Recently our developers are developing an HTML5 site with video content (MP4 videos). When doing development and debugging on developer’s workstation, the site worked perfectly well. But after deploying the site to IIS 7.5, issues kept coming out:

1) MP4 video was not showed on the page using any browsers.

After some investigations, it was MIME type missing issue. Have to add the MIME type for MP4.

After this, a new issue came up.

2) The HTML5 video tag is not working in IE10 while it works perfectly in Chrome and Firefox.

After some Bing/Google, we found out it is the IE10 docmode issue. Since our IIS test server is in intranet, IE 10 displays the intranet site in Compatibility View by default. This option in IE settings needs to be unchecked. There is an article on MSDN for explaining the IE docmode issue. And some good solutions on Stackoverflow.

We have to consolidate some share folders to expand the storage space recently. The common solution is to create some symbolic links on main windows file server’s share folders. There are three types of file links supported in the NTFS file system: hard links, junctions, and symbolic links. Here is an MSDN article for an overview of these types.aspx).

As for my scenario:

• Windows Server is Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise
• Main folder is H:\Data
• Needs to create link in main folder as Y2014 which is linked to I:\Data\Y2014

Before creating the link, one more thing we have to check the server is the “Symbolic link evaluation settings” on this windows server to make sure the link will work.

Use this command to query the settings:

fsutil behavior query SymlinkEvaluation

And this command to set the settings:

fsutil behavior set SymlinkEvaluation [L2L:{0|1}] | [L2R:{0|1}] | [R2R:{0|1}] | [R2L:{0|1}]

These settings can also be set via Group Policy->Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Filesystem and configure “Selectively allow the evaluation of a symbolic link“.

In order for users to access all folders, it needs to be created as “Junction” instead of Symbolic link. I used “MKLINK” command:

MKLINK /J H:\Data\Y2014 I:\Data\Y2014

Windows Sysinternals tool suite also has a tool – Junction can do it.

SQL Server 2012 has a new system store procedure - sp_server_diagnostics which gives you lots of information about system health status and statistics, such as system, resource, query_processing, io_subsystem, and events. I found out there is a reporting dashboard available which is based on this store procedure. It is so good! Please try it out.

Happy New Year!!

This article I read today really brings back lots of memories. And we can still get some tastes of these OS in web browser thanks to these terrific simulators.

7 classic versions of Windows and Mac OS you can run in a browser

Windows XP is already 13 years old. But it is still so popular. Amazing…

EMC Unisphere interface is using Java applet. After upgrading my workstation to Java 7 update 51, I can’t access to Unisphere interface anymore. I got the Java applet security exception error.

After some Bing research, I found out the solution for it. I have to add this site to Java’s Exception Site list.

• Go to the Java Control Panel (On Windows Click Start and then Configure Java)
• Click on the Security tab
• Click on the Edit Site List button
• Click the Add in the Exception Site List window
  
• Click in the empty field under Location field to enter the URL
  Example: http://www.example.com
  ( URL should begin with http:// or https://)
• Click OK to save the URL that you entered.
• Click Continue on the Security Warning dialog

Just learn a new trick to add a menu toolbar to Windows 8.1 from here. Pretty awesome, just find out where the program shortcuts store. And let the toolbar points to this folder. And we will have a windows 7 style menu on our windows 8.1 desktop toolbar.

Just want to share a little bit experience I got a few days ago for troubleshooting BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) in Windows 8.1. After I did a bunch of windows updates for Windows 8.1 pro on my brand new Dell T3600, it got BSOD happening every other 30 or 40 minutes. It was happening randomly either when I opened my outlook, or even opened IE. It showed the error was “DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION” on the blue screen. But no more details.

Thanks for this small tool – BlueScreenView. I can view the minidump files windows created from BSOD. I found the bug check code – 0x00000133. And Bing it. Bingo, it told me the issue would be the video card driver issue. I found out the windows updates did update my NVIDIA NVS 310 to the latest version (331.82) of the driver. So I just downloaded the last one (320.09) and updated it back. And Windows 8.1 pro is back to normal.

Wish you a prosperous and happy new year!

This is the second time I attended this super event of SQL Server community. It was fun and excited to meet back lots of friends met last year in Seattle. And met some new friends. And also learned some new sessions other than the regular topics such as Cloud computing, In Memory OLTP (Hekaton), SQL Server Memeory debugging, index debugging etc. Charlotte is a nice small city like Seattle. Thanks for the SQL Sentry shuttle taking me a tour of the night life of this city. NASCAR Hall of Fame was very impressive even though I didn’t get time to explore and experience it very much.

PASS Summit is still a superior event for social networking and skill set learning just like the slogan – “Connect, Share, Learn”. Hope to see you all again in Seattle next year.