Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition 10

Today when I tried to uninstall this guy in a particular machine, it returns "Fatal Error During Installation" halt and no go.

Further investigations reveal that the LiveUpdate (version 2.6) is not working properly and returns this error.

Therefore the workaround is to uninstall the LiveUpdate first and then next to SAV CE 10.

Hope this can solve some of the people worries.... XD

Little Introduction of myself

I am a gadgeteer: Zaurus Linux PDA, Windows Mobile (PocketPC), Palm, Mac OS X, Windows XP, Windows 2003 ...

Therefore, inside this web-log, many techniques dealing with these kinds of stuff will be seasoned....

For my current job, I am a C# / ASP.NET and Coldfusion developer, so some techniques for them are also discussed....

Stay tuned.....

A mixture feeling....

This is a new web-log.
However, I have another old web-log which is in Chinese / English.

Therefore, the functionality of this web-log may be different from my origin first blog which is dealing the sharing of incidences, while this web-log may rest upon the technical information sharing (in my expertise - IT-related).

Hope this web-log can be a good referee to my career.

PS. the original web-log (http://dinorex.mocasting.com) is still functional....

[C#] Loading and reading the Microsoft Excel file contents using C#

If you are not lazy, you can search the following CodeProject via Google within seconds: -
http://www.codeproject.com/useritems/Excel_Application_in_C_.asp
This mechanism can be used, but it has some considerations: for your deployment, you need to apply the Office component (which is using Microsoft.Office..blah blah blah..Excel, instead of the mentioned using Excel; ~!) to read the cells, that means, the deployment machine needs to purchase an extra Office licence for the deployment - most of the small businesses are reluctant to do so.. moreover, since this Office Object is version dependent, when the developer has an office version different from that in the client site, a nightmare .. XD
Therefore, you must ask: How can I accomplish that goal then?..
The answer is: SIMPLY USE StreamReader to directly read the file LINE BY LINE!..
If you don't trust me, you can try it yourself by setting similar Console App and you 'll get amazing results~!
This workaround is valid even for Visual Studio 2003, and the behind scene mechanism of that fussy StreamReader Object is a mystery to me..

[MSN] Solution to solve Windows Live Messenger 8.0 or above 1603 installshield problem

everyone searching the web for the installation problem 1603 in Install_Messenger.exe for Windows Live Messenger 8.0 or above should be very annoying to the various Google Results coming from this kind of 'install MSN error 1603', as all of them are useless..
I have this problem for a while and finally I have got a 'brutal force' solution to that.. XD
1. find a clean computer to install MSN 8.0 or above using Install_Messenger.exe
2. In your target machine, install MSN Messenger 7.0 which is error free for installation
3. rename the directory name in your target machine C:\Program Files\MSN Messenger as different name (somewhat C:\Program Files\MSN Messenger.bak .. XD)
2. copy out C:\Program Files\MSN Messenger\ and put to your target machine
3. copy C:\Windows\System32\sirenacm.dll and put to your target machine
4. edit the MSN messenger 7.0 icon as you like in C:\Program Files\MSN Messenger\msnmsgs.exe .. XD
Then your installation will be successful.. XD .. cheers.. XD

[browser technique] print a web page without print dialog box popup

Thousands of materials in web are talking about this topic, but I found none of them works..
So I just trying that all by myself..
just copy and paste the following html code into your web page and test, then you can get a fancy result..
(PS. Please don't ask me why javascript counterpart cannot hide the print dialog box, since I also don't know.. Orz)
* I guess maybe that's M$ strategy to force you to write stuff on VBScript instead of Javascript..

