Nikolais Rant

Well I am about to begin my journey into VS.NET 2005 and SQL Server 2005 using Virtual Server to host my development environment. Here is a quick tip just incase you have some issues getting the server up and running.

When attempting to fire up the Virtual Machine Remote Control (VMRC) Server and you keep getting 'Virtual Server could not start the VMRC server. Another server may be using the selected TCP/IP port.' run the following command to check which application is hogging the tcp/ip port 5900

From Steve Radich blog Permalink
To display the listening ports on a server you can do (From a command prompt):

netstat -ano | find ""

For example the newsgroup post is about virtual server which uses port 5900. You could do:

netstat -ano | find "5900"

This would return something like:

TCP 0.0.0.0:5900 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING 320

You can then launch Task Manager and find that task ID. If Task Manager doesn't show the process id column then you can (in task manager) go to View - Select Columns - PID (Process Identifier).

Thanks Steve

On a course I saw this very cool SysInternals tool being used on the class desktops that display the systems configuration information. Very nifty, new and cool, very geeky. Check it out.

http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/bginfo.shtml

This is an oldie but a goodie. .Net connection strings for accessing SQL server databases and the like are a pain in the ass to remember, this solid site takes away the need to remember this crap =)

Finally I get to attend a Tech Ed http://www.microsoft.com/nz/teched/ 2nd to the 4th of August 2004

I am attending heaps of the BizTalk tracks, Visual Studio developer tools, and a bit of info path stuff. I also get to met the famous Scott Woodgate, and ask him all sorts of stupid questions, neat. Oh geek heaven, and we get a party at Rainbows End, yeeeehhhaaa