Windows Store apps store their settings in a registry hive file named settings.dat. Even after loading it into registry the values inside it are non-standard which makes them difficult to read and edit. The post dives into their serialization format and guides the reader through developing a PowerShell function for editing the values.
Creating a Windows service in .NET could hardly be any easier. Installing multiple instances of such a service on a single computer is not that easy. Since there's not much documentation about it, many articles are describing over-complicated custom solutions instead of taking advantage of the APIs that are already available.
If you're developing a Windows Phone 8 application which doesn't only connect to public web services to get its data, but also communicates with you own custom web service, you'll want to be able to connect to it from the Windows Phone Emulator with as little hassle as possible. Usually that means that you'll want it to connect to your local IIS Express server.
Windows 8.1 doesn't seem to always ask for location (public or private) when connecting to a new network for the first time, instead it often defaults to public. While this certainly is more secure than the opposite option, it can cause difficulties when trying to take advantage of features that are by default disabled on private networks, such as network discovery and remote access. Since enabling them for public networks would be insecure, the only option to use them on such a network is to change the location to private as it should be.
After switching to TeamCity one of the first tasks was setting up proper backup of its configuration. There are multiple ways to backup TeamCity data. The only one that can be performed remotely is exposed over TeamCity's web UI. Fortunately it can also be triggered via REST API for easier automation.
Troubleshooting WCF services is often challenging, mostly because of cryptic and uninformative error messages. When you combine that with complex usage and configuration scenarios, it takes time to get to the bottom of the problem. The issue I'm about to describe manifested itself on a production server running a WCF service with HttpModule based Windows authentication. Other authentication methods worked fine, while with Windows authentication WCF returned a rather cryptic error message.
If you're using Subversion in a corporate environment you might need to rely on path based authentication to revoke users' read or write access to parts of a repository. Unfortunately the feature is not documented very well and there are a couple of specifics you should be aware of in advance to prevent unpleasant surprises later. I decided to describe two of them that I recently stumbled upon.
The Xbox 360 Dashboard update released on 4th December 2007 added support for playing DivX and XviD videos natively. Unfortunately this only works for media played directly from the dashboard and not within Media Center Extender. The only thing left to do was to setup Windows Media Player media sharing.
Windows Vista unlike the previous versions doesn't have an option to enable or disable hibernation in the Power Option of Control Panel. If you end up with disabled hibernation, the only way to turn it back on is from a command prompt.
Any custom identity being used for an application pool in Internet Information Services 6.0 must be a member of the IIS_WPG group which grants it all the necessary privileges, otherwise IIS reports only Service Unavailable when the site gets accessed.
The functionality of the Run as context menu item is often an invaluable tool. The downside of this command is that unless you want to use the administrator's account, you have to enter the desired username every single time which quickly becomes tedious.
Microsoft Office 2007 applications (at least Outlook and OneNote in particular) require Windows Desktop Search 3.0 to be installed for their built-in search capabilities to work fully.
The default port number 3389 for RDP (Remote Desktop and Terminal Services) can be changed through a registry value.
By default the Windows XP Welcome screen shows the users created through the control panel applet. You can change all that by setting up the correct values in the registry.
Simple file sharing hides Security tabs on all Properties dialogs. You need to disable this feature to explicitly set permissions on any object in Windows Explorer.