Well I had a look and sure enough it had somewhere stuck in the system, the proxy settings from waay back when I was pratting about. Anyway, if anyone finds this do the following:

Open CMD (command prompt) – Start > Run > CMD [ENTER]

proxycfg [ENTER]

It should then display the proxy settings, then use:

proxycfg -D [ENTER]

to go direct, or, if you are using a proxy server:

proxycfg -U [ENTER]

This will grab it from IE and set it for the system. Job’s a good’un.

Program Benefits

• Microsoft Partner Points
  When your application earns the “Compatible with Windows 7” logo, your business will receive up to 30 Partner Points for use in the Microsoft Partner Program*. The Microsoft Partner Program provides valuable software, training, and support; you can learn more at Program Membership.

  *Total points awarded subject to rules of MSPP program; see MSPP calculation details for more information.

• Priority Listing on the Windows 7 Compatibility Center
  Logo-qualified products receive special priority on the foremost showcase of Windows products: the Windows Compatibility Center.
• Logo Artwork & Marketing Guides
  Logo artwork is provided to display on your packaged product and websites to help communicate to your customers that they can be confident your product will be compatible and run reliably on Windows 7.  The logo marketing guide provides you with details on how.
• Windows Error Reporting
  Once in market, access to Windows built-in error reporting (WER) enables you to monitor issues being experienced by your customers and respond pro-actively.

Best of all, there’s no charge to submit.  Once your application passes the logo requirements, you simply submit for the logo and will begin receiving the benefits above.

So, what’s the problem? Well you need to code sign your work, which costs? Or does it? Well although you can get it for free from some companies, it won’t be able to be used. You need to use a Verisign code signing.

So isn’t that anti-competitive? Well yes, but why have they done it? Well I signed up for a free code signing (30 days), and the company in question didn’t even check who I was. So I could sign up as Capita and then start issusing code signed by “Capita”. Verisign however, appears to actually check who you are. So, if you want something Windows 7 approved, it’s $99.

Shame about the ref and England’s second goal. Maybe that would have raised our sprints enough to have pulled it out of the bag.

At least Wayne controlled himself, still he played shitta. Only one question remains, what colour will Wayne’s caravan be?

Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/simsextract

Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

The only time you would want to keep a backup would be pre and major event. So in the case of schools and SIMS .net, before a SIMS release or patch. In this modern age where discs are pennies, I would invest in a spinal of DVDs and copying the encrypted backup onto the disc and labelling correct and storing it in a secure place.

Anyway, getting back to the day-to-day backups, we need to have a way of removing the old backups, so, what’s the solution. Well you could use Microsoft SQL Studio Management and create a task to deal with backups, but that starts getting complex. To keep it simple we going to use a tool called TidyBackups. Which was created by yours truely. TidyBackups will remove the old and compressed the uncompressed.

You can download TidyBackups from Sourceforge.

An example of TidyBackups would be:

TidyBackups is saved to C:\SIMS

Schedule Task details:

Run: C:\SIMS\TidyBackups.exe /DAYS:45 /PATH:”C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.SIMS2008\MSSQL\Backups” /ZIP /LOG

Start In: C:\SIMS

Schedule Task: Weekly – Mon – Fri 17:30

This will then run every weekday at 5.30PM, it will delete any files with the extension .bak (even if they are compressed), that are older then 45 days and compress the remaining .bak files. All of this will be logged in a text log file in C:\sims called TidyBackups_log.txt

I could do with the code for future ref.

Yippy!!

The /LOG option should help with Windows Server 2008. Allowing to output to file without any legacy methods. I suppose I could improve upon further, but then it would break my key goal. Keeping it simple. One task, one tool.

I suppose I could create another application that could be used to create a scheduled task, but hey, it’s a bit like re-inventing the wheel. There are already numerous ways of doing it. In small environment I suppose, when you do it by hand, it could be useful, but most sites nowadays are managed and have methods for creating scheduled tasks.

Back to work tomorrow. Yip.

I am bored of your OS and your hardware, although good, it’s not me. I am therefore leaving club Apple and returning to the gated world of Microsoft.

Your unfaithful servant,

Matt

PS: Yes, David, it’s on eBay – 320529993522