Running Github Hubot on a Windows machine

I finally managed to get Github Hubot running on my Windows 7 64 bits machine. Thanks to  Sean Copenhaver & Thomas Kahlow which pointed me to the correct direction on the ‘Run hubot on windows’ discussion.

So here is how I did it.

First of all download and install nodejs 0.6.15. This will also install npm 1.1.16 which is the node package manager.

Then start Powershell and create a new folder e.g. HubotWorking

mkdir HubotWorking

cd .\HubotWorking

npm install hubot

You should see the following output

Go on with the following

cd .\node_modules\hubot

node .\node_modules\coffee-script\bin\coffee .\bin\hubot

And the magic!

You might want also to run it through JetBrains WebStorm 4.0, so here is the configuration you will need

And here is the result in the WebStorm nodejs runner

Using windows 7 symbolic link to organize your DropBox

If you are a user of the fantastic DropBoxtool you might know that you have to organize your folders under a top root folder. This was really an issue for me which I wanted to solve because I like to organize my files in a different manner.

I used the mklink command from a Windows Command

E:\My Dropbox>mklink
Creates a symbolic link.

MKLINK [[/D] | [/H] | [/J]] Link Target

        /D      Creates a directory symbolic link.  Default is a file
                symbolic link.
        /H      Creates a hard link instead of a symbolic link.
        /J      Creates a Directory Junction.
        Link    specifies the new symbolic link name.
        Target  specifies the path (relative or absolute) that the new link
                refers to.

I used it this way to create a symbolic link between a folder in “My Dropbox” folder on a folder outside:

E:\My Dropbox>mklink /D "Logs" "L:\Logs"
symbolic link created for Logs <<===>> L:\Logs

So now everything which is on my L:\Logs folder is synchronized using DropBox.

You can also use this trick to move folder around on your system after having those under the DropBox root folder. Before that I always stop DropBox and restart it after the creation of the symbolic link.

Very helpful!

Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool

Tonight during the preparation of an usb stick using Windows 7 USB/DVD Download I got an error message about bootsect just at the end of the creation of bootable usb stick. Following the troubleshoot link I arrived on the following

When creating a bootable USB device, I am getting an error about bootsect
To make the USB device bootable, you need to run a tool named bootsect.exe. In some cases, this tool needs to be downloaded from your Microsoft Store account. This may happen if you're trying to create a 64-bit bootable USB device from a 32-bit version of Windows. To download bootsect:

1. Login to your Microsoft Store account to view your purchase history
2. Look for your Windows 7 purchase.
3. Next to Windows 7, there is an "Additional download options" drop-down menu.
4. In the drop-down menu, select "32-bit ISO."
5. Right-click the link, and then save the bootsect.exe file to the location where you installed the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool (e.g. C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Apps\Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool).
6. Once the file has been saved, go back to the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool to create your bootable USB device.

Now my problem is that I haven’t ordered my iso on Microsoft Store but downloaded it from MSDN, so I can’t download bootsect from Microsoft Store.

I could find bootsect.exe in a Windows 7 32 bit iso which came also from MSDN. Then after following the help documentation I successfully created a bootable usb stick with Windows 7 64 bits.

Tomorrow evening I will start the re-installation of my machine with a fresh Windows 7 64 bits (running 32 bits till now) and a new Seagate Momentus XT, 7200rpm, 32MB, 2.5", 500GB, SATA-II

Windows 7, Disk is offline because it has a signature collision

When I switched on today my second hard drive I had the following issue displayed

The disk is offline because it has a signature collision with another disk that is online

Running Diskpart as administrator proved that it was the issue

As you can see disk 2 and disk 4 both have the 00024A91 signature hence the collision.

Following the advise here, I changed the signature of the drive decreasing from 1 unit.

Than I brought back the disk online using Disk Management

And everything went back to normal

Windows Backup, Xbox 360 media extender and 0x80070002 error

Yesterday I bought a new Western Digital external hard drive of 1TB for 109CHF, incredible how cheap it is now.

Then I configured my Windows 7 backup to use this new hard drive, very easy and the backup in less than 2 minutes.

At the end the backup failed because of drive having errors, then after a Error-checking everything was fine.

So I restarted the backup and got again an error:

Backup encountered a problem while backing up file C:\Users\Mcx1-xx-PC\Contacts. Error:(The system cannot find the file specified. (0x80070002))
Backup encountered a problem while backing up file C:\Users\Mcx1-xx-PC\Searches. Error:(The system cannot find the file specified. (0x80070002))
Backup encountered a problem while backing up file C:\Users\Mcx2-xx-PC\Contacts. Error:(The system cannot find the file specified. (0x80070002))
Backup encountered a problem while backing up file C:\Users\Mcx2-xx-PC\Searches. Error:(The system cannot find the file specified. (0x80070002))

Searching on the Internet I found a forum post with the following solution:

This is a known issue with Media center users. For such users, Windows does not create "Contacts" and "Searches" directories which Windows backup expect to be present. As a workaround, please do the following:
1. Launch Change backup settings.
2. Choose the same backup target and proceed to next page.
3. Select "Let me choose".
4. Expand the user Mcx1-NEO node in the treeview. Expand "Additional locations".
5. Exclude the Contacts and Searches directories for the user.
6. Proceed with configuration and save settings.

Restarted backup and now it works!

Devices and Printers empty on Windows 7

For some days I had the following issue on my Windows 7 installation: clicking on the start orb then on Devices and Printers would open the window, show a progress bar and then nothing else, a completely empty folder.

I tried a restore that didn’t solved the issue but it reminded me that I installed some days ago a Bluetooth software for a Bluetooth headset I received as a Microsoft MVP gift. This gave me the direction to search for.

I ended up seeing in the Services that the “Bluetooth Support Service” was stopped and that it Statup type was set to disabled. Re-enabling it fixed my issue and now I have again the full list of Devices and Printers shown in the dialog.

Set default printer per network on Windows 7

I installed Windows 7 the day after it was released on MSDN. I am discovering daily new things that improve my productivity and I am really delighted about it.

Today I was back to work at Innoveo Solutions and adding the HP Color Laserjet 5500 printer was just so easy but the best was that we can now manage default printers per network. At home I have a HP Laserjet 4000 that is set as my default printer when I connect my notebook to my home LAN. When I connect to the Innoveo Solutions LAN my default printer is set automatically to the HP Color Laserjet 5500 printer. It might be a detail, but in the past it happened several time, doing home office and printing on the office printer when I wanted to print on the home printer.

With Windows 7 it is really easy to configure, click on the Start button then Devices and Printers, you will get to that dialog:

Click on the Manage default printers and you will get a second dialog in which you can click Change my default printer when I change networks and configure which printer belongs to which network:

Simple and easy.