Creative in Code

“Access Denied” Error Message When You Call a Web Service While Anonymous Authentication Is Turned Off

jasongill09 — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 17:09:20 +0000

Recently created a web service on a seperate server and when I tried to access the service, I received the following error:

The request failed with HTTP status 401: Access Denied.

Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current Web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.Net.WebException: The request failed with HTTP status 401: Access Denied.

The problem was that my application was using the NETWORK SERVICE account to access the web service which isn’t going to work. Instead I created a domain-level service account and used that to access the web service.

//Create an instance of the CredentialCache class.
CredentialCache cache = new CredentialCache();

// Add a NetworkCredential instance to CredentialCache.
// Negotiate for NTLM or Kerberos authentication.
cache.Add( new Uri(myProxy.Url), "Negotiate", new NetworkCredential("UserName", "Password", "Domain")); 

//Assign CredentialCache to the Web service Client Proxy(myProxy) Credetials property.
myProxy.Credentials = cache;

Convert YouTube video to mp3

jasongill09 — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 16:57:01 +0000

I was searching for a way to get the audio (mp3) from a YouTube video and stumbled across this little gem – http://www.video2mp3.net/

In a nutshell, if you search for a video on YouTube or any other video website, just paste the URL in to the input field and away you go. It will convert the video into an mp3 file which you can download and save locally.

MSDeploy skip Thumbs.db files using a wildcard

jasongill09 — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:16:46 +0000

I use MSDeploy for one system which syncs/replicates content from staging to several production environments. However whenever the sync script tried to copy content it would often encounter a problem with a Thumbs.db file (which comes out of thin air) and throw its toys out of the pram.

The easiest way to fix this was to skip any files with filename ‘Thumbs’ in it. Using the below snippet elivated the problem, wooohooo!

-skip:ObjectName=filePath,absolutePath=”.*\\Thumbs.*”

Using Firebug to learn jQuery

jasongill09 — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:43:37 +0000

Stumbled across this useful video tutorial by Dave Ward and Craig Shoemaker that shows how to use Firebug (web dev plugin for Firefox) to help you learn jQuery. It also brought to my attention two additional tools; jQuerify and SelectorGadget.

The cool thing is you can apply these changes to any website, not just the ones you have source code access to

Enjoy.

Adding e-mail verification on ASP.NET MVC using Membership Framework

jasongill09 — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:56:16 +0000

Was recently looking for something to help me do this.

I found this useful blog entry.

Arrgh…I’ve lost my Windows taskbar

jasongill09 — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:31:46 +0000

This is a common problem with Windows XP, where the taskbar just disappears. Most people think they have to go through the pain staking process of closing down all their applications and rebooting their machines… but you don’t!

How to restore the taskbar

1. Hold down CTRL + Alt + Delete on your keyboard to bring up Windows Task Manager

2. Under the Applications tab close all of your Windows Explorer tasks by selecting the task one by one and selecting End Task

3. Once you have successfully closed your Windows Explorer tasks, choose File > New Task (Run) (or you could hold down the Windows key + R button on your keyboard)

4. You should now see a Run window appear, type in ‘explorer’ in the text window and press OK.

Wallah! Your taskbar is restored!

Programming books for sale

jasongill09 — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:07:51 +0000

Selling some programming books I have lying around that I don’t use anymore. In very good condition, almost new.

Check them out on Amazon – seller account ‘creativeincode_books’

3DS MAX 6 Fundamentals (Fundamentals (New Riders)) [Paperback] by Boardman, Ted

Beginning ASP 3.0 (Programmer to Programmer) [Paperback] by Buser, David

Beginning JavaScript (Programmer to Programmer) by Wilton, Paul

How to Do Everything with Macromedia Flash X by Blake, Bonnie

VB.NET Language in a Nutshell (In a Nutshell (O’Reilly)) by Roman, Steven

Learning Visual Basic .NET [Paperback] by Liberty, Jesse

Dual boot Windows XP and Windows 7 from 2 hard drives

jasongill09 — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:33:00 +0000

I recently blogged about carrying out a dual-boot install of Windows 7 Ultimate on my personal desktop PC.

My current setup is Windows XP Professional on a 75GB HD and now Windows 7 Ultimate running on a separate 75GB HD. I realise it’s probably overkill having such large disks used for operating systems but I got a good deal on HD’s when I built the PC…so what the heck!

Why dual-boot?

I wasn’t sure how good Windows 7 would be (let’s face it, if Vista was anything to go by then I would be switching back to XP pretty soon) and I was happy with what I was getting from XP so rather than replace XP I wanted to be able to try the new OS and check all the hype from myself. So if like me you want to ‘test’ before you switch then carefully follow the instructions below.

How to set up

I already had Windows XP installed which makes the process easier but there are other people who have blogged on how to install XP on a system already running Windows 7 or Vista.

1. First things first, make sure the HD (hard drive) you want to install Windows 7 on has been formatted. The easiest way to do this is to open My Computer > Right click the drive you wish to format > Choose ‘Format’. Ensure you carry out full formatting process and not quick format.

2. Next step is to place the Windows 7 boot CD/DVD in the PC’s CD/DVD drive.

3. Now restart your PC.

4. Enter the BIOS menu by pressing the appropriate F key on your keyboard. For me this was F10.

5. The Boot menu should now appear (blue screen). Choose to boot from your CD/DVD drive.

6. Now carefully follow the instructions on-screen.

7. When you are prompted to choose ‘type of installation’, ensure you choose ‘Custom’ and choose the correct drive you wish to install Windows 7 to. Always double-check because the last thing you’d want is to overwrite your Windows XP installation.

8. Carefully follow the instructions on-screen until installation is complete.

9. When you restart your PC you will notice that you will be prompted to either use ‘Windows 7′ or ‘Previous version of Windows’. We have dual-boot mode…woohoo!

That wasn’t so hard now was it!

Go get a cup of tea and enjoy being able to dual-boot Windows XP and Windows 7.

Installed Windows 7 Ultimate

jasongill09 — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:06:03 +0000

Just installed Windows 7 Ultimate on my desktop PC. So far so good. I was a bit at first reluctant due to Microsoft’s previous OS release and to be honest XP did exactly what I wanted so why change, right? A few colleagues who had installed Vista and changed over to Windows 7 said that the new OS was much much better and highly recommended the switch. Having not previously installed Vista for the reasons they changed to 7, I thought I’d better install Windows 7 on a new partition/hard drive… just incase it wasn’t as good as the hype.

So far I’m impressed. Everything seems to be working OK, no performance issues and was pretty quick to install. It also managed to download and install all the hardware drivers for me which was very handy.

Dual boot

I decided to install Windows 7 on a second 75GB hard drive (as I had a second spare HD sitting in my PC) and still have XP on a seperate HD.

I will blog about how I did this later.