Tony's Microsoft Access Blog

Windows Live Family Safety Filter is an enormous pain

Windows Live Family Safety Filter is an enormous pain.   I was called by a friend telling me that she couldn't get into her Internet banking.  Turns out that some kind of Windows Live ID screen belonging to the WLFSF is obstructing every possible Internet access.  Including coming up in the middle of games.  Frequently.  Very frequently.  As in every 10 or 30 seconds.   She had absolutely no idea how it started happening.  And she was quite vague as to when this started.

Every Windows Live ID and password that she knew about made no difference.  I created a Windows Live ID myself and was told I wasn't part of the family.  Well frig.   Ok, that makes sense but geez, I'm trying to disable this very frustrating screen.

Next to no help on the Windows Live ID screen that was popping up.  I certainly don't recall seeing any and I looked.

So I start searching Windows Help.  Nothing. 

Oh, and I can't research this problem on the Internet because it won't let me on the Internet.   Aaarrrghhhhh

Did this have any thing to do with Windows Parental Control?  Didn't look like it.

I tried disabling all the Windows Live toolbars and other "helpers" in IE.    No difference.

Finally I started looking through the registry for the word family.  Ahh, some registry keys with DLLs with that word in there.   

Well, DLLs have to be installed I assumed so I poked about in the Add/Remove Programs (or whatever the equivalent is in Windows Vista.).   Aha, Windows Live Essential Tools and a few other downloads installed about eight days ago.   And there's an option to uninstall just the WLFSF. 

Now I'm quite expecting Microsoft to automatically send down updates in a few months which will re-install the entire thing including the WLFSF.  <sigh>

I charged her $10 for the hour and a half.   It's not her fault. 

"Type mismatch" error in Auto FE Updater fixed.

A new version of the Auto FE Updater is available for download.

Version 1.76  - 2009-01-26

• Fixed occasional "Type mismatch" error message.  Thanks to Roy-Vidar Steining for being persistent in solving this baffling message.  
• Write date of file copied to local INI file in ISO yyyy-mm-dd format.

See "Type Mismatch" bug and line numbers in the Auto FE Updater for a complete explanation and an example of my stupidity.

Microsoft Office Access 2007 Developer Edition FAQ Update

Updated the below section to show how Access 2007 is smarter than I initially though.

Q: How do I set the trusted locations using the runtime?

<snip>

Access 2007 will go through all the registry entries under the Trusted Locations key.   So you can call your trusted location as you desire so long as it doesn't conflict with another applications key.   You may want to use your company name and app name or a GUID.

For example
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Access\Security\Trusted Locations\Company Name App Name

I'm planning on adding this functionality to the Auto FE Updater. Soon I hope.  As well as the Jet 4.0 Sandbox and Access 2003 Macro security settings.

"Type Mismatch" bug and line numbers in the Auto FE Updater

I've been getting intermittent email reports of a "Type Mismatch" error message in the Auto FE Updater.  However the problem just wasn't making any sense.   Thankfully the most recent person who emailed me was quite persistent and so the problem is solved pending the last version he is going to be testing very shortly.

The lengthy amount of delay in figuring out the problem was exacerbated by my own stupidity.   I use a lot of API and other code especially from Randy Birch's VBnet Visual Basic Developers Resource Centre.   I didn't bother adding my standard error handling routine in much of the code for whatever foolish rationale I can't quite figure out now.  In hindsight of course.  So the error message was passed back to upper level procedures where there was no numeric handling so I was greatly puzzled as to how some string manipulation was causing "Type Mismatch" messages.

Turns out the problem was due to converting the OS version number "5.1" string (meaning Windows XP) in systems where the decimal symbol is , (comma).

In that code look for the line

Text1(1).Text = win.VersionNum

In that example the code is being converted to a string so no problem. However my code converted it to a Single variable.  

Now when I set the decimal symbol to comma on my own system the number gets converted to 51.  And not 5.1.  I'm not quite sure why Norwegians and others are getting type mismatch.  But I'm not going to worry about that for now.

Thanks also to MZTools for having buttons to add and remove line numbers from subroutine and function calls.  This allowed me to ship new versions of the Auto FE Updater to the tester and narrow down the line in the routines causing the problem.  You can use the variable Erl to display the line number of the line of code causing the problem.

