Recover Office 2010 password from backed up drive

I had copied all the files off my hard drive before upgrading my motherboard.  I looked everywhere for my license key for Office but couldn't find it.  Luckily it proved pretty easy to recover.  I used the free ProduKey software from NirSoft ( http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/product_cd_key_viewer.html ).

1.  Simply download and run the program.  I had to start it as administrator.  
2.  Go to the file menu and choose Select source. 
3. Check the box to load the product key from external windows directory
4. Choose browse and select the windows directory from your old hard drive
5. Click Ok and after a quick search your key will be displayed.
6. Click on your key and save it to text file.  put the text file someplace safe.
7. Bookmark this post for when you can't remember where that someplace safe was.

Windows 7 connect to ethernet over wifi

This one was driving me crazy.  My laptop would always use the wireless even when it had a valid and much faster ethernet connection.  After digging around on the internet I found the solution.  Open the Network and Sharing Center.  On the left hand side click Change adapter settings.  Now click the "Alt" key to bring up the hidden menu.  ON the menu click Advanced -> Advanced Settings.  In the top box under Adapters and Bindings select the wired connection (probably labeled Local Area Connection) and use the arrow key to move it to the top.  Click Ok and you are set.  This really shouldn't be this hard to find.

Sharepoint 2010 Designer problems and ribbon stuck on loading.....

I ran into a good one today.  I had just implemented several new Sharepoint sites.  I used ControlPoint to copy the top level site to a subsite and changed the home page of the old top level site to do a meta refresh to the new sub site that I wanted to act as the top level site.  This would still bring up the old page for a brief second before the redirect so I decided to instead put in an IIS redirect.  This seemed to work great, until suddenly I couldn't open anything in Sharepoint Designer.  I started getting the infamous "The Web server at .... does not appear to have Microsoft SharePoint Foundation installed" error.  The ribbon was also stuck on Loading......I checked all the settings for designer and client integration, changed them, and changed them back.  I reset all my IE settings.

Finally I found this link: 
http://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/questions/27877/sharepoint-designer-2010-doesnt-work

It ends up that if Sharepoint can't access the top level site (which happens with an IIS redirect) then a lot of stuff starts going crazy.  The lesson here is to not mess with the top level site.

SharePoint 2007 Designer - this page contains markup that is not valid when attached to a master page

The problem arises when creating a custom form and attaching it to a master page.  The problem is SharePoint Designer inserts an empty script tag into custom forms.  Go to code view and search for <script /> and delete it. 

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/sharepointcustomization/thread/184a40da-01f0-44a0-a90b-0e719132eae0

Configure today screen on Windows Mobile 6.5

The following provisioning xml will configure the today screen for Windows Mobile 6.5.  The key is to set enabled = 0 on anything you don't want to show.  The Order param starts at 1 (top of the screen ) and goes up by 1 for each position.  You can skip numbers without anything bad happening.  I use this to set what I don't want to display to high numbers so that they don't conflict with the items I do want to show.  Sample provisioning xml is below.  This will hide Getting Started, Bing, and My Today.  It sets the order high for them to get them out of our way.  It then sets device lock to display at the top of the screen followed by Tasks.  Use a remote registry editor to find the settings you want to change.

<wap-provisioningdoc>

<characteristic type="Registry">

  <characteristic type="HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Today">
    <parm name="Date" value="1" datatype="integer" />
  </characteristic>
 

  <characteristic type="HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Today\Items\Getting Started">
   <parm name="Enabled" value="0" datatype="boolean" />
   <parm name="Order" value="49" datatype="integer" />
  </characteristic>

  <characteristic type="HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Today\Items\Bing">
   <parm name="Enabled" value="0" datatype="boolean" />
   <parm name="Order" value="47" datatype="integer" />
  </characteristic>

   <characteristic type="HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Today\Items\My Today Item">
   <parm name="Enabled" value="0" datatype="boolean" />
   <parm name="Order" value="46" datatype="integer" />
  </characteristic>

  
  <characteristic type="HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Today\Items\&quot;Device Lock&quot;">
   <parm name="Enabled" value="1" datatype="boolean" />
   <parm name="Order" value="1" datatype="integer" />
  </characteristic>
 
 
   <characteristic type="HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Today\Items\&quot;Tasks&quot;">
   <parm name="Enabled" value="1" datatype="boolean" />
   <parm name="Order" value="2" datatype="integer" />
  </characteristic>
 
  
 
</characteristic>

</wap-provisioningdoc>

ATT XML Provisioning

I've been wrapped up in a major roll out of a Windows Mobile 6.5 device(Intermec CN50).  Hopefully it is slowing down and I can get back to some semi-regular posts.  I thought I would start off with some more of the xml provisioning files I had to write.  Here are the settings to get the device to connect to ATT gprs.

<wap-provisioningdoc>
  <characteristic type="CM_GPRSEntries">
    <characteristic type="ATT">
      <parm name="DestId"
      value="{ADB0B001-10B5-3F39-27C6-9742E785FCD4}" />
      <parm name="UserName" value="" />
      <parm name="Password" value="" />
      <parm name="Enabled" value="1" />
      <characteristic type="DevSpecificCellular">
        <parm name="GPRSInfoValid" value="1" />
        <parm name="GPRSInfoAccessPointName"
        value="wap.cingular" />
      </characteristic>
    </characteristic>
  </characteristic>
</wap-provisioningdoc>


I'm also using the following settings to stop the device from popping up the window asking if you want to automatically configure the device for the SIM card.  I'm not 100% sure which setting is required. I just kept doing registry dumps to see what changed every time I cold booted the device and configured it, but the following works either way.

 <wap-provisioningdoc>
  <characteristic type="Registry">
    <characteristic type="HKLM\Comm\AutoDataConfig">
      <parm name="LastIMSI" value="310410" datatype="string" />
    </characteristic>
    <characteristic type="HKLM\System\State\Shell\Notifications\{DDBD3B44-80B0-4B24-9DC4-839FEA6E559E}\4096">
      <parm name="TodaySK" value="Notification" datatype="string" />
    </characteristic>
    <characteristic type="HKLM\System\State\Shell\Notifications\Active">

      <parm name="CLSID"
      value="{DDBD3B44-80B0-4B24-9DC4-839FEA6E559E}"
      datatype="string" />
      <parm name="ID" value="1000" datatype="integer" />
    </characteristic>
  
  </characteristic>
</wap-provisioningdoc>