Bits & Pieces – A blog by Kannan Balasubramanian
With Window 8 Pro ditching the start menu 
, people have to resort to the multiple steps to launch control panel.
If you are in desktop mode all you need to do to launch control panel is, do the following.
There… the control panel is launched 
Password for Managed Account in SharePoint 2010 can be set in the following ways.
Set a new password for Managed Account
#If there is only one managed account, the following line could be written as: #$inputManagedAcct = Get-SPManagedAccount $inputManagedAcct = Read-Host "Enter managed account as Domain\User" #Input the desired new password $inputPasswd = Read-Host "Enter new password for managed account" –AsSecureString #Change the password for the managed account to the new value Set-SPManagedAccount -Identity $inputManagedAcct -NewPassword $inputPasswd
To update the account password to a new automatically generated value, from the Windows PowerShell command prompt, type the following:
Set-SPManagedAccount –Identity domain\user -AutoGeneratePassword $true
Update the password for a Managed Account that has already been reset through Active Directory
If the password for a managed service account has been manually changed outside of SharePoint (such as directly in Active Directory), you can update the password to the new value in SharePoint 2010 as follows
#If there is only one managed account, the following line could be written as: #$inputManagedAcct = Get-SPManagedAccount $inputManagedAcct = Read-Host "Enter managed account as Domain\User:" #Input the Managed Account $inputPasswd = Read-Host "Enter password from Active Directory for managed account:" –AsSecureString #Change the password in SharePoint for the managed account to the new value Set-SPManagedAccount -Identity $inputManagedAcct -ExistingPassword $inputPasswd –UseExistingPassword $true
To update the account password to a already changed password, from the Windows PowerShell command prompt, type the following:
Set-SPManagedAccount -Identity domain\user -UseExistingPassword
For more information look at http://blogs.technet.com/b/seanearp/archive/2011/01/25/updating-passwords-on-sharepoint-2010.aspx
Music broadcast has come a long way from age old radio stations to digitally downloadable to online streamed contents. Online radio stations have survived for almost a decade and with decreasing internet tariffs they are fast becoming popular.
Couple of my favourite online radio station are di.fm and sky.fm which have some awesome channels. These stations stream content in various formats such as MP3, AAC etc. The only problem with them is, you have to rely on their website to change the channels if used from desktop based systems.
Coming back to the problem of relying on website to change channels, I was planning to develop my own Windows desktop based client. While doing research related to this came across a project at DI’s forums called as “DI Radio Player”
It has some good features and few of my favourites are listed below.
This radio player is based on .NET 2.0.
You can follow the following link to discuss and download the player.
Discussion: http://forums.di.fm/world-of-music/digitally-imported-windows-player-unofficial-269504/
Download: http://tobiass.eu/
Both these Digital Imported & Sky FM channels have awesome mobile clients (DI, Sky) in almost all mobile OS categories + For the upcoming Window 8 Pro OS based tablets, this app will be a good option. Especially with Intel Clover Trail
When a SharePoint 2013 needs to be deployed in a server which doesn’t have internet access, and SharePoint requires prerequisite to be installed, we can do couple of things.
Downloading prerequisites
We can download prerequisites using Powershell. Please use the following script.
Import-Module BitsTransfer
## Prompt for the destination path
$DestPath = Read-Host -Prompt "- Enter the destination path for downloaded files"
## Check that the path entered is valid
If (Test-Path "$DestPath" -Verbose)
{
## If destination path is valid, create folder if it doesn't already exist
$DestFolder = "$DestPath\PrerequisiteInstallerFiles"
New-Item -ItemType Directory $DestFolder -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
}
Else
{
Write-Warning " - Destination path appears to be invalid."
## Pause
Write-Host " - Please check the path, and try running the script again."
Write-Host "- Press any key to exit..."
$null = $host.UI.RawUI.ReadKey("NoEcho,IncludeKeyDown")
break
}
## We use the hard-coded URL below, so that we can extract the filename (and use it to get destination filename $DestFileName)
## Note: These URLs are subject to change at Microsoft's discretion - check the permalink next to each if you have trouble downloading.
