Today when I tried to start MSSQL EXPRESS 2005 on my laptop in which I have not started the SQL service for quite some time, I received the following error:

Windows could not start the SQL Server (SQLEXPRESS2005) on Local Computer. For more information, review the System Event Log. If this is a non-Microsoft service, contact the service vendor, and refer to service-specific error code 3417.

And I found the following error detail in the Event Viewer (Windows XP: Start > Settings > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer > Application)

“The file ‘ C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data\mastlog.ldf ‘ is compressed but does not reside in a read-only database or file group. The file must be decompressed.”

Immediately the cause was known. As my laptop disk space did run low quite some time ago, Windows actually helped to compress the files that were not used frequently. MSSQL doesn’t know how to load compressed database files, as simple as that.

I simply browse to ‘ C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.2\MSSQL\DATA\ ‘, right click on ‘ mastlog.ldf ‘, proceed to ‘ Properties > General > Advanced ‘ and uncheck ” Compress contents to save disk space “

If that still does not solve your problem, try to do the same for all the files under that folder, that should do the trick.

Cheers!

I received three warmhearted W3 Silver Awards today, awarded by International Academy of the Visual Arts, an assembly of leading professionals from various disciplines of the visual arts dedicated to embracing progress and the evolving nature of traditional and interactive media.

The three winning websites are: mysingapore.sg, yesterday.sg, singapore2010.sg (was face-lifted), in which I was involved in site planning, and in-charged of the rest of the development, deployment, testing cycle.

Special thanks to Convertium and Gerard Lim for the opportunities, ex-tech manager for the unconditioned guidance and supports, project managers for excellent collaborations, and the designers for the brilliant creativity, and not forgetting the awesome clients MICA, NHB and MCYS.

I gladly and truly appreciate the recognitions, it seems like all the hard works being paid off.

This year is definitely going to be a better year!

Cheers!

I was working in one of the projects where our client requested to allow clean URL  which contains ampersand symbol (&). The website is powered by our inhouse CMS which allow generation of clean URL (without file extensions) by page.

While it is not a good practise (at all) to allow ampersand (and other special characters) in the URL, there are some situations where you just have to work around it and accept those URL (e.g. the URL was previously created and the URL was widely spreaded).

By default, IIS will block URL requests containing special characters (%, &, :, *) for security concerns, throwing error “400 Bad Request” (or simply “Bad Request” for some cases).

The workaround is rather simple, just following the following steps. Be extra careful as it involves changes in your registry

1. Set “AllowRestrictedChars” to 1 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/820129)
2. Set “VerificationCompatibility” to 1 (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;826437) – yes, it applies to ASP.NET frameworks other than 1.1
3. If you are running on Windows 64-bit version, you may also want to set “VerificationCompatibility” to 1 (Path: Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\ASP.NET)
4. And if all the above does not help, you may want to try to set “<Page ValidateRequest=false>” on your website’s web.config

Do note that for step 1 and 2, you’ll need to restart IIS and/or HTTP related services, so you may want to follow the steps closely.

Hopefully it will help those who had the same problem as I did.

I have always been aware of the existence of my blog and the lack of updates, but simply couldn’t make time for there were always other better things to do than sitting down and complete a blog post (I do have a few saved-in-draft blog posts that yet to be completed), be it excuses for laziness or was really busy (haha)

I have seen a lot of my friends talking about their past-a-year achievements and new year resolutions.

While I don’t really have new year resolutions which I’d want to share publicly, I appreciated (and felt glad) with what had happened in year 2009. There were simply too many things to record them all down, but here were some of the great happenings:

• I visited Tokyo for the first time in my life towards the end of 2008 and back to Singapore in early 2009. I was exposed to the lovely Disneyland, breathtaking Mt Fuji, shopping heaven Harajuku and Shibuya districts, amazing railway systems, pedestrian scrambles at Hachiko Square, historical Kamakura, and many more interesting local cultures and people. I told myself that I would definitely revisit Japan some time later.
• It marked my first anniversary with Convertium Pte Ltd, at where I have gained the most growth in my working life (the people I worked with, the projects I was exposed to, the knowledge I’ve gained and the opportunities I was given). It was a whole great year in my career and I believed it would elongate.
• I was promoted as a senior technology engineer as an acknowledgment of works I’ve done. It was also meant to be a beginning of another level of my career, with more chances and future exposures.
• Me and girlfriend celebrated our first year anniversary as we spent our precious first 365 days of life together. We spent quite a bit of time in adjusting ourselves getting together, and I promised myself I would do the best to make sure we will spend indefinite 365 days in our future.
• I stopped rambling and turned to take more actions. It was hard to let go something you are so used to, but sometimes you just need to sacrifice for the better. In fact, ramblings (and grumblings) will not help but to get out there and act.
• I was in the United States for the first time in my life at the end of the year, took the longest hour flight in my life, experienced real jet-lag and been to magnificent places (like San Francisco, Lake Tahoe, Death Valley, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon and Los Angeles). The scenic places were simply awesome, but culturally I felt glad to be born in Asia country (will blog about the trip separately)
• I revisited Tokyo for a few days as we transit from United States back to Singapore. Tokyo was as great, and once again, I promised myself that I would revisit Japan again, maybe some other parts other than just Tokyo as I believe there are more details yet to be discovered in the Land of the Rising Sun.

To sum it all once again, it has been a good year 2009, and I very much look forward for year 2010.

WebEx, currently acquired by CISCO, was started up aiming to provide a suite of applications specifically designed for business processes such as sales, support, training and marketing processes. Any company taking web platform seriously in their business will find it advantage with WebEx’s on-demand collaboration, online meeting, web conferencing and video conferencing applications.

Using WebEx out of the box is straight forward. However, to date, WebEx seriously need to have their documentation relooked, especially the “Lesson-1: How to get started” kind of documentation.

Here, we are going to look at the fundamental steps in integrating WebEx API, particularly in ASP.NET.

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