will put together a mailing list and simple web page detailing dates of meetings.

Come along because:            +     Dot Net = Fun!

Logo:

We do a monthly Pizza.net night at our company where a couple of people do a presentation on a topic relating to development. Tonight I did a quick introduction to Unit Testing in .Net using nUnit. I have uploaded the ppt which covers the features and benefits.

I have already blogged about Vault and source code control here: http://www.dualbotic.com/DasBlog/What+Visual+Source+Safe+Doesnt+Do+For+Us.aspx

We are a seven man MS dev team and have been using Vault for nearly a year. First things first it is a huge improvement on VSS 6.0d, because it uses compression combined with a webservice our dev's can work from home over broadband hardly noticing any slow down in check ins/outs. The other killer feature is the Diff tool this is big step up from VSS. It also has some neat reporting although it takes a while to figure this out as the UI is not designed all that well. The one bug bear we have is that there is no plug in for VS2002 only for VS2003 over time this will cease to be a problem as we move more of our code base to VS2003.

I haven't looked at the newest MS VSS which ships with VS2005 Team System so I am not sure whether Vault has some competition coming it's way but we will probably be using VS2003 for at least the next couple of years so we are very pleased with the utility we are getting from it.

One thing I have noticed with all source control products is that the less experienced members of the Dev team struggle with the concepts that lie behind source control and that the UI of most tools doesn't do much to assist them in their plight. It would be good to see more narrative in the UI that would help them make the right decisions and not overwrite local changes by mistake.

I was compiling a release script the other day, and needed to check if all data items in a column were unique before adding a Unique constraint to a table. I wanted a way to stop Query Analyzer (QA) from executing the batch if the check revealed there were duplicate items in the column. I tried a few obvious things like Return and raiserror but these didn't work. I then realised that the issue lay with the GO command. I found this in BOL "GO is not a Transact-SQL statement; it is a command recognized by the osql and isql utilities and SQL Query Analyzer." unfortunately there isn't a corresponding STOP command so you cannot easily perform a test in T-SQL and then tell Query Analyzer (QA) to stop processing the rest of the batch.

I did however find a dirty way around this problem. Using a While loop and the Print command I was able to repeatedly display a message to the user explaining the problem and instructing them to cancel the execution. Not very elegant but it did work.

BOL Search Terms: Batches, Batch Processing