MsgBox "The following error occurred in procedure GetWinVerAll of Module APICalls" & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & _
    Err.Description & vbCrLf & "Line Nbr: " & Erl & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & Command() & _
    gblstrSupportMsg & gblstrCopyrightNotice

There are a variety of methods to determine the decimal symbol including API calls such as GetLocaleInfo: Regional Locale Numeric Settings.   However Rick Rothstein, fellow MVP had the following elegant solutions.

DecimalPoint = Format$(0, ".")

DateSeparator = Format$(0, "/")

ThousandsSeparator = Mid$(Format$(1000, "#,###"), 2, 1)

Tony

P.S.  In another day or two I'll have a release of the Auto FE Updater which solves this problem.

Children sleep through smoke alarms

"In the first house, David and Louie, ages five and eight respectively, were still asleep after 3.5 minutes despite the squawking alarm outside their bedroom."

"In the second home, one of the seven-year-old boys awoke 10 seconds after the smoke alarm sounded. He called to his brother and then left his bedroom in a sleepy state of confusion, walking up and down the stairs four times, not knowing what to do."

Building a better, safer home

"Out of memory" or "Object not found" while importing reports?

Just trying to figure out some weird problems with a clients medium sized front end.  I isolated the above messages while importing reports to having PDF Creator as my default printer.  Once I switched my default printer to my HP Laser Jet printer I was able to import the reports just fine.

Note that the commercial product calling itself PDFCreator as at http://www-pdfcreator.com is just trying to make $$$s attempting to masquerade as the open course product   See Impostors on the Internet.

Scum spammers using veretekk.com

I have no idea if veretekk.com are responsible for the three spams I have received today from subwebs which have their domain there.  By subwebs I mean felixalexanderthomas.veretekk.com.   Maybe veretekk.com will see my posting and likely others and put in procedures to ensure that spammers have a more difficult time using their systems.   However that domain has now been blacklisted in my spam filters so I won't see any more spam or emails from them.  Bye bye.

From: Alexander Thomas <felixalexanderthomas.vm@veretekk.com>
Subject: It is all about Leadership & Training
Message-Id: <20090119021234.9200D3BF876B@mailout26.e-wav.net>
Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2009 18:12:34 -0800 (PST)

This email has been sent from:
http://felixalexanderthomas.veretekk.com
IP address 172.129.132.128
Date stamp: 2009-01-18

You have received this email because this email address
was used to subscribe to the Veremail Newletter system.
If you did not request this subscription, please disregard this
email. You do not need to unsubscribe or take any further action.

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We require that you "validate" your registration to ensure that
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To activate your account, simply click on the following link:

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You can also activate your no-cost subscription by sending this entire message back to us.

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Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

Thanks to my friend Jim - Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard   My favourite quote - "Everything is just a few hundred clicks away"

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You did realize that the Onion is a parody website, right?

Spit does not go clunk at -40 aka Converting to Metric

I just had to laugh long and loud when I read the Converting to Metric XKCD cartoon.  In light of the Canadian prairie deep freeze where the temps have had wind chills in the -40 and -45 C for quite a number of days recently.

Spit does not go clunk at -40.

Mind you there are some videos on YouTube showing boiling water being thrown in the air.  For example From Boiling to Frozen

A number of years ago when I was a teenager I was working for my Dad up in Fort McMurray, Alberta on some 3 1/2 story walkup apartment blocks.   The recessed balconies had to be painted so they were covered in multiple players of plastic.  It was about -45 or -50 C outside without the wind chill.  I was really tempted to cut a small slit in the plastic on the fourth floor balcony and see if err, ahhh well you know, that yellow stuff, would be frozen when it hit the snow.  However I quickly realized that a rather important chunk of the male anatomy might get frost bite which I figured would be a bad thing.  

My sister, who reads my blog, is just shaking her head right now.  

Internals viewer for SQL Server

Internals viewer for SQL Server I always enjoy peeking under the covers.  Hey, computer software covers.  Get your mind out of the gutter.   This blog posting mentions how to poke about under the covers of SQL Server.

Similar to MDB Tools - A set of libraries and utilities for reading Microsoft Access database (MDB) files. 

Download the file and open the HACKING file.