Activating Windows 8 Upgrade After a Clean Install

If you bought an upgrade edition of Windows 8 Pro you might, like most sensible people, prefer to do a clean install rather than doing the upgrade. Sounds straight forwards, right? Wrong!

Although the installation appears to work ok, when you try to activate your copy of Windows 8 it will flat-out refuse to acknowledge your legitimate Windows product key. I have no idea why Microsoft have put this block in, other than to cause headaches for legitimate customers.

Happily, there is a work around - posted by someone going by the handle BinaryInk on the Windows forum  and re-posted here for posterity:

1. Run the registry editor (regedit) 

2. Find the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup\OOBE 

3. Change the value for 'MediaBootInstall' from 1 to 0 

4. Open an elevated command prompt (run as admin) 

5. Run the following command: slmgr -rearm 

6. Reboot

If you already entered your key, check the activation: for me it was already activated and I needed to do nothing more. If not, type in activate windows and type in the key; it should work. Also, do yourself a favor and export this key from regedit and save it somewhere if you ever are required to do another clean install. I know I did.

Darth Monolith

Introducing an exciting new range of action figures!

Click to embiggen

Doorhanger of excellence

I've decided to create a new range of free products that will, without fail, improve your life and the lives of those around you.

No. 1 in this fabulous new range: The Doorhanger of Excellence! Behold!

Click to embiggen

All that's left to do is print, cut out, use and enjoy!

Windows 8 - The enemy of creativity

Microsoft recently released a Preview (or beta) version of its upcoming operating system, Windows 8. I don't normally bother with beta versions of code, but I was intrigued enough by all the talk of the new Metro interface to download the preview and give it a test run. What follows is my experience of the OS in its beta form and why I believe Windows 8 is the enemy of creativity.

Ka-Boom!

Captain Morgane and the Golden Turtle (PC Review)

Introduction

I'm a big fan of point-and-click adventures and have been ever since I first played the original Monkey Island some 20+ years ago. Sadly the genre is no longer a mainstay of video gaming, with new releases few and far between, so when I heard about Captain Morgane and the Golden Turtle - a new piratically themed point-and-click adventure - I immediately rushed out to buy it.

What follows is my (admittedly amateur) review of the PC version. Read on, me hearties, to see how she fared!

Using VB6/VBScript to connect to a SQL Server 2012 LocalDB instance

In a previous post I covered how to use Python to connect to a SQL Server 2012 LocalDB instance. In this post I'll show you how to connect via VB6/VBScript. As per the Python post, you'll need to download and install the SQL Server 2012 LocalDb software, along with the SQL Server Native Client 11 database driver. 

One of the key differences - and one that took me some time to figure out - is that you need to specify a slightly different connection string: 

connectionString = "Provider=SQLNCLI11;Data Source=(localdb)\v11.0;Integrated Security=SSPI;"


One of the gotchas I encountered was with the Integrated Security parameter. If this isn't set to SSPI, you'll get Multiple-Step OLE DB Operation Errors.

Here's a complete listing you should be able to copy into a VBScript file to test:

connectionString = "Provider=SQLNCLI11;Data Source=(localdb)\v11.0;Integrated Security=SSPI;"
Set conn = CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
Set com = CreateObject("ADODB.Command")
conn.Open connectionString
set com.ActiveConnection = conn
com.CommandText = "SELECT 'Hello, World!'"
set rs = com.Execute
while not rs.eof
    msgbox CStr(rs.Fields(0))
    rs.movenext()
wend
conn.close 

Using Python to connect to a SQL Server 2012 LocalDb instance

One of the new features of SQL Server 2012 Express is the LocalDB installation. This is a standalone install of SQL Server Express designed to support local databases which, importantly, requires practically no configuration . Although the documentation hints that developers were Microsoft's primary consideration behind LocalDB, there are many scenarios where having a zero configuration install of SQL Server could be very useful, such as offering offline access to a LoB application without needing to port the data to different database engine or necessitating a full blown SQL Server Express install on a user's machine.

Today I was experimenting with getting Python to talk to SQL Server LocalDB's - which proved to be very easy indeed!

First up, you'll need to install SQL Server Express 2012 LocalDB: http://www.microsoft.com/betaexperience/pd/SQLEXPCTAV2/enus/default.aspx

Next up you'll want to install the latest Native Client Drivers (SQLNCLI11): http://www.microsoft.com/Download/en/details.aspx?id=29065 (it's about halfway down this page)

Once both of those are installed, you're pretty much ready to go.

My Python environment is 2.7.2 on Windows 32-Bit. Into this I've installed pyodbc 3.03. From there, fire up IDLE and enter:

import pyodbc
con = pyodbc.connect('Driver={SQL Server Native Client 11.0};Server=(localdb)\\v11.0;integrated security = true')


And that should be you connected and ready to use a LocalDB from Python!

iControlPad Review with HTC Desire HD

Mobile gaming is taking off in a big way but not, as many might have supposed, thanks to the efforts of Microsoft, Nintendo or Sony. No, instead the biggest player in the mobile gaming is scene is the humble mobile phone. To describe a modern smart-phone as humble is, of course, entirely misleading. The latest models from the likes of Apple, HTC, Samsung et al are all fully-fledged handheld computers featuring multi-core processors, graphics accelerators, huge amounts of RAM and enough storage space to make even the largest titles viable.