How To Archives ⋆ Page 2 of 5 ⋆ Dirk Strauss' Tech Blog

SQL Server Management Studio – Changing Default Data Type In Table Designer

How To
SQL

- January 24, 2014November 2, 2016 23081

If there is one thing that I always had a pet peeve with, was the table designer column data type default in SQL Server Management Studio. You have no option (that I am aware of) to change the default column data type when creating a new data table in table

Outlook Email Stuck In Outbox With Date Of None – Resolved

How To

- January 15, 2014November 2, 2016 47026

Outlook Email Stuck - I came across a very strange problem. I sent an email and it seemed to get stuck in my Outbox. I am using Microsoft Outlook 2010 and I was having some connectivity problems. It seems that when I sent the email, my line dropped. Somehow this

Scumbag Scammers – My Conversation With The Devil In Disguise

How To

- November 7, 2013November 2, 2016 81888

Scumbag Scammers - I have always maintained that the easiest way to hack someone, obtain access to their PC or to get someone's password is to simply ask them for it. There is a worrying trend in the world where more and more people's private information is being compromised by

Windows 8 Tips Series – Content Rollup

How To

- July 30, 2013November 2, 2016 1990

Windows 8 Tips Series has been a regular post on this blog for the past couple of months. I think it is time to close the series and provide a content roll-up of all the posts. With Windows 8.1 around the corner, I will probably cover that from now on. I

Resolve Windows Live Mail Error When Using smtp4dev

How To

- July 15, 2013November 2, 2016 122920

smtp4dev is an excellent testing tool to add to your tools library. Go ahead and download smtp4dev from CodePlex. It is a dummy SMTP server which is compatible with Windows 7/Vista/XP/2003/2010. smtp4dev Will sit in the system tray and listen for messages on the port you specify (usually port 25). The

Clone VirtualBox VM’s Easily To Provide a Fresh Dev Environment

How To

- July 11, 2013November 2, 2016 07308

Clone VirtualBox VM's - Lately I have fallen in love again with VirtualBox. I have decided that using the same installation of SYSPRO on my local dev machine to do all customisations is inefficient. As time moves along and different customisations need to be done for different clients, my SYSPRO installation

Windows 8 Tips Part 19 – Bring back Boot Into Safe Mode With F8

How To

- July 8, 2013November 2, 2016 01152

F8 Safe Boot seems to have vanished from Windows 8? One of the strange quirks of Windows 8 is that the Boot into Safe mode by pressing F8 at boot time has been disabled. Microsoft justifies this by saying that modern computers boot too fast. The response window for pressing the

VirtualBox CompareExchange128 Error on Windows 8.1 Preview Install

How To

- July 4, 2013November 16, 2016 478134

VirtualBox CompareExchange128 Error Over the past few days, the Internet has been abuzz with articles, Tweets and showcases of Windows 8.1 Preview and Visual Studio 2013 Preview. My curiosity got the better of me, so last night I decided to give Windows 8.1 Preview a whirl. So as any good intrepid explorer

Twitter – Get All Your Tweets In One Archive

How To

- July 2, 2013November 2, 2016 62283

Twitter is addictive. Can you remember your first tweet? I was so thankful that mine wasn't one of those 'Trying out this Twitter thingy' tweets. You know, the one that is almost like making a good entrance. Well just how do you go about getting your Twitter Archive? Finally they have

Windows 8 Tips Part 18 – Customize Task Manager

How To

- May 15, 2013November 2, 2016 41589

Windows 8 has redesigned the Task Manager. It's better and more advanced than the previous versions of it. Did you know that you can customize Windows 8 Task Manager to your liking? Take a look at the tabs along the top and you will notice (among others) Performance, Startup, App history