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How to Fix the “Service Unavailable” problem in IIS

Gears gears cogs bits n piecesThe Problem: For whatever reason, your website is displaying a white screen with “Service Unavailable” and nothing else.

The Cause: There could be many causes, but the one I just discovered was that the application pool had shut down for no good reason.

The Solution: In IIS, navigate to “Application Pools”, right click to bring up the content manager – select “Stop”, and then select “Start”.  That should fix the problem in most cases.

Creative Commons License photo credit: Elsie esq.

 

This post originally appeared on the Stronico blog – with the absorption of Stronico into Digital Tool Factory this post has been moved to the Digital Tool Factory blog

ASP.net / How To Fix / Microsoft— No comments
23
May 11

Written By Steve French

 

An argument for .Net in startups – to wit, avoiding groupthink

Vikings!I recently read Why Startups Could Use .NET, But Don’t and the original CEO Friday: Why we don’t hire .NET programmers post from Expensify.  For a quick summary

Starting Fact:

  • Startups are risk taking places
  • Startups are founded by risk taking people

Pros of .Net

  • Great Tools
  • Works together well
  • .Net programmers know how to use the platform

Cons of .Net

  • .Net programmers are stodgy
  • And risk averse
  • And see no need to tweak solved problems like the networking stack

(Granted, I am biased as a .net developer.)

From which I drew the conclusion: The technology is, if anything, better, but the non .Net people are more similar to risk-taking startup CEO types, so they fit into the startup culture much better.

Now that I think about it, that seems to be an argument FOR startups developing on the .Net platform.  The risk taking CEO is a given, if you also bring in like-minded developers then the startup will have more group think, and consequently make poorer decisions than a more diverse mix of personalities.

Now that I read this again, this is an empirical question – What proportion of .Net based startups reach profitability vs the non .Net startups?  Do(es) the data exist anywhere?

Creative Commons License photo credit: hans s

 

This post originally appeared on the Stronico blog – with the absorption of Stronico into Digital Tool Factory this post has been moved to the Digital Tool Factory blog

Microsoft— 1 comment
17
May 11

Written By Steve French

 

How to fix problems with SMTP on IIS 7/Windows Server 2008

Don't feed your daughter to the crocodilesThe Problem: You move servers, and for unknown reasons all smtp services stop working. You search forever, but there are no error messages being given and nothing in the event log

The Cause: For whatever reason, (in my case anyway) the server does not display the problem as an error, but as a warning in the event log, even the it is a record of an error.

The Solution: None that I can tell, just make sure to check the event log for warning where there should be errors.

Creative Commons License photo credit: tm-tm

 

This post originally appeared on the Stronico blog – with the absorption of Stronico into Digital Tool Factory this post has been moved to the Digital Tool Factory blog

How To Fix / Microsoft— No comments
05
Feb 11

Written By Steve French

 

How to fix a missing reference to mscorlib in Visual Studio 2010

Runtime compiling is greatI was trying to update my main app code to utilize the .Net Framework 4.0 and this happened:

The Problem: I could find no obvious way to update the mscorlib reference in my solution, so I decide to simply delete it and add it again, and hope that it magically updates to the most recent version.  This is actually what usually happens with Visual Studio.  However, I delete the mscorlib reference, and I am unable to add it back again, I get the error message telling me that mscorlib is already included in the project.

The Cause: This is a known problem in Visual Studio.

The Solution: I just went into my project (.csproj) file and added the following line

<Reference Include=”mscorlib” />

And that fixed it.  I still have no idea how to make it use the most recent .Net Framework though.

