This article got me started with enabling the “aero” theme, Windows Server 2008 “Aero Enabled” Workstation Edition.

Vista and Longhorn both have increased security measures.  Overwriting a system file like notepad.exe is more involved. While I can see their need for this added security, I do find it annoying. Regardless of whether or not you are installing Notepad2, as in this article, or you just need to reassign ownership of a file in Vista or Windows Server 2008, I hope this article helps alleviate some of the pain.

In following the article on overwriting notepad.exe with notepad2.exe, I first came across the issue of granting full control rights for this file to my logged in user. Since I have had to figure this process out more than once now, I am deciding to document it, with wonderful screen-shots.

While granting full control to the administrator, I was alerted with the following dialog.

In order to overwrite a file, like notepad.exe, we need to give the administrator "Full control." In order to do this, we need to change ownership of the file from "TrustedInstaller" to "Administrators." TrustedInstaller, by default, has full control, while the admin account does not.

Right click the target file, click Properties.

Click on the security tab. You should see the "Administrators" account, by default, with read and execute permissions only.

Click on the "Administrators" account, seen above, then click on "Advanced" as pictured below.

Next, we need to select the account for which we wish to edit owner permissions. Select the "Owner" tab. We should see "TrustedInstaller" highlighted as the current owner.

Click the "Edit…" button to change the owner of the file. The owner settings dialog should appear. Select the "Administrators" account, and click "Apply." After clicking apply, there should be a prompt as shown below.

Finally, click "OK." Then click "OK" to close the owner dialog. Click "OK" to save and exit the "Advanced Security Settings for <YourFileName.extension>."

Next, we want to allow "Full control" for the admin account. After closing the last dialog, we should still see the properties dialog for our file (the original dialog view, the second screen-shot in this series). Select the "Administrators" account, and click "Edit."

Give our "Administrators" account full control by enabling the checkboxes.

When you click "Apply" to apply these changes, the following prompt should be displayed. Click "Yes" to apply these changes to to grant full control to the administrator account.

At this point, the ownership of this file should have changed from the default "TrustedInstaller," to the "Administrators" group. For me, I can now overwrite this notepad.exe file with the more useful notepad2.exe.

I hope this article helps. Until Vista and Longhorn become second-nature, I know I will be referencing this.

Due the dependencies and build process, I wanted to schedule nightly builds on my local machines. This was when I discovered Windows PowerShell. PowerShell uses the .NET CLR and the .NET framework to provide new tools and methods for administering Windows environments. While similar in some aspects as DOS, PowerShell is much more. It is a command-line shell and scripting language that allows administrators to use C#.

Each night I want to backup certain files, sync files, clean and build my projects for 32 and 64 bit systems, update my environment with dependency changes, and email myself the log files generated during this process. I am not a DOS command nor scripting guru, but I could figure this out with some time. With PowerShell, I can leverage my C# knowledge to do all these tasks in a short amount of time.

If you want more control over administering your environments and would like to use C#, check out PowerShell. There is a good amount of support and tutorials to help get started.

Trivial Examples

The following is a trivial example of how to connect to a SQL database, query the Employees table of the Northwind database, and write those results to the screen. The PowerShell scripting syntax can be seen below.

   1: $conn = New-Object System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection

   2: $conn.ConnectionString = "Data Source=.;Database=Northwind;"

   3: $cmdText = "SELECT TOP 10 * FROM EMPLOYEES"

   4:  

   5: $conn.Open()

   6: $cmd = New-Object System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand($cmdText,$conn)

   7: $rdr = $cmd.ExecuteReader()

   8:  

   9: while($rdr.Read())

  10: {

  11:     $id = $rdr["EmployeeID"].ToString()

  12:     $fn = $rdr["FirstName"].ToString()

  13:     $ln = $rdr["LastName"].ToString()

  14:     Write-Host "$id $fn $ln"

  15: }

  16:  

  17: $conn.Close()

While that example is extremely trivial, it does show the power of using C# logic with the PowerShell language. It is easy to see how the code example above was translated from C# into PowerShell. The differences are syntactic.

For my nightly build scenario, I am able to create a scheduled task that calls a batch file, with similar contents as below.

   1: REM Calling Nightly Build

   2:  

   3: REM do the necessary to clean and build my environment

   4: call MyBuildLogicFile.bat

   5:  

   6: REM call powershell scripts

   7: powershell -command "& C:\PowerShellScripts\MyBuildScript.ps1

The batch file does the building then calls a PowerShell script I created to do help me parse my log files and email the contents. It actually call two scripts, one for parsing the content of my resulting log file, and the other to email the contents of the log file. The contents of the two files can be seen below.

PowerShell provides a number of predefined methods that can be used out of the box. Since I am interested in reading a log file, parsing its contents, and emailing the results, there are some functions available for making this scenario easier. For example, I do not need to recreate the wheel to read in a file’s contents. I can use Get-Content. Before getting carried away with writing too much C#, check the available cmdlets (commandlets) to see if your desired functionality exists.

My file content parser script, using Get-Content.

   1: # Create a StringBuilder to retain our log file contents

   2: $sb = new-object System.Text.StringBuilder

   3:  

   4: # append a line break point, <br/> for the log file contents

   5: foreach ($line in get-content "C:\Output.log")

   6: {

   7:   $sb.Append($line).Append("<br/>")

   8: }

   9:  

  10: # Call our Emailer.ps1 to send this content to us

  11: powershell -command "& C:\PowerShellScripts\Emailer.ps1 -param '$sb'"

My email script that is called from the above code.

   1: param($param1) 

   2:  

   3: $message = new-object System.Net.Mail.MailMessage("me@mail.com", "me@mail.com")

   4: $message.IsBodyHtml = $True

   5: $message.Subject = "Automated Build Update"

   6: $message.Body += $param1;

   7:  

   8: $smtp = new-object Net.Mail.SmtpClient(”smtp.mail.com”, 587) 

   9: $smtp.EnableSsl = $True

  10: $smtp.Credentials = new-object System.Net.NetworkCredential("username", "password")

  11: $smtp.Send($message)

Pretty simple. Thanks to PowerShell, I have more control over administering my development and test environments using my preexisting knowledge of C#. One command that was always useful in Unix/Linux is grep. PowerShell uses Regex to simulate similar functionality, and you can find examples of those online.

Seriously! And don’t think I don’t realize I am sounding like a turtle neck wearing, smug, metrosexual developer. Dang it, I hate that, too!

This may be a pet peeve, but c’mon! I just want to mount an ISO without downloading 3rd party software and instead I get Texas Hold’em baked into the OS installer disk?

AAAaaaaargh…

I am running Vista + Mac OS X with Boot Camp. I installed VS 2008 Architecture Edition Monday only to learn that edition of Visual Studio doesn’t support unit testing. Of course I wanted it off, but uninstall Visual Studio? You might as well reinstall the OS for all the goo VS seems typically leaves behind.

Luckily, I created a restore point before installing VS2008 in anticipation of something not working out well (oh me of little faith). One does that easily enough:

1. Start > Backup and Restore Center
2. Select the "Create a Restore Point" in the side menu.

   

3. This gives you dialog allowing you select the drive you want to create a restore point for.
4. Install Visual Studio 2008 for Architects Edition
5. Start > Backup and Restore Center
6. At the bottom of the screen select:
   
7. Select the "Choose a restore point" option and get the dialog showing all of your restore points.
   
8. Click next and pray.
9. Go eat dinner.
10. Come back after dinner and login. It’s bloody magic!
11. Install Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite.
12. Blog about it.