I recently solved this issue and it was a doozy; I found that in sys.databases, log_reuse_wait_desc was equal to ‘replication’. Apparently this means something to the effect of SQL Server waiting for a replication task to finish before it can reuse the log space.

So we fire the following query to find the cause of the Transaction Log growth and observe the following

select log_reuse_wait_desc,name from sys.databases

log_reuse_wait_desc                                          name

———————————————————— ————-

REPLICATION                                                                             test

And to our surprise the log_reuse_wait_desc column reflects REPLICATION for a particular database, however replication had never been used on our DB nor on our server.

So to confirm this we fire the DBCC OPENTRAN which gives the undistributed LSN for the Transaction log and we get an undistributed LSN value as shown below

DBCC OPENTRAN(13) 

 Transaction information for database ‘test’.

Replicated Transaction Information:

        Oldest distributed LSN     : (0:0:0)

        Oldest non-distributed LSN : (43831:51:1)

DBCC execution completed. If DBCC printed error messages, contact your system administrator.

So this confirms that above undistributed transaction is causing the Log Growth

Now in theory, you should be able to clear the state by running ‘sp_removedbreplication’; however for me ‘sp_removedbreplication’ didn’t solve the issue. Instead SQL just returned saying that the Database wasn’t part of a replication…

I found my answer here:

* http://www.sql-server-performance.com/forum/threads/log-file-fails-to-truncate.25410/
* http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlserverfaq/archive/2009/06/01/size-of-the-transaction-log-increasing-and-cannot-be-truncated-or-shrinked-due-to-snapshot-replication.aspx

Basically I had to create a replication, reset all of the replication pointers to Zero; then delete the replication I had just made.
i.e.

Execute SP_ReplicationDbOption {DBName},Publish,true,1
GO
Execute sp_repldone @xactid = NULL, @xact_segno = NULL, @numtrans = 0, @time = 0, @reset = 1
GO
DBCC ShrinkFile({LogFileName},0)
GO
Execute SP_ReplicationDbOption {DBName},Publish,false,1
GO

And I hope that this helps somebody else out there!

SignTool reported an error SignTool Error: Signtool requires CAPICOM version 2.1.0.1 or higher. Please copy the latest version of CAPICOM.dll into the directory that contains SignTool.exe. If CAPICOM.dll exists, you may not have proper permissions to install CAPICOM.
Follow these steps

The weird part was that I hadn’t change anything sine my last deployment and my solution would still build!

So, a quick google showed nothing much of interest until I found this page: http://geekswithblogs.net/hinshelm/archive/2007/02/07/105684.aspx

However that wasn’t the complete solution as Windows 7 should be using CAPICOM 2.1.0.3; additionally I was on a 64bit version of the operating system. Luckily I found the location where Visual Studio 2008 holds it Capcom.dll by default (C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\microsoft shared\CAPICOM\); so with this knowledge, I was able to fix my issues with the following steps:

• COPY C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\microsoft shared\CAPICOM\CapiCom.dll TO C:\Windows\SysWOW64
• Then simply run a command prompt as an administrator, navigate to \windows\system32\ and run the RegSrv command: regsrv32.exe capicom.dll

I’ve got no idea what caused this issue, but hopefully this helps other because I wasn’t able to find a complete solution elsewhere on the internet

But every now and then you come across something that should be very simple to do, but it just isn’t so. So you just have to do things the hard way… this consumes time (to develop), this add complexity (to reading, understanding and debugging) and it adds noise (to the real logic and code).

One such little quirk that I’ve hit was that the GridColumn’s on the DevExpress GridControl/GridView have no way to set a MaxLength on the field. This is because they do not actually support editing but rather inherit this capability from a default BaseEdit instance within the cell.

The trick is then to grab this BaseEdit for the cell you want and set its MaxLength. The simplest and fastest was to do this is by using the GridView ShownEditor event as shown in this simple example.

    private void gridViewItemList_ShownEditor(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        BaseEdit edit = ((BaseView) sender).ActiveEditor;
        GridView view = sender as GridView;

        if (view != null && edit is TextEdit)
        {
            switch (view.FocusedColumn.FieldName)
            {
                case "Reorder":
                case "Code":
                    (edit as TextEdit).Properties.MaxLength = 25;
                    break;
                case "Alias":
                    (edit as TextEdit).Properties.MaxLength = 20;
                    break;
                case "Description":
                    (edit as TextEdit).Properties.MaxLength = 50;
                    break;

            }
        }
    }

Hopefully this helps as the alternative common approach is to create a repositoryItemTextEdit for each column, assign it to the column and then set up your repositoryItemTextEdit to behave the way you like, not nice if you have a few dozen columns !

During this session Andrew pointed us in the direction of a little tool that will allow you to create a Bootable USB drive that you can install Windows 7 off of. This comes in handy when you have dozens of installations to do and in our case at Fred Health, when you have a custom built Windows 7 installation built using the WAIK.

One of my colleagues was not able to find this little tool on the net without actually going back through the presentation! So I thought I’d post some quick info here…

A Bootable USB: Utility to Create Bootable USB Drive to Install Windows Vista, Server 2008 and 7

A few other important things do know about building a bootable USB Windows 7 installation drive.

• Windows 7 ‘has all the bits’ for all of the versions (This includes the anytime upgrade)
• Simply deleting the “ei.cfg” on your USB key file will allow you to choose the version
• USB keys with solid read (25MB/s) will rocket through

Most of our software runs services (e.g. a self hosted WCF service), so visual studio needs to be running as administrator (at least in Win7). With UAC on the only way you can accomplish this is to right click on Visual Studio, select ‘run as administrator’ and then open the Project/Solution from within Visual Studio.

This sucks because personally I like to be able to find the ‘solution file’ on my computer and simply double click on it.
So to get Administrator elevation every time you launch VS, you need to change the ‘compatibility setting’ by:
•    Right clicking on C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe
•    Then selecting Properties, selecting the Compatibility tab, and then checking the box ‘Run this program as an Administrator’

Now the second part is where the trick is, because the ‘solution file’ doesn’t actually launch VS itself, but rather a ‘VS Version Check Launcher’… which in turn launches VS
So to fix this:
•    Right click on C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\microsoft shared\MSEnv\VSLauncher.exe
•    Select Properties, select the Compatibility tab, and check the box ‘Run this program as an Administrator’

Hey presto… Now you can launch visual studio from your solution file, with UAC, and have the administrator elevation screen appear!

Well Technically is a blog about my experiences, hardships, and wins as an IT professional. Although my role is technically a ‘Developer’; I am also a Domain Administrator at my place of work, Fred Health. This means I do everything from configure firewalls, fix printers, manage the LDAP (Active Directory), and administrate Microsoft Exchange; to actually doing my job of writing software.

Fred Health is based in Australia and specialises in the wants, needs and whims of the pharmaceutical industry. Fred Health packs a very big punch for its size and is a Certified Microsoft Gold Partner… this means I get to play with all the latest cool toys