Creative Commons License photo credit: dasapfe

 

This post originally appeared on the Stronico blog – with the absorption of Stronico into Digital Tool Factory this post has been moved to the Digital Tool Factory blog

How To Fix / Microsoft / Software Development— 1 comment
26
Jul 10

Written By Steve French

 

Upgrading to Silverlight 4 and Visual Studio 2010

Abstract TechnologySorry for the blog silence so far, I’m still working on my post on programming and endurance sports.  I also have started using Visual Studio 2010 and Silverlight 4.  So far I’m impressed by both.
Creative Commons License photo credit: Wonderlane

 

This post originally appeared on the Stronico blog – with the absorption of Stronico into Digital Tool Factory this post has been moved to the Digital Tool Factory blog

 

This post originally appeared on the Stronico blog – with the absorption of Stronico into Digital Tool Factory this post has been moved to the Digital Tool Factory blog

Microsoft— 1 comment
16
Apr 10

Written By Steve French

 

How to fix strange errors in silverlight web services

fix you_smallThe Problem: You upload your wonderful Silverlight application to a new server and begin to get all sorts of strange errors, most notably something like this

Message: Unhandled Error in Silverlight 2 Application An exception occurred during the operation, making the result invalid.  Check InnerException for exception details.   at System.ComponentModel.AsyncCompletedEventArgs.RaiseExceptionIfNecessary()
at StronicoMain.ServerUtil.AddressTypeListCompletedEventArgs.get_Result()
at StronicoMain.Page.proxy_AddressTypeListCompleted(Object sender, AddressTypeListCompletedEventArgs e)
at StronicoMain.ServerUtil.ServerUtilClient.OnAddressTypeListCompleted(Object state)
Line: 1
Char: 1
Code: 0
URI: http://www.servername.com/Silverlight.js

Continue reading →

ASP.net / How To Fix / Microsoft / Silverlight— 3 comments
02
Mar 10

Written By Steve French

 

Thoughts on predictable software scheduling

Schedule 2/6
While pondering installing Visual Studio 2010, as well as thinking how all software is moving to a subscription basis, I had the thought – why not do two predictable releases a year?  The first release, say in January, would be whatever new features were in place by that date.  The second release, say in July, would be a pure performance and usability release, as the development team would spend half the year optimizing and tweaking the code, as well as fixing all bugs.  Any new “Features” would have at least six months to cook in the minds of the developers and would be implemented on a much stronger code base. Continue reading →

Biz / Microsoft / Sentiment / theory— No comments
25
Feb 10

Written By Steve French

 

How to fix the No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it 127.0.0.1:25 error

The Problem: You have a brand new Windows 2008 server and you are testing your web application and trying to send an email.  Every time you try to send an email via the web application you get the following error

“System.Net.Sockets.SocketException: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it 127.0.0.1:25”

The Cause: SMTP services are not installed on the server, they do not seem to be installed by default. Continue reading →

ASP.net / ASP.net MVC / How To Fix / Microsoft— 1 comment
12
Feb 10

Written By Steve French

 

How to migrate a user profile in Vista

In a previous post I detailed the simple procedure of leaving a domain and joining a workgroup in Vista. The catch is…

The Problem: When you leave the domain, the user profile is basically destroyed and a crippled version is put in it’s place. Very little documentation exists on how to prevent this, and the market has not supplied many programs to help either. Copying files and folders did not work for me. I tried both Windows Easy Transfer and the User State Migration Tool from Microsoft, to no avail. Curiously, none of my knowledgeable tech friends knew of an easy way to do this.

The Cause: As near as I can tell – there is little software market for downgrading your network, or providing documentation. Happily there is at least one company that will step up.

The Solution: Download the User Profile Wizard from Forensit. (It took me much time to find it). Make backups of everything, then run the Wizard. You will probably have to create a new login to use, but the profile will be pristine once it’s transfered over.

I imagine this would not be much of a problem for someone more knowledgeable, but for me it was quite vexing.

Okay, hopefully the next blog posts will be all about startsups and Silverlight.

 

This post originally appeared on the Stronico blog – with the absorption of Stronico into Digital Tool Factory this post has been moved to the Digital Tool Factory blog

How To Fix / Microsoft— No comments
15
Nov 09

Written By Steve French

 

Google Desktop is now available for Vista Ultimate 64 bit

It wasn’t before. Hallelujah! Just after Windows 7 comes out too.

 

This post originally appeared on the Stronico blog – with the absorption of Stronico into Digital Tool Factory this post has been moved to the Digital Tool Factory blog

Microsoft— No comments
26
Oct 09

Written By Steve French

 

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