Forgot your SQL Server Instance name?

I stumbled upon this useful blog about SQL Server instance names. In short, you can find the installed instance names in the registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\Instance Names\SQL. It also tells you which instance name is associated with which data directory (default names by SQL Server are MSSQL.1, MSSQL.2 and so on).

iContact phantom contact

Recently I installed iContact (supware.net) on my Windows Mobile phone (HTC Touch Cruise). Works a lot nicer than the built-in contact manager.
Then I started synchronizing my contact through an Outlook Web Access connection (so far I synced with Outlook on the desktop). Something went wrong, and I ended up with two versions of every contact entry. That's not funny. At the office - with Outlook having a connection with Exchange - I de-duplicated all the entries. Sync the phone again - all well, you might expect.

However, in iContact I still had all the double contacts. One thing changed: With all contacts, one of the two did not contain any data. What was wrong?

De-installed iContact, so I could see the original contact manager. There I saw that the data was allright. No duplicates. So the problem was in iContact. Re-installed iContact, thinking that might help. Not so. So it had to be in the iContact settings that had remained on the memorycard after the uninstall. Retry:
- uninstall iContact
- I found the directory <storage card>\Program files\iContact, with allcontacts.dat and favorites.dat files in it. Deleted the directory
- re-installed iContact
Yes, now it was ok.

Conclusion: iContact does not detect it when you remove contacts outside of iContacts' own program interface. If in trouble: remove the allcontacts.dat files from the program files\iContact directory.

Edit: the iContact faq also gives a solution: "While viewing the "all contacts" tab, touch the contacts tab at the bottom of the screen again."

WinDiff with Visual Studio

Microsoft has built a nice tool for comparing files and folders ages ago, and it's called WinDiff. It used to be deployed along with Visual Studio, but as of version 2008 I cannot find it anymore. So if you want to save your WinDiff, you can copy it from VS2005\Common7\Tools\Bin\Windiff.exe. Looking for it in VS2008 is useless.

Of course you can also download it on numerous places on the web, or use WinMerge.

The right keyboard settings

Today somehow I found myself with smart quotes. It's that annoying option in Windows where you type a quote, nothing appears, then you type a letter, and you get an accented letter. If I type a quote, I mean a quote. If I want an accented letter, I can type in the alt-code.

So I had to find out what the solution was (not for the first time, this also happens with fresh Windows installations, but I did not remember exactly). For me it was (on Windows XP SP3):

• Open Control Panel, Regional Options, tab Languages, button Details.
• Remove everything but Dutch (as language) and US (as keyboard layout).
• Make sure that you don't use US International keyboard layout, since that comes with the smart quotes.
• Hit OK a few times and logoff/logon.