I did some work related to certificates exactly one year ago. Today I had to repeat some of what I did in order to generate a new cert, and I’d forgotten some of the details in the process. I wrote a little about it here last year, but clearly I’d left out one step: How to generate a signing request which you can then submit to a third party for signing. Luckily I was able to recall the details after messing around with the files from last year. The following is a simple guide to save more time next time.
Continue readingMinor Technical Issues
Solution for “Server is in single user mode. Only one administrator can connect at this time.”
I ran into the error message in the title today, while trying to access a database on my local machine after upgrading various stuff. Among other things, I had installed the newest version of Microsoft SQL Server, and now I could not access my DB. Here’s how I fixed it.
It took me a little while, but I eventually found the cause: For some reason an -mhad been added to the list of parameters used when starting up the service that runs the database server. If you’re in the same situation, you’ll find this in the application Sql Server Configuration Manager.
Right click SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER) and select the tab Startup Parameters:
I don’t know why the -m parameter was there to begin with – perhaps I’d configured it that way unwittingly during the installation.
In any case, selecting and removing it and restarting the service MSSQLSERVER fixed my problem, and let me access my database again.
PS: Still not working? Look for an -f
A few other posts I read indicate that an -f parameter can have the same effect, so you might want to look for that if the above doesn’t fix your problem.
Notes to self: Publishing .NET Core web services
I generally create .NET Core web services in Visual Studio. I’ve heard good things about the more light-weight and easy-to-configure Visual Studio Code, but I’ve only barely tried it myself yet. I’m sure I will give it another go sometime soon, but for now I’m fairly content with VS – with one exception.
Extending the lock screen screen timeout Windows 10
I lock my PC every time I leave it (Shortcut: Win + L), and until recently, that would cause my screen to shut off too after only a minute. When it can take upwards of 30 seconds to turn the screen back on, that can get pretty annoying if you’re just gone for that one minute.
You would perhaps think there was a simple setting for adjusting the time it takes before your screen turns off – and there is – but for some reason, it seems to be disabled and hidden in Windows by default. To enable it, you’ll need to make a change to your Windows registry. Once you’ve done that, you can easily adjust the timeout as you like.
Continue readingVS Reference Blues
When code builds but looks invalid, and intellisense is dead
I recently encountered what I at first thought was a bug in Visual Studio, but which turned out to be a poorly described configuration error on my part.
The problem manifests itself like this:
