About zeddy

ex-Microsoft, founded a startup, now consulting in Dubai. SharePoint/Surface/WPF Consultant by day, Mobile Dev by night. Also a father of 2 awesome sons.

Exchange Web Service: False message of ‘Unable to read data from the transport connection’

Exchange Web Service: False message of ‘Unable to read data from the transport connection’

So we are using Exchange on-premise Web Services (/EWS/Exchange.asmx) to send Calendar Invites (S+) automatically when people register for trainings, but on the recent scheduled job, suddenly the C# App throws errror: [crayon-65f9141b674c9008541904/] First thing that we want to check of course is Firewall. Nope, I can browse https://exchange/EWS/Exchange.asmx just fine. Second thing is to blame Exchange, maybe there's a recent change? Since the app does not change at all. But going through IIS Logs of Exchange CAS is troublesome (the log files are 200MB daily!) Anyways, we could not see the IP trying to connect to Exchange Web Service....

The Ultimate Laptop for Devs, ITPros, Creatives – 2016 Edition

The Ultimate Laptop for Devs, ITPros, Creatives – 2016 Edition

2 years ago I bought the ThinkPad W540. Having 2 SSDs and 32GB of RAM allowed me to run 6 simultaneous Virtual Machines for my SQL Server Disaster Recovery Demo. I sold that laptop last year, and I feel the urge to get a new one this year. Now, some readers will know that I already have a Surface Pro 3, but that's given by the company and hence restricted for work. Getting a personal laptop means you are free to code away or play around with Lightroom on your free time. During the absence of a personal laptop, I...

How to fix Windows Server 2012 Blue Screen SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED (WppRecorder.sys)

How to fix Windows Server 2012 Blue Screen SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED (WppRecorder.sys)

I do a lot of virtual machines Save, and hardly reboot my VMs. So for the past weeks, my Windows 8.1 host did a lot of Windows Updates. Then yesterday I had to reboot one of my VMs named SP1 and I got Blue Screen of Death at the boot screen. I became curious and restarted SQL1, DC1, then ROUTER1. They all had the same Blue Screen of Death: SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED (WppRecorder.sys). Ok, now I'm panicking...I could rebuild the virtual machines using PowerShell that I described in previous post, but it would take hours to re-install SQL Server 2014, SharePoint 2013,...

Building Enterprise Environment Lab for Development with Windows 8 & Hyper-V

Building Enterprise Environment Lab for Development with Windows 8 & Hyper-V

So you don't want Visual Studio to be installed in a Virtual Machine, because that's not what happens in the real-world. You want Visual Studio to be natively on your Windows 8, but easily copy files for deployment to IIS/SharePoint site hosted by your 3-tier virtual machines of Web-App-Database servers. You want to be able to use the Domain Controller's DNS in the virtual machine, so you can type http://intranet.zed.com from Windows 8 Internet Explorer, not from Restricted IE inside your virtual machine. You want to simulate having 2 Datacenters, where 2 virtual machines have different Subnet, and they all...

How to create a Quran app for Windows Phone (w/ sample code)

How to create a Quran app for Windows Phone (w/ sample code)

WARNING: You should always double-check what you copy-pasted from the Internet. Holy Text is a sensitive matter, double check with an online Mushaf al-Madinah here, or an offline Mushaf (this will give you the bonus of reading the Quran anyways :) ). Before we continue, I'd like to state the purpose of this blog post... I wanted to create a Juz 'Amma (surah 78 to 114) app to help me refresh and re-memorize the Juz 30 (you know when you were kids your brain is like paper, anything you memorize will quickly stick like pen-on-paper, and as you grow older...

Living with high resolution screen: the small-as-ants curse – DPI setting and App Manifest file

Living with high resolution screen: the small-as-ants curse – DPI setting and App Manifest file

Nowadays, there are larger-than-HD laptop screens available. There's the Lenovo Y50 3840x2160, The Yoga 2 Pro 3200x1800, and the ThinkPad X1 Carbon 2560x1440. For my case, I got the ThinkPad W540 2880x1620 IPS display. So at first, we must all be thinking, bigger resolution, bigger screen estate... I can now open Visual Studio side-by-side with Adobe Photoshop (strange combination, yes). 1. The DPI Setting Alas, you will be disappointed. Windows 8 will automatically choose a recommended DPI setting, so when you switched on your laptop and booted into that nice Windows 8 Desktop, what you will see is... 1440x810, see...

The Ultimate SharePoint Discussion Board Customization

The Ultimate SharePoint Discussion Board Customization

Problem: User wants to be able to receive email notifications from SharePoint Discussion Board. User should be able to start & reply threads via email, using his Outlook or mobile phone. Ideally, replies should go into the Correct Topic Folder and new threads should create a New Topic Folder in SharePoint Discussion Board. At first, I thought "Dude, this is Microsoft. They must have think about this functionality". So I accomplished Problem Number 1 using SharePoint Alert feature. For Problem Number 2, I used the Incoming Email feature in List Settings. Done? No. You see, if you use the Alert...

Bored with Pivot & Panorama, My New Windows Phone UX Controls: Top & Side Menus

Bored with Pivot & Panorama, My New Windows Phone UX Controls: Top & Side Menus

So I got bored with Pivot & Panorama. It was exciting at the beginning, then when everybody else joined the Windows Phone developers camp, my apps begin to look like everyone else's apps... My company, Armanovus has some apps published. We also have built apps that other brands publish under their banner. For my business, I need a differentiator that separates me and other devs. If everyone can do Pivot & Panorama, and for a cheaper consulting fee, why would they go to me? :) Thus begins my search for new Windows Phone UX Custom Controls...and after a month contemplating...

Can Classic .NET apps run on Surface (Windows) RT?

Can Classic .NET apps run on Surface (Windows) RT?

Short Answer: Yes, only and only if it's digitally-signed by Microsoft Corporation. These are the more detailed steps on how I reached this conclusion: In Visual Studio 2012, there's VS 2012 ARMS Cross Tools Command Prompt. Now let's create a simple HelloWorld program using this code: [crayon-65f9141b69ba1205366101/] and let's see the result: and the result in Surface (Windows) RT:   So how did apps like Office 2013 and other .NET apps run on the Surface RT? Let's take a .NET app that runs both on x86 Win8 (Windows 8 Pro) and ARM Win8 (Windows RT), which is the Microsoft Test...