My recent experience with HP is not .NET related but i am going to BLOG about it anyway...
I have bought the HP2575 printer witch can be connected through ethernet as well as USB. Witch is great because my i have multiple machines and when my girlfriend wants to print something important the server is allway in the remaining time ehwn it is 99.999% up. You know what i mean.. I know you do...
So, the printer is standalone and with a fixed IP adres, nothing will prefent my girlfriend from printing. Except now i have had a problem, because the installer would not install the driver. The installer, at a given point, checks if there are USB ports and if there are not ithe user has two options. Stare at the error message some more or Cancel the installation. I tried the first a couple of times, but that did not seem to work. The second of course dit exactly what it should, but did not help me either.
The reason for my lack of USB ports is that i use several Virtual PCs. I run Virtual Server 2005 on a Win2003 server (DC, DHCP and DNS) and turn on the machines when i need them. I then connect to them with remote desktop.
So after a couple of weeks (using my girlfriends PC to print) I started to get irritated by it and descided to send an email to HP stating their installer sucked. They replied very fast with an over polite email saying they will contact me within the hour. Ok, i thought... HP has bought a reply robot... Damn...
I realy have to reconsider my opinion about reply-bots. They are getting quite good. The first reply stated the usual Vobis (sorry Patrick) reply like, download the latest driver, click on start -> Printer -> Add, that kind of details, but ok, i expected that for a first reply. I replied that the problem was the installer and the USB ports. That did not help. I got an email stating how to find out the IP adres of the printer. A bit irritated a email them that the problem was the installer and the USB ports. I then got an email how to install the printer with the network setup. I REPLIED THAT THE PROBLEM WAS THE INSTALLER WITH THE USB PORTS. AND PLEASE READ MY PROBLEM STATEMENT!!!!!
Then all of a sudden Esther came into my life. She is very good. One setence and i Qoute: "Press Ctrl (Keyboard) + Shift (Keyboard) + Cancel (On screen)"
simultaneously to overcome the Red X." I could not believe my eyes. And for two reasons: Who the $#&$# has thought of this feature??? And second: This might actually work!!
It did. So for people having a problem with HP printer installers (HP2575). Try the above method, maybe the programmer is still in service with HP and he programmed more backdoors like this. And the best part is still that it took me about 2 1/2 days te get the problem solved. I was getting very irritated with these people, but in the end it was all very quickly solved. Many little steps, but very fast after eachother made my day!! Keep up the good work HP!
Seems like the SQL Browser service was not running by default. When turned on VS2005 was able to find the Server and the Database. The database was created with the Management tool b.t.w. Thats it, working like a charm.
Ok, so you want sql 2005 express intalled.... What I ran into.
I was installing SQL Express on a Win2003 Server. So I downloaded the installer and copied it to the server. The server has to be updated to the fullest to allow the SQL Server to be installed, but I cannot blame Bill for that. When i finally fixed all the prerequisites, the installer ran beautifully and installed everything like it should. The first thing I did was enable the TCP/IP protocol because that sounded like a good idea. Excited as I was, I tried to connect to the server from an WinXP machine with VS2005. Damn.. no parla SQL...
Then I installed the Management tool ("SQL Server Express Manager"): http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/sql/default.aspx That helped a lot... No realy it helped!. You can see wether the server is running and able to receive connections. Also the name of the server, etc. Out of time for now, but i will get back to on this topic.
To be continued....