BT peak hours change

Just seen the interview with a man from BT on Working Lunch Iplayer Link (Valid for 7 Days).

Basically, BT are changing the off peak hours from its current time of 6PM-6AM to a new time of 7PM-7AM.

What a load of rubbish! I understand what the bloke from BT was saying on the show - and on Working Lunch, the figures were about making call every day - however, I am not that different.

I usually make a 10-20 minute call every other day at around 6:30, this is currently completely free with BT - now I will be paying about £15 a month for these calls unless I sign up to their any time package at £4.99 a month.

I think that is just a way of getting cash from people who do not know about this change or a way of forcing people on to their £4.99 a tariff.

I have long hated BT, but I am on a LLU internet package that I love and there is little other choice. Personally, I think I would rather change my habit and make my calls after 7:00 instead rather than give a penny more to BT. How they can defend their position and say that not many people make calls straight after 6:00, I have no idea.

Delete Windows 7 Search History (And customise!)

A question just came up on SuperUser.com where a user asked the following:

Windows 7 - Make Windows Explorer Never Remember Search Terms

You know the handy search bar on the top right of Explorer. I find it irritating that it always remembers search terms. I feel like, people can easily intrude into my computer since they know what documents I'm searching for.

Is there any way to disable it?

So... I remember the search being the third tab within the re-done folder options dialog, however I could not see the ability to disable search or delete the history. I looked a bit further at some other options, but could not find it anywhere (Including a quick look in group policy).

I ran Microsoft/Sysinternals Process Monitor and found that the following location is where the search results are stored :

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\WordWheelQuery

So, to cut it short, you can delete any entry within this key without breaking anything - The entire key simply does not exist on a fresh Windows install. But, to disable search history entirely simply right click the key (In the left folder view) and click Permissions, Click add then type everyone and click ok. Click on the Deny box next to "Full Control", and you should see something like the following:

Simply Click ok and done! If you go to any Windows Explorer folder and click on search, there will not be ANY results from previous searches and more importantly, it won't remember anything you type in the future.

Whilst this is job done, I wanted to take this a step further and see if it is possible to add predefined search terms whilst preventing Windows from writing new entries - Long story short, I failed!

I understand how the entire registry key works, You simply add a new Binary value with a sequential number, write your search term and add a 00 in-between each letter followed by three 00's at the end. For example:


Lastly, I think for the last item - MRUListEx, you simply need to add followed by three 00's. For example, With three entries, MRUListEx looks like:

And with four, it looks like:

Anyway, I tried simply disabling the ability for everyone to write, however it seems to disable all history despite effective permissions confirming that there is still permission to read. I spent a good few minutes on this but I just have a lot of work to do today - This is something I want to revisit when I have more time to spare!

Visual Studio Sound Effects

I wanted to change the sound effects for something and I was checking through the sound settings and I found this:

So, does Visual Studio corrupt the sound control panel item? Do other people have these duplicates?

Speed up ASP.Net Development Server on Firefox

I have been doing a lot of work on ASP.Net development recently and one thing that annoyed me was how slow the ASP.Net Development Server was. I use Visual Studio 2008 and Firefox.

I always thought that the delay was due to the server itself, as I had no problems when the site is deployed to IIS, however I needed to test a CSS style in Internet Explorer and I noticed that it was just as fast as when deployed.

So, it was time to try and figure out what caused the delay! Long story short (and after a few hours of looking), I found the following.

In Firefox, type about:config into the title bar and then ipv6 in the filter. I was then left with just one option - network.dns.disableIPv6

By changing network.dns.disableIPv6 to true, it suddenly makes a world of difference - instead of a 3-5 second delay after any request, it (usually, script dependently) appears instantly!

I still don't think anyone is reading my Blog - don't blame you, one post every 15days-2 months at random, but hopefully this comes up on Google just in case anyone else has the same problem!

Visual Studio 2008 Install Order

Well, after many problems, I reinstalled Windows 7 from scratch and got everything working.

(My problems mainly are because of a bug with x64 Windows + x64 SQL with x86 Visual Studio)

It is really hard to find a good guide so if anyone is interested the following is what I did and got it all working without any problems.

1. Install Windows 7 RTM
2. Perform all Windows 7 updates.
3. Install Visual Studio 2008 (Team Suite)
4. Install Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Update
5. Install SQL Server Express Edition 2008 SP1*
6. Install SQL Server 2008 Management Studio Express
7. Install SQL Server 2008 SP1 Update**
8. Install Visual Studio Hotfix 957944

And all done! Everything working without any problems!

* As much as I wanted to use the Advanced edition with Text Search, BI tools and reporting services, I just need to use SQL, I don't need anything advanced. I always seem to mess around with things I do not need! This time I just wanted to keep it simply and this works.

** Management Studio Express 2008 is not available to download with SP1 already applied, I tried running it and it seems to be fine - I cannot see anything that running the SP1 update actually improves, however when looking at the version numbers, it does get upgraded whilst the SQL 2008 instance previously installed remains untouched.

I was searching for ages for a guide like this but could not find anything up to date. I have done a lot of testing inside VMs, but this is what I came up with. I hope it helps someone out there!

Jury Service day 10

Well, I arrived at court in the morning and we listened for a few hours to more evidence and were told that we have to reach a decision.

Anyway, it was complicated and not everyone agreed but in the end we did.

Don't know what I am allowed and what I am not allowed to say, so I won't put it here!

I have to say, if I am called for Jury service again, I will defiantly do it. It is a very good experience and if you are called, it is hard but very good work.

Just a little tip - Bring a laptop or something interesting to do... It is so boring if you don't!

Jury Service day 9

Another half day! The case is going on for quite a while and is very complicated and interesting.

Anyway, we have been told that it will end tomorrow and to bring lunch as we will not be allowed out until we reach a decision.