Shandy's Blog

I have recently been looking into utilising VB.NET forms from a VB6 application and found that there seemed no one place on the internet where I could find all the relevent information I required to get it working. I have therefore created my own article on the subject.

To customise your i-mate SP3 so that you can play specific tunes for text alerts/alarms simply copy your midi (it must be a midi audio file) into the root windows folder.

I managed to get my i-mate SP3 to act as a modem for my Dell 620 laptop by adding the following modem initialisation string in the bluetooth setup dialog.

+CGDCONT =1,"IP","goto.virginmobile.uk", where goto.virginmobile.uk is the apn address as entered in the settings from my previous post, Setting Up An i-mate SP3 With Virgin Mobile Pay As You Go In The UK To Use The Internet.

I also had to setup a dialup connection using the *99# number with no user name, password nor domain entered. The network was set to Internet.

The access speed is pretty slow but it does work.

It appears that to enable email on my i-mate SP3 I needed to enable WAP. Enabling an internet connection was not enough. To setup WAP I needed to create a dialup account using the WAP Network option and the *99# number. No user name, password or domain entries were required.

The actual network setting is set to Internet. Setting the network directly to WAP does not seem to work but with a WAP entry being setup, even though it is not directly accessed seems to do the trick.

Virgin Mobile do not, as far as I know, have their own publically usable email servers so you need to specify both incoming (POP3) and outgoing (SMTP) servers as your own email servers (Personally I use vbCity's email server)

I'd always previously relied on the intrinisic ring tones on my i-mate SP3. However, with the improvement in sound quality with the BIOS upgrade I recently performed I thought I'd put on my old favorite of The Professionals theme tune as the ringtone when I receive a call. It took a little bit of trial and error to get the tune listed as a possible ringtone. It turns out the ringtone must be placed in the root of the Storage, My Documents folder to get the ringtone included in the list of selectable ring tones. Both wav and mdi formats seem to be supported. I still have to figure out how to get a sound listed on the text message arrival sounds list.

I upgraded the BIOS on my i-Mate SP3 today. The download is available from Club i-mate. To gain access to the BIOS update you have to be a registered member. Be aware that to become a member of club i-mate costs $59.99 if you are re-registering an i-mate device that has previously been registered with club i-mate. However, once a member, the download is free. If possible I'd advise anyone buying a second hand i-mate to also try and get the login details off the previous owner.

The version I was using was v1.something (I forget exactly which) and I upgraded to v2.4.33.11. To find the version on my i-mate SP3 I used Start, Settings, About, ROM Update versions: Operator.

Note that when you upgrade the BIOS you lose all your user settings. This includes installed applications other than the default ones and any connection information like internet settings.

The main benefit of the upgrade appears to be that I am now able to use ActiveSync to via a bluetooth connection. Previously I used a USB connection and to some extent I will still use the USB connection as when the i-mate SP3 is connected to my laptop via a USB connection it also re-charges. However, the bluetooth re-synchronising is something that will be useful if I am fully charged and forget to plug my SP3 in. The quality of the audio has also been improved tremendously.

I used the following settings

Start, 8 Settings, 9 More..., 2 Data Connections, Menu, 1 Edit Connections, 4 GPRS Connections, Menu, 1 Add
Description: Virgin GPRS (This can be any name)
Connects to: The Internet
Access point: goto.virginmobile.uk
User name: user
Password:
Primary DNS: 193.30.166.3
Secondary DNS:
IP Address:

Start, 8 Settings, 9 More..., 2 Data Connections
Internet connection: Virgin GPRS (This must be the same name that was specified above)

In SQL Server 2000 I used a SQL Server authenticated user name to send emails with attachments using the xp_sendmail account. However, in SQL Server 2005 I was unable to get xp_sendmail working and after switching to using sp_send_dbmail I initially still couldn't get my SQL Server authenticated account to send emails with attachments. In the end I had to give the SQL Server authenticated account sysadmin rights. Not a very satisfactory solution but a lot easier than switching to using a windows authenticated account.

I'd be interested to hear if anyone has a more elegent solution

In SQL Server 2000 the @Attachments parameter for the xp_SendMail stored procedure allowed you to pass attachments in the format "\\servername\sharename\filename;\\servername\sharename\filename;". However, when using the sp_Send_DBMail stored procedure @file_attachments parameter this format is invalid resulting in the error message:

The format of the parameter @attachments is incorrect. The file names must be separated by a semicolon ";".

