Have you ever been installing an optional component of windows, such as IIS, and been prompted with the box below:

Some might say, "Well you are obviously and idiot, put the CD in the drive." It just so happens that you can get this message when you do have the CD in the drive. What's happened here is that you've changed the path to the location where windows was installed from. So in my case when i originally installed windows the CD drive was G:, now it is F:. Windows stores this information in the registry under a String Value called SourcePath. To Change the value open up regedit and go to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup and change SourcePath to the new location of our XP install files. In may case I set it to F: Now as long as I have the CD in the drive I won't be prompted to select a location.

If you want to do away with the need to keep putting your CD in the drive, just copy your I386 directory to the hard drive and point SourcePath to the location you've copied the files to. Simple.

This guy has figured out how to replace windows notepad completely with notepad2, well done I say!

http://blogs.msdn.com/omars/archive/2004/04/30/124093.aspx

So i've fallen in love with this notepad2 utility that you can get over here. It is basically what Microsoft should have done with their notepad. It is a great little program with syntax highlightnig and regular expression support.

To make notepad2 your view source editor just do the following:

If you like the theme for this site and you are using dashBlog then why not download it and use it on your own site. project84v2.zip (9.18 KB)

If you have any comments/suggestions or find any bugs please let me know.

Every now and then when I am going to add an entry to dashBlog I get an error. When I look in the event log I see the following:

Error:
System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
at FreeTextBoxControls.Support.ResourceManager.LoadResource(Hashtable target, String language, String cacheKey)
at FreeTextBoxControls.Support.ResourceManager.GetResources()
at FreeTextBoxControls.Support.ResourceManager.GetString(String name)
at FreeTextBoxControls.Support.Helper.PopulateDefaultDropDownList(ToolbarDropDownList toolbarDropDownList, FreeTextBox freeTextBox, ResourceManager resourceManager)
at FreeTextBoxControls.FreeTextBox.OnPreRender(EventArgs e)
at System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal()
at System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal()
at System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal()
at System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal()
at System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal()
at System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal()
at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain()
while processing http://blog.project84.net/EditEntry.aspx.

Has anyone else had this problem or know how to fix it??

I just noticed that Microsoft have again updated their Solution Accelerator for Business Desktop Deployment(BDD). If you are interested in automating a deployment of windows xp take a look as it is really very good. You can find the BDD over here.

Well I got sick of that ugly brown theme and created a new theme based off of one that was included with the new version of dashBlog. The theme was originally coded by James Snape which i then altered to come up with the theme you currently see here. What do you think?

Ever wondered what all the reserved words are in C#....well I did. Head on over to http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/csref/html/vclrfcsharpkeywords_pg.asp to find out. I've copied them below.

abstract	event	new	struct
as	explicit	null	switch
base	extern	object	this
bool	false	operator	throw
break	finally	out	true
byte	fixed	override	try
case	float	params	typeof
catch	for	private	uint
char	foreach	protected	ulong
checked	goto	public	unchecked
class	if	readonly	unsafe
const	implicit	ref	ushort
continue	in	return	using
decimal	int	sbyte	virtual
default	interface	sealed	volatile
delegate	internal	short	void
do	is	sizeof	while
double	lock	stackalloc
else	long	static
enum	namespace	string

I got sick of trying to get my blog working with Community Server so I've migrated over to DasBlog. The installation was painless and making skins is significantly easier than with CS. Now that I've got this working correctly, stay tunned for some exciting new posts.

I was wondering the other day while at work why when I right-click in a command window that windows pastes whatever is in the clipboard and doesn't show the context menu. I tried it at home and all I got was the right-click menu. Now I've grown very attached to this quick pasting feature so started to dig around to find out how I could get me home PC to do the same thing. As it turns out it is really very easy. Here are the steps involved:

1. Go to Start->Run
2. Type cmd and click Ok.
3. Right-click on the title bar and go to properties
4. Then select QuickEdit Mode on the right.
5. Click Ok and choose to change the default settings.