[Zaurus] Zope in Zaurus pdaXrom, a OO database and web server

Owing to my one of the recent project requirements, I need to investigate a system called Zope (and its ZODB which is a OO database). It is easily installed in XP environment, but surprisingly, I found that the zaurus support to this is quite less….. Therefore, that triggers me to try to install this Zope inside my lovely pdaxrom….
All in all, the experiment is in vain (how come my recent trials are all in vain?…. ), but I would like to share my experiences during the trials, and hope (maybe) any interested parties to play around this stuff on their spare time.
1/ Since the python in pdaxrom is 2.4.1, which is quite out-dated in view of Zope current environment, we need to grab the previous versions of zope source code to compile - the one i chose is zope-2.9.1.tar.gz. During the compilation process, I stopped at a step which reports the python header is not fully satisfied, and using some others experiments certifying the header is really not fully satisfied. Therefore I gave up that direct compilation approach.
2/ searching thru google i found that there is a version called something related to zope-2.5.1-python_2.1 to zaurus environment. that means previously zaurus should support this zope server; and surprisingly, debian also support zope server as well! and found a package called zope_2.5.1-1woody1_arm.deb for arm processor debian….
3/ based on these observations, I tried to convert that deb to ipk. This is easy to be done by a simple script called deb2ipk.sh. When I really tried this converted ipk installation (my installation destination path is in /mnt/ide, which is not in the NAND area), I have encountered the following missing python scripts (and create a directory called /usr/lib/python2.1 linked to /usr/lib/python2.4): -
a. glob.py, fnmatch.py, shutil.py, compileall.py - all can be easily obtained the python script code from the internet. However, for compileall.py, add a '-q' option do exactly the same as '-f' option (to fool the compiler seems the debian python compileall.py has another option -q which is for quiet mode, but i don't know how to make it, therefore I used -f as the substitute. (line 103 added for description, line 112 added for force endorsement)
b. fcntl.py. This is obsolete (desperated in python term) in python 2.4.1 but still exists in python 2.1. on searching the web, you should be able to find the declaring as 'desperated' script, and apply it …. however, since there is a DOS version of FCNTL.py, you need to find that one for bullet-proofing. I adopt the one generated by h2py from /usr/include/sys/fcntl.h and put it in /usr/lib/python2.4 directory (together with fcntl.py).
c. when you do that, you need to compile those .py files to .pyc, search google on related topic for python compilation to .pyc [should be something like import py_compilepy_compile.compile(”your.py”)]
d. since the installation trials may involve the missing directory in /usr/lib/zope, you need to symbolic link the /usr/lib/zope to /mnt/ide/usr/lib/zope between installation failures so that you can pass the installation trials.
after you have done the following remedial actions, you should be able to install the converted ipk successfully.
4/ starting the zope server is simple : zope-z2 -w80 (port 80 for web, default is 9673, as seen in the help page when you carries -h parameter), then you should see your pdaxrom CPU time is nearly 100% ! And some warning messages shown up repeatedly in the terminal screen….. Therefore, I tried using telnet 80 port as a trial, can still cannot catch the port authentication…. therefore, I certified although the server is up and running in pdaxrom, the server processes cannot be utilized in the appropriate manner….
Hope these sharings can ignites some zope users investigations to Zaurus, and can be able to make the zope server be used in Zaurus. I really don't mind if anyone can share me a full set of python 2.4.1 headers in pdaxrom so that I can compile the zope server directly on board, in order to alleviate such a tedious repeated trials….

Official Way to restart explorer

source from: http://weblogs.asp.net/whaggard/archive/2003/03/12/3729.aspx
Official way to restart explorer

I found yet another Windows tip I did not know in Richard Birkby's Explorer column handler shell extension in C# article at The Code Project:

Finally, if you want to restart an instance of Windows Explorer, you should use the official way to shut down Explorer, rather than killing it from Task Manager! To shut down officially, hit Start->Shutdown (or Turn Off Computer on Windows XP), then while holding the control shift and alt keys, click cancel on the shutdown dialog. To start a new instance of Windows Explorer, bring up Task Manager by holding the control and shift keys, then hit escape. In Task Manager, choose File->New Task and enter “Explorer.exe”. This will have restarted Windows Explorer properly.