Dell Inspiron 600m - Windows 7 Upgrade - Step by Step Instructions

If you love your Dell Inspiron 600m laptop, you will love it even further after installing Windows 7.

Most of the web sites and search engine results will not give proper guidance. Since Dell is also wanting you to buy their latest hardware, they may not tell that Inspiron 600m that debuted in 2004 may not be good.
Don't feel left down.

Here are the easy and simple steps to upgrade to Windows 7.

1. Take backup of only important files such as documents and photos and Outlook email personal folder files etc. by burning them to a DVD. You may even upload to Windows Live SkyDrive that may give up to 25GB of storage depending on whether you live in US. Other places get a minimum 2 GB.

2.Do not bother about existing software that came when you bought your Dell in 2004. Chances are that they just lie in your PC dormant or if you have used them sparingly.
Any Productivity software such as Microsoft office have better versions now. So just disregard your love for Dell OEM software.

3. If you have downloaded Microsoft Windows 7 ISO image, I recommend that your burn it on to a DVD.

4. While booting up your Dell, make sure boot from CD / DVD is right on top by changing in the BIOS screen.

5. Now , with Windows 7 disc inserted, boot up your Dell and press any key to boot from CD when prompted.

6. Windows 7 Setup prompt.

7. Chances are you have a 40 GB hard disk, there may be some GB assigned to OEM such as Dell for automatic recovery. Go ahead, delete OEM partitions. Trust me, you will not need windows XP anymore.

8. Create a new partition, allocate full space to it. windows 7 may ask for 100 MB for System Reserve. Choose that. Very Important!!! Your Dell has now gotten a new OS almost and your old Hard disk has been wiped of its data when you do this step. Just say farewell and move on.

9. Follow onscreen instructions...............and now ........Windows 7 has been setup on your PC.
Congratulations!!!!!

10.Okay, now wireless does not work for you, isn't it? Well, visit Intel.com and choose its Driver update tool. You will be scared by Intel folks that they discontinued support for Intel Wireless 2000 BG adapter and not have a windows 7 update.Microsoft has a workaround for you.....Read on....

11. Windows 7 is not completely re-written. Just Vista revamped and marketed well by Microsoft folks...and the good part is Intel had a driver update for Windows Vista, which works just fine with Windows 7. So go ahead, download the driver, run the setup and then restart your PC.
Your wireless network is now active.

12. One more final step. Visit Dell.com support website. Enter your service tag for Inspiron 600m. It may provide you drivers selectively. Again, since Microsoft has built upon XP to Vista to Windows 7, you can download all XP drivers from Dell site. you may not need all of them except for the SigmaTel Audio.

13. Your Inspiron 600m continues to amaze with its new found mate Windows 7......Let the love continue for you too....

Actionspane or simple pane for Excel 2003

Actions pane are not available for programming in Excel 2003 using VSTO for VS 2008.
However, there is a workaround.
Create an office commandbar, Add a user control to it of type activeX.
Make your C# class com visible, create a new GUID and assign the attribute.
make your project COM Visible and also strong named.
The User control in .net containing windows forms controls will be available enabling you to create application level pane similar to actions pane.

The following piece of code is undocumented in MSDN but is a key thing.

objPane = (Office._CommandBarActiveX)actionsPane.Controls.Add(Microsoft.Office.Core.MsoControlType.msoControlActiveX, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, true);
objPane.ControlCLSID = "";
objPane.Width = 900;
objPane.Height = 337;
objPane.Visible = true;

The key is set CLSID to the object GUID .

SQL Server Management Studio 2005

If you are like me, who got used to modifying stored procedures by right-clicking and clicking modify and if you had tinkered around the scripting options, then you will find it confusing that suddenly sp_executesql seems to appear in the script and not the normal one.
Wonder why?
This will happen if you make IF NOT EXISTS option to be true.
This will cause management studio to display the script on modify or script new to be using sp_executesql syntax.
Turn IF NOT EXISTS option to false, and you will be fine.

Connect to Oracle from Visual Studio 2008 Server Explorer

If you want to connect to Oracle from Visual Studio 2008 Server Explorer, follow the below steps.

Install ODP.Net from Oracle (latest version)
While installing, make sure client bits are installed
After installation, add the following Enviroment variable
TNS_ADMIN pointing to the folder containing TNSNAMES.ORA

If there is no existing Oracle home, then copy TNSNAMES.ORA sample from Network/Admin/Samples folder and modify to your needs.
That's it.
Happy Programming....

Crystal Reports Version 10 with .Net 1.1 / Visual Studio 2003

Recently, I faced a strange problem.
One of my crystal reports had a sub report.
The sub report was displaying data partially though the entire data was made available to it.
This is a push method where Dataset gets formed and assigned as datasource to the crystal reports using SetDataSource method.
After hours of digging, I finally found out that, if you have sub reports, always set the datasource of the subreport and then set the datasource to the main report.
Hope it helps.