I'm always forgetting my dsn-less connection string formats.

 

VB6:

Oracle:

Provider=OraOLEDB.Oracle.1;Data Source=tnsname;User Id=userid;Password=password;

 

Sql Server:

Provider=sqloledb;Data Source=servername;Initial Catalog=dbname;User Id=userid;Password=password;

.Net

Oracle (OracleClient):

Data Source=tnsname;User ID=userid;Password=password;

 

Sql Server (SqlClient):

Server=servername;Database=dbname;User ID=userid;Password=password;Trusted_Connection=False

If you want access to the individual files within your complete pc backup, then the built in Complete PC Backup in WIndows Vista isn't for you.  You can only restore your complete partition.

A caveat to the above is that I have heard you can mount the above backup file in Microsoft Virtual PC as a harddrive, which in theory would allow access to the individual files however this would require you have Virtual PC installed and I have not tried this.

Acronis True Image 10 is compatible with Windows Vista and allows you to explore the backup files in explorer.

I installed the Windows Vista Ultimate final over the weekend and here are some notes on what I did before doing a fresh install.

Run the Windows Vista Analyser to determine how well your pc can handle Vista.  Don't expect it to catch everything, it will not.

Do a full bootdrive backup. No seriously, do it! I recommend Acronis True Image.

Decrypt all files encrypted by the os (or if you have the know how, export your certificates, etc.)  Your encrypted files will not be readable in the new OS since the user's SID will be different.  (If you are upgrading and not doing a fresh install, you probably don't need to worry about this.)  If you backed up your encrypted files with Windows XP/95's backup tool before you decrypted them you will still not be able to read them as the backup actually backs them up as encrypted files.

During the install, I chose to format the boot drive since I had done a full backup.  I have never fully trusted Windows upgrades, so I always do a full install.

I found this nice command line tool of Microsoft's that will make a patch file by comparing two files which can be used with their command line patching tool to create the 2nd file.  This works great for patching an executable that is large.

The patcher works on Windows XP without the SDK installed.  But the SDK must be installed to get the command line tools you need.

The command line tools you will need from the SDK are called mpatch and apatch and are in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Platform\SDK\Samples\SysMgmt\Msi\Patching.

Here is the download:  Platform SDK


I found this by reading this blog entry.

I tracked down where the nightly builds are.  At one point I was downloading the source code and compiling it myself... but there's no need:

http://dasblog.info/dbftp/