Problems with uplink on an 8 port Netgear Gigabit switch

All the ports on the Netgear GS608 I think are meant to be auto speed and uplink sensing, I have found this not to be true. I had the 1Gb uplink to our central switches in Port 8 and a 100Mb Ethernet workstation in port 2 could not get an IP address via DHCP. When I moved the uplink to Port 1 it all leapt into life. Interestingly other 1Gb PCs in other ports had no problem with the uplink in either port 1 or 8. ...

June 30, 2009 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

.NET Framework 3.5 SP1 issue on Windows SharePoint Services v2.0

If you apply the TFS2008 SP1 to a system that has been upgraded from TFS 2005, but the WSS was not upgraded from 2.0 to 3.0 you can get a problem that you cannot access the SharePoint portal sites due to WebPart load errors (you get an Event ID: 1000 error in the Windows event logs). This is because the TFS 2008 SP1 installs .NET framework 3.5 SP1 which causes some problems for WSS 2.0. Note this is not usually a problem for new installs of TFS 2008 as these use WSS 3.0 by default, but the upgrade of TFS from 2005 to 2008 does not force the upgrade of WSS 2.0 to 3.0 so sites that upgraded are susceptible. ...

June 29, 2009 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

Logging everything that is going on when an assembly loads using CThru

Whist trying to work out if there is any way to get around the problem I am suffering with Sharepoint workflows idling inside a Typemock Isolator test harness I have been having a good look at CThru; a set if libraries for Typemock that, and I quote Codeplex here, ‘… allows creating interception and isolation frameworks for logging, testing and many other things very simply’. This is the framework is used to create the Silverlight mocking frame work on the same Codeplex site. ...

June 22, 2009 · 4 min · Richard Fennell

0x800106ba Windows Defender error in Windows Vista

I was installing a new PC for a friend yesterday; after using the Easy Transfer Wizard (first time I used this and I can heartily recommend) to move their settings from their old XP system to their new Vista one I got the 0x800106ba Windows Defender error on start-up. Now there is a lot of frankly useless comments on this error on various forums, strange as the solution is simple. I suspect this is down to this issue being predominantly a problem that hits home user who are not a familiar with the internal workings of services etc. in Windows. ...

June 21, 2009 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

29109 error when installing the quiescence GDR patch for TFS 2005

Whilst upgrading a single server TFS 2005 to a dual server 2008 install I hit a problem. I had installed the new 2005 Data Tier (DT) and patched it without issue. However then I tried to apply the patch VS80-KB19156-v2-x86, the Quiescence GDR patch, on the Application Tier (AT) I got the 29109 error: SQL Reporting Services configuration encountered an unknown problem. A search on the web found this is a common issue usually fixed by repeated retries! This did not work for me. ...

June 12, 2009 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

TFS Sharepoint Extensions on a Load Balanced Sharepoint farm

I posted yesterday about problem creating a new team project if you had missing templates on your Sharepoint server. This problem could of course be avoided if you had installed the TFS Sharepoint Extensions onto your Sharepoint server as your are meant to. However, as I have discovered it is not that easy to do if your chosen Sharepoint system has network load balanced front ends. The problem is that Sharepoint will replicate your MSFAGILE30.STP template between the various servers, but it will not move other TFS artefacts such as the TFSREDIRECT.ASPX in the 12 hive or setting to point to the reporting service instance in the registry. To add these other items you need to install the extensions an then run the TFSConfigwss.exe tool to edit the registry. The problem is the Extensions MSI will not complete if it detects the STP already in place (which as I said will that have been replicated by Sharepoint). The only solution I found was to cheat a bit: ...

June 10, 2009 · 2 min · Richard Fennell

TF30227 error when creating team projects on TFS 2008

Historically we have used the eScrum process template for our TFS team projects. However, with a view to the TFS 2010 future we have decided to moved back to the MSF Agile template. We used eScrum to provide an easy to use web based project dashboard; we now think that we can achieve the same or better in TFS 2010 using Excel’s enhanced links to TFS and Excel Services in Sharepoint. ...

June 9, 2009 · 2 min · Richard Fennell

Addressing binding issues with with Ivonna 2.0.0 using <dependentAssembly> in web.config

I have been having some binding problems when trying to use Ivonna 2.0.0 against a version of Typemock Isolator other than the 5.3.0 build it was built to run against. This is a know issue, if your version of Ivonna and Typemock don’t match then you have to use .Net Binding redirection to get around the problem. So to track down the exact problem I used the Fusion logger shipped with the .NET SDK (via fuslogvw.exe). This in itself has been an interesting experience. A few points are worth noting: ...

May 29, 2009 · 3 min · Richard Fennell

The setup story for TFS 2010

I have been looking at the various install and upgrade stories for the TFS 2010 Beta. I have to say they are very nice compared to the older TFS versions. You now have a SharePoint like model where you install the product then use a separate configuration tool to upgrade or setup the features required. There are plenty of places to verify your setting as you go along to greatly reducing the potential mistakes. ...

May 27, 2009 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

Everytime I have to use Typemock I need to ask does my code stinks?

Ok a bit sweeping but I think there is truth in this, if you have to resort to a mocking framework (such as Typemock the one I use) I think it is vital to ask ‘why am I using this tool?’ I think there are three possible answers: I have to mock some back box that is huge and messy that if I don’t mock it will mean any isolated testing is impossible e.g. SharePoint I have to mock a complex object, I could write it all by hand, but it is quicker to use an auto-mocking framework. Why do loads of typing when a tool can generate it for me? (the same argument as to why using Refactoring tools are good, they are faster than me typing and make less mistakes) My own code is badly designed and the only way to test it is to use a mocking framework to swap out functional units via ‘magic’ at runtime. If the bit of code I am testing fails into either of the first two categories it is OK, but if it is in third I know must seriously consider some refactoring. Ok this is not always possible for technical or budgetary reasons, but I should at least consider it. Actually you could consider category 1 as a special case of category 3, a better testable design may be possible, but it is out of your control. ...

May 24, 2009 · 4 min · Richard Fennell