Fix Mac BootCamp after accidental disk (re)partition

Repartitioning your Storage Drive (e.g. shrink and resize) after installing BootCamp can corrupt the boot record for your bootcamp. Fixing this is vey simple but writing this as I can forget how to get to the beginning.

1. From within Mac's System Preferences -> Startup Disk choose to boot from the Windows HD
2. Restart your system
3. Boot using the original Windows installation media. (Insert media and press "Alt/Option" during startup)
4. Choose the option "Repair your Computer"
5. Choose the option Startup Repair.
6. Let the process complete and reboot.
7. Your should have booted using the boot camp. (As we set the startup disk to windows in step 1)

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Solve "PresentationFontCache" (.exe) taking too much CPU

After working on a project on Visual Studio 2010, I faced an issue where nearly 25% of my CPU (i7 M620, Windows 7) was being taken by the PresentationFontCache.exe. This service is used by applciations that use Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) but many a times I was not even using a .NET applicaton (rather I was working on Java !!) and still teh PresentationFontCache.exe was hogging my CPU.

After some search and analysing multiple possible solution running these command and rebooting solved my problem on my Windows 7:

cd /d C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\LocalService\AppData\Local\ del Font*.dat

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How to Access a Cassini (IIS in Visual Studio) hosted site from a remote machine

Visual Studio provides Cassini (a local only version of IIS for Web Projects in Visual Studio) for developers to test their projects on their systems without having to use the real IIS server. However, it also imposes a restriction that only the localmachine (OS on which Visual Studio is Installed) can access it. Following the steps here would allow us to go around this restriction and view a site hosted on the Cassini server from another host (machine or virtual-machine) which is on the network. This helps when doing cross-platform or cross-browser UI testing.

 

Perquisites:

1. Remote Machine/VM.
2. Fiddler 2 (download from here). TIP: We will use its reverse proxy capabilities.

Steps:

1. If using a VM, make sure you are using the Shared Networking/Bridged Mode.
2. Build and Run the web-application/web-project on Visual Studio and make sure you can access it on your local machine. Take note of the port on which is hosted.
3. Start fiddler and open from the menu. Tools > Fiddler Options.
4. Go to the ‘Connections’ Tab and make sure the option - “Allow remote computers to connect” - is check marked.
5. Customize the “Fiddler listens on port:” to a port not used by any application on your system (e.g. 9999)
6. Click [Ok] button to save these options.
7. Press ‘Ctrl+R’ to Customize rules (You can also go to Rules > Customize rules). This generally opens the rules file in notepad (or the default editor)
8. Find the function OnBeforeRequest (The rule files follows the Jscript syntax)
9. At the end of this function add these line:
   

   if (oSession.host.toLowerCase() == "192.168.2.6:9999"){ oSession.host = "localhost:58060"; } // The IP address is the original machine's (with Cassini) IP // the localhost:port is the application port on Cassini

10. Run cmd.exe and renew your IP by doing an:

    >> ipconfig /release followed by  >>ipconfig /renew

11. From your browser in remote machine/VM access IP:<Fiddlers port>. e.g.

    http://192.168.2.6:9999 

You should be seeing the website, served from Cassini, on the remote machine!

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Using MySQL with Python/Django on Mac OS X (Snow Leopard)

Setting up MySQL with Python ( or Django ) can be a bit tricky since no database driver is officially provided by MySQL (as of Feb 2011). I had a couple of failed attempts, but finally got it working. A hit and trial method and troubleshooting guides from various websites helped. To sum it up, here is what worked for me:

Environment:

1. Mac OS X 10.6.6
2. Python 2.6.1 (Django supports this version and is installed on Mac by default if Xcode is installed)
3. GCC 4.2.1
4. MySQLdb 1.2.3 (Download from http://sourceforge.net/projects/mysql-python/)
5. MySQL 5.1.x Server (Since MySQLdb supports upto this version as of Feb 2011)

Don't try to reuse the MySQL installed as part of MAMP because it doest match typical deployment environments if you would use Python/Django for professional application and secondly its overtly complicated.

Install MySQL:

See previous post Install/Uninstall MySQL 5.1 on Mac @ http://abhishekdev.posterous.com/installuninstall-mysql-51-on-mac

Perquisites: before installing MySQLdb

1. Add the following line to the ~/.bash_profile or ~/.profile (Found by default on10.6.x) file under the User Home (if ~ is not known to you)
   PATH="${PATH}:/usr/local/mysql/bin" 
2. Type in Terminal
   mysql --version
   Should read something similar to "mysql  Ver 14.14 Distrib 5.1.55, for apple-darwin10.3.0 (i386) using readline 5.1"

Install MySQLdb:

1. Extract MySQLdb if it came archived/compressed
2. Open Terminal
3. Make the extracted folder as current working directory

   cd [Path if any]MySQL-python-1.2.3

4. Type in Terminal
   

   python setup.py build sudo python setup.py install

5. If no Errors get thrown. In Python Prompt type "import MySQLdb"
   

   python import MySQLdb

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Install/Uninstall MySQL 5.1 on Mac

Install

1. Download a x64 bit (.dmg) copy from MySQL website
2. Install it
3. Also install the Preferences Pane

Troubleshoot if MySQL wont install or a version (previous/latest) is already installed.

Uninstall

1. Make sure MySQL is not running
2. Open Terminal
3. Type in Terminal:
   sudo nano /etc/hostconfig
4. Enter your password, if asked for.
5. Delete the following line if its there: “MYSQLCOM=-YES-”
6. CTRL+X (This is the command for closing NANO, Enter the “Y” key to save the file if you changed it and exit nano).
7. Type in Terminal

   sudo rm /usr/local/mysql sudo rm -rf /usr/local/mysql* sudo rm -rf /Library/StartupItems/MySQLCOM sudo rm -rf /Library/PreferencePanes/My* sudo rm -rf /Library/Receipts/mysql* sudo rm -rf /Library/Receipts/MySQL* sudo rm /etc/my.cnf sudo rm -rf /var/db/receipts/com.mysql.mysql*

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Make Team Fortress 2 Dedicated Server Work

Many a times I have noticed that people can’t get the default dedicated server for TF2 available on steam to work. They can start the server but people cant join the game. Even I could not get the server to work initially. But then after reading through some posts of other games at steam I figured out how to get it work. So here it is:

1. Go to folder X:/…/steamapps/YOUR_ACCOUNT/source 2007 dedicated server/tf/
2. Create a new .txt file
3. Give it the name: steam_appid.txt
4. Open it and write: 440
5. Save changes

After this people would be able to connect to your server.

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How to use AllShare on Samsung Galaxy S

Finally got time to find, how to view media content from my home computer on my phone. After testing a few softwares I have zeroed in on TVMOBiLi server. Its free and awesome. It does what it says.

What and Why I Liked it:

1. Is Cross Platform (Windows / Mac / Linux)....So I am not bound to a platform
2. Its NOT Java...Now I know how it is so fast and light!!!
3. Web Interface
4. External Access
5. Share with Friends
6. Very fast transfers and lag-less buffering.

What I dont like:

1. No ability to remove the default folders
2. The web interface design is not very appealing (Too many bright colors and hues...looks 90's)
3. On Galaxy S only the first 6 items show up in the contents....However the Dev Forum at TVMOBiLi reports that it has fixed this problem in a developer build and is soon going to publish it. Would update when I get it

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