$UrlList = ("http://download.microsoft.com/download/D/0/F/D0F564A3-6734-470B-9772-AC38B3B6D8C2/dotNetFx45_Full_x86_x64.exe", # Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5
"http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/2/B/52B59966-3009-4F39-A99E-3732717BBE2A/Windows6.1-KB2506143-x64.msu", # Windows Management Framework 3.0 (CTP2)
"http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/1/3/9138773A-505D-43E2-AC08-9A77E1E0490B/1033/x64/sqlncli.msi", #Microsoft SQL Server 2008 r2 Native Client
"http://download.microsoft.com/download/D/7/2/D72FD747-69B6-40B7-875B-C2B40A6B2BDD/Windows6.1-KB974405-x64.msu", #Windows Identity Foundation (KB974405)
"http://download.microsoft.com/download/E/0/0/E0060D8F-2354-4871-9596-DC78538799CC/Synchronization.msi", # Microsoft Sync Framework Runtime v1.0 SP1 (x64)
"http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/6/7/A678AB47-496B-4907-B3D4-0A2D280A13C0/WindowsServerAppFabricSetup_x64.exe", #Windows Server AppFabric
"http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/1/D/01D06854-CA0C-46F1-ADBA-EBF86010DCC6/r2/MicrosoftIdentityExtensions-64.msi", # Windows Identity Extensions
"http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/1/D/91DA8796-BE1D-46AF-8489-663AB7811517/setup_msipc_x64.msi", # Microsoft Information Protection and Control Client
"http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/F/9/8F93DBBD-896B-4760-AC81-646F61363A6D/WcfDataServices.exe", # Microsoft WCF Data Services 5.0
"http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/B/5/7B51D8D1-20FD-4BF0-87C7-4714F5A1C313/AppFabric1.1-RTM-KB2671763-x64-ENU.exe" # CU Package 1 for Microsoft AppFabric 1.1 for Windows Server (KB2671763)
)
ForEach ($Url in $UrlList)
{
## Get the file name based on the portion of the URL after the last slash
$DestFileName = $Url.Split('/')[-1]
Try
{
## Check if destination file already exists
If (!(Test-Path "$DestFolder\$DestFileName"))
{
## Begin download
Start-BitsTransfer -Source $Url -Destination $DestFolder\$DestFileName -DisplayName "Downloading `'$DestFileName`' to $DestFolder" -Priority High -Description "From $Url..." -ErrorVariable err
If ($err) {Throw ""}
}
Else
{
Write-Host " - File $DestFileName already exists, skipping..."
}
}
Catch
{
Write-Warning " - An error occurred downloading `'$DestFileName`'"
break
}
}
## View the downloaded files in Windows Explorer
Invoke-Item $DestFolder
## Pause
Write-Host "- Downloads completed, press any key to exit..."
$null = $host.UI.RawUI.ReadKey("NoEcho,IncludeKeyDown")Once all the prerequisites are downloaded, copy them to server in a particular path and create the following batch file.
Installing prerequisites
set PreReqPath="E:\Install\SharePoint\PrerequisiteInstallerFiles" PrerequisiteInstaller.exe /SQLNCli:%PreReqPath%\sqlncli.msi ^ /PowerShell:%PreReqPath%\Windows6.1-KB2506143-x64.msu ^ /NETFX:%PreReqPath%\dotNetFx45_Full_x86_x64.exe ^ /IDFX:%PreReqPath%\Windows6.1-KB974405-x64.msu ^ /Sync:%PreReqPath%\Synchronization.msi ^ /AppFabric:%PreReqPath%\WindowsServerAppFabricSetup_x64.exe ^ /IDFX11:%PreReqPath%\MicrosoftIdentityExtensions-64.msi ^ /MSIPCClient:%PreReqPath%\setup_msipc_x64.msi ^ /WCFDataServices:%PreReqPath%\WcfDataServices.exe ^ /KB2671763:%PreReqPath%\AppFabric1.1-RTM-KB2671763-x64-ENU.exe
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Following is the text from engadget regarding Windows 8 PC & Device Requirements.
If you want more detailed information take a look at Windows 8 Hardware Certification Requirements
The following MS SQL query can be used to get list of tables along with their column details.
SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS
Source : MSDN Forum
Scenario:
Microsoft has removed the functionality of automatically adding the local windows system admin to SQL 2008 Users. The following solutions are workaround to get inside the SQL server by adding a user to SQL Users Table.
Note: Since this involves SQLCMD and starting, stopping of SQL Instance the logged in user should be an administrator of that server where the SQL Server is running and both solutions should be run under an elevated command prompt.
Solution 1 : (Little difficult Solution. Check Solution 2 for automated script by Microsoft)
Open command prompt.
sqlservr -m”SQLCMD”
CREATE LOGIN [testAdmin] WITH PASSWORD=N’test@1234′, DEFAULT_DATABASE=[master];
EXEC sys.sp_addsrvrolemember @loginame = N’testAdmin’, @rolename = N’sysadmin’;
GO
Note: If you do not have SQL authentication enabled then you can try adding your windows user and replace setp-6 with below queries. Here <<DOMAINUSERNAME>> is placeholder for your user name
create login [<<DOMAINUSERNAME>>] from windows;
EXEC sys.sp_addsrvrolemember @loginame = N'<<DOMAINUSERNAME>>’, @rolename = N’sysadmin’;
GO;
Solution 2 : (Easy Solution)
Download the following file, extract and run the cmd file in elevated command prompt.
http://downloads.binarybits.net/blog/addselftosqlsysadmin.zip
Input:
%1 specifies the instance name to be modified. Defaults to SQLEXPRESS.
%2 specifies the principal identity to be added (in the form “<domain><user>”).
If omitted, the script will request elevation and add the current user (pre-elevation) to the sysadmin role.
If provided explicitly, the script is assumed to be running elevated already.
Method:
1) restart the SQL service with the ‘-m’ option, which allows a single connection from a box admin (the box admin is temporarily added to the sysadmin role with this start option)
2) connect to the SQL instance and add the user to the sysadmin role
3) restart the SQL service for normal connections
Output:
Messages indicating success/failure.
Note that if elevation is done by this script, a new command process window is created: the output of this window is not directly accessible to the caller.
Source: http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/addselftosqlsysadmin/
Windows 8 the next iteration of Windows has app stores !
