I rebooted my windows 7 machine yesterday and could successfully remote desktop to it. I then disconnected from the session as I had some things running and wanted them to continue to run. When I try to re-connect tonight I get :
Any ideas what this means?
Edit: Tried running remote desktop from the command line with the /console option and that doesn’t resolve the issue either :-(
Ever had to setup a local SMTP server when you’re developing some functionality but don’t want the emails being sent out by accident?
I’ve had a couple of systems which I’ve written over the years and been a little paranoid each time that some test emails will be sent out to a live email address. This stems from a project I worked on a while back and had to send the system to the company development team so they could do some in depth testing/debugging and they ended up sending over thousand emails out to the client ;-)
Any how …
I went to setup an SMTP server locally to do some testing today and found out that Windows 7 doesn’t have a built in SMTP server option anymore so went on a Google hunt. After doing some searching I came across a few free server options, but the one which caught my eye was on Codeplex. My initial thought was “Woo, can see how they wrote it if I want to” and the description was spot on …
Project Description
Dummy SMTP server that sits in the system tray and does not deliver the received messages. The received messages can be quickly viewed, saved and the source/structure inspected. Useful for testing/debugging software that generates email.
Anyway, I downloaded the latest build of smtp4dev as it seemed to fill all my requirements; a) does not deliver email and b) doesn’t interfere with anything else.
The description was spot on, and so far so good it works as required. Will post an update once have used it a bit more.
Hope it helps others out in the future. Let me know if this helps you!
I was browsing through my regular blog feeds this morning and the tweets which had happened over night this morning and I came across the following link. It’s posted in the context of Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2, however it works for any window which is currently selected.
As I use a duel screen setup at work and manually dragging/snapping the windows to the side of the screen only work at the far edges of the entire desktop real estate these short cuts enable halving both screens spot on.
The short cuts which are starting to be high up on my most used list are:
Dock to Screen Left : Windows + Left Arrow
Dock to Screen Right: Windows + Right Arrow
I’m lovin’ Windows 7!
At my new job part of my role is to bring most of the current website development in house for the 8 websites we currently have. Due to this I have decided to instead of just run them on the built in development web server which ships with Visual Studio and launches when you hit f5 with an address something similar to http://localhost:58697/Website1 to setup individual websites in IIS to best replicate the production environment. This is possible as IIS 7 on Windows 7 allows multiple websites on the client OS.
To do this I did the following:
1. Create a new website in iis 7 manager console; setting the host name to <identifier>.localhost
2. Update the hosts file to point the local loop back ip address to know about this new host name. Open the hosts file found in C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\ and add the following line:
127.0.0.1 website1.localhost
3. Open the Visual Studio solution (as Administrator) with the website in and navigate to the property page of the website. Navigate to Start Options > Server > Use custom server and set the Base Url to http://website1.localhost
4. Hit f5 in Visual Studio and run it.
I hope this helps anyone looking to do a similar thing.
Enjoy :-)
I’ve been using Windows 7 from the RC now on my Mac Mini for a couple of weeks. I’ve got all the usually required applications installed; Firefox, Visual Studio etc. and have been relatively impressed by the experience.
On starting my new job last week I was given a pretty powerful Dell Vostro 1720. Its hasn’t got the highest of build quality, but it is packed fully of goodies including 2.6Ghz duel core cpu, 8gb ram, 512mb dedicated graphics card with a 1920 x 1200 resolution 17inch screen which is very crisp.
Anyway, I digress … at work I’ve got an MSDN subscription which allowed be to download the released version of Windows 7 64-bit and install it. I’ve now been using it close on a week and it feels like forever. The user experience is good and it feels very natural to go to from Windows XP. I had used Vista a couple of times before and just hated it with a passion. It was just slow and clunky.
I know the user experience including the speed is down to the components in the machine, but it runs in RC on my Mac Mini at home pretty comfortably and that doesn’t have much power or ram. I’ve also seen people running it on netbooks, something you wouldn’t even think about doing with Vista. Due to being pretty impressed so far with the OS I thought I’d put together a top n things I like about Windows 7. It would also give me the opportunity to look back on it in a few months time and see if I’m still impressed by it and if its still the same things which are good.
Top 4 “likes” about Windows 7
1. Speed - The general speed of it is good. Quick recovery from hibernation, good reboot speed, general usage gives good response time.
2. Taskbar organisation – I love the way the task bar is organised. The pinning of applications to it, keeping all the icons together, being able to drag and drop them into which ever order you like is brilliant.
3. Multiple Monitor support – Brings an all new meaning to ‘plug ‘n’ play’ support. Plug in your second monitor for the first time, configure it correctly (location, resolution etc.) and thats it; done! Un plug it, take your laptop home, come back in, plug the monitor back in and it auto recognises it, goes back to the previous setup. No pushing laptop function buttons and waiting for the screen to refresh!
4. Window docking – There are little applications out there to automatically set the active window to half the screen, move it left and right etc. but the built in window docking in Windows 7 does for me. The high screen real estate which I’ve not got makes putting applications half screen usable … just drag them over to the side of the screen you want and *poof* automatically half the screen. My only niggle about this functionality is that when you’ve got 2 monitors it acts like a single screen so you can’t dock left and right on both screens which is a bit of a short fall, but other than that all good!
