Author: Neil.B.Ennis

Very happily married, father of 5, stepfather of 5, software developer, daydreamer.
Software

SSL / HTTPS stops working on localhost under IIS 5.1

by Neil.B.Ennis September 14, 2007 No Comments Shortlink

I have an ASP.NET web application that uses SSL.

The other day it stopped working on my development machine (Win XP Pro SP2). Whenever I tried to navigate to the SSL page my browser said it couldn’t find the page.

I spent hours trying to google an answer to this problem.

The thing that finally fixed it was…. (drum roll)… a reboot.

Now here’s the proof that I’ve taken leave of my senses. My colleague had the same problem a few days ago. I helped him resolve it, and even suggested the reboot solution. It worked for him. But today when this problem happened to me, I forgot all about that episode, and wasted time until I came up with the same solution. Again.

I must be getting old.

Incidentally, if you need an SSL certificate for testing purposes, try Microsofts SelfSSL utility. It creates the certificate and installs it for you.

It’s available at https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=56FC92EE-A71A-4C73-B628-ADE629C89499&displaylang=en or search for “Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 Resource Kit Tools”.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Microsoft’s SelfSSL utility will cause MSDE to stop working. It tries to install certificates in the SQL Server which makes it impossible to connect to.

Blogging

BuzzNet to Blogger woes

by Neil.B.Ennis May 31, 2007 No Comments Shortlink

There was a cool feature at BuzzNet.com. It let you email a photo to a secret email address and would then create a blog entry at BuzzNet from the email. Really handy when you were on the road, had some nice photos, and wanted to upload them quickly without stuffing around with URL’s and HTML image references and crap like that.

What was also nice was the BlogThis! facility that let you convert the new BuzzNet entry into a Blog Entry here at Blogger.

After I upgraded to Blogger’s new gmail accounts, I was unable to use the BlogThis! facility at BuzzNet.

I’ve been stuffing around with this for ages, and every time I tried to get BuzzNet to talk to Blogger I got errors, and it wouldn’t retrieve a list of Blogs.

Eventually I gave up in disgust and tried Flickr.Com.

It works! Perfectly! Easily!

I created a new Flickr account, told it that I had a Blogger account, and it directed me to a page at Google which let me authorize Flickr to update my blog.

Now I can email a photo to a Flickr address, and it automatically creates a new Blog entry for me.

Next time I go on a cruise, I’m all set to upload my new photos every day without spending hours trying to figure out all the HTML references.

I am a very happy camper. If anyone else has this problem with Buzznet – forget them – just upgrade to Flickr and make your life easier.

Harrdware

Laptop Runs like a Dog

by Neil.B.Ennis April 11, 2007 1 Comment Shortlink

My laptop has been running slowly for months. I thought I had problems with the CPU temperature, the CPU itself, spywarre, viruses, global warming, little green men – you name it.

The penny finally dropped. (D’OH!)

My power management settings were set to “Default Power Scheme”. So Windows was throttling the CPU to reduce power usage and extend the life of my battery. That’s useless to me because my computer is rarely un-plugged.

I changed it to “Minimal Power Management” and WHOOOOSH!!!!! It’s running as fast as it used to.

Nice to have decent laptop power again. I’ve been putting up with crawling speeds for months. If only I’d found this solution earlier!