Note also the incorrect naming of the parameter @file_attachments as @attachments. Instead you need to use the format "\\servername\sharename\filename;\\servername\sharename\filename".

I found that although I could access remote computers using SQL SErver Surface Area Configuration on the same domain as myself I could not access servers on other domains. I resolved the issue by allowing my windows login access to the local administrator group on the remote servers.

I give in. Having spent the last week on and off trying to allow a SQL Server authenticated user to execute the xp_SendMail stored procedure I am at a loss as to what to do to allow this to happen. It looks like I am going to have to rewrite my code to utilise the new Database Mail method, something I could really do without at the moment. I will still need my code to execute the xp_sendmail stored procedure because my code still needs to use the xp_sendmail on SQL 2000 servers.

I suppose the alternative is to change the login from the specific one I have created, which can only access stored procedures I give it execute acess to (it cannot access views nor tables directly), and allow my application to login as the sa user. Ironically making the SQL Server 2005 less not more secure.

After a struggle I have finally managed to get the full edition of Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio installed on my laptop. Initially, it refused to install claiming that it was already installed, despite the fact it wasn't. I believe the problem was because I had previously installed SQL Server 2005 Express and despite not installing Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Express something had installed that prevented the full blown Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio from SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition from installing. Fortunately the solution was fairly straightforward. I simply un-installed all SQL Server 2005 express components and installed the SQL Server 2005 standard edition from scratch.

The reason I needed to install full Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio edition was that the express edition did not appear to list the SQL Server Agent in the Object Explorer and so I was unable to access any jobs installed on the SQL servers. As far as I am concerned this is a fairly fundemental flaw in the express edition, rending it useless for the work I need to do.

The company I work for, CMI has recently started to roll out Skype as a method of communicating over our network. We have chosen to use US Robotics USR 9600 USB internet phones running with Skype 3.0. Hopefully this can save us a lot of money with phone calls between our UK and overseas factories. From a personal point of view it will save the company money with me being able to use it to contact my wife, Helen, from abroad once I get her a Skype phone. I always phone my wife every day I am away and the phone bill can be quite considerable by the end of my stays abroad!

As posted on my Sri Lanka blog I am due to fly out to Sri Lanka shortly. The main objective is to install a SQL Server 2005 server onto our Sri Lanka network. We have just purchased six PowerEdge 2950 servers; all to be configured to run SQL Server 2005. Four of the servers are to be based in the UK and two in our overseas factories - one in Morocco and one in Sri Lanka.

This is the first part in a major project to upgrade our current systems to .NET. Currently we program mainly in VB.Classic with SQL Server 2000 as our backend database. The first phase of the project will see us migrate our core database to SQL Server 2005 and the second phase will see us upgrade our core applications to VB.NET 2005.

The server for Sri Lanka was shipped out last week and allegedly landed in Sri Lanka last Saturday. Currently our Sri Lanka factories are closed down for the Wesak holiday but should be re-opening tomorrow when I hope to get confirmation that it has cleared customs. One of my colleagues has pre-configured the server so my job will mainly be to plug it into the local network and make any configuration changes to get it up and running on the local domain as well as ensuring we can remotely access it and also to ensure the local IT department are able to support it.

I have a couple of additional tasks to perform at our Sri Lanka factories if I get chance. I have to audit the factory scanning system I developed to ensure it is working as required and also to see if I can get Skype up and running.

Last Friday we re-organised the Keyboard/Video/Mouse (KVM) switches at one of our server rooms. Previously we had never bothered to daisy chain our KVM switches and consequently had three KVM switches, each with their own keyboard, mouse and monitor. As we had two identical KVM switches - Belkin Omni View Pro 8 Port KVM Switches (F1D108-OSD) - it seemed logical to place these physically together, daisy chaining them using a Belkin 2' Daisy-Chain Cable (F1D108-CBL) so that they could share a single keyboard, mosue and monitor. However, when we did this the monitor attached to the master unit would only work for devices attached to the master unit; we had to attach a second monitor to the slave unit to handle devices attached to the slave unit. The master unit keyboard and mouse worked successfully for both devices connected to the master and the slave unit. Has anyone else come across this problem and found a solution so that only a single monitor is required?