If you have a Dell laptop, and out of the blue you get the error NTLDR is Missing when you turn the machine is turned on, followed by an Invalid MBR error on subsequent reboots - DO NOT PANIC

Chances are, you accidentally pressed the Media Direct Button (looks like a house on my laptop) instead of the Power Button. Now if you have a Dell standard install, this will probably load the Media Direct application - but if you have done a wipe / rebuild, and not set up the Media Direct partion as expected, then you will likely get NTLDR / MBR errors, and an unbootable machine.

When you press this little button, the system rewrites the MBR on the primary disk, and causes the system to boot to a different partition (one which theoretically should contain the Media Direct application). If that partition does not exist, you get an apparently bricked laptop.

The good news is, that if you press the button again, then the changes to the MBR get reverted - may need a subsequent reboot - and you should be able to get back into windows :)

Dangerous button :-/

Just had the following issue when trying to start a CF8 instance.

Within the windows services control panel, I clicked start for all of the instances (8) - and they all started except 1.

This was following some fairly in depth reconfiguring of the instances - involving changes to multiple configuration files, the registry, and (perhaps most tellingly) mapping each instance to use its own configuration file by un-registering the windows service, and then re-registering the service using the new config file.

During this process, jrunsvc will stop the service if it is currently running.

When I checked within the JRun {instance name}-out.log file within the instance which would not start, I saw the following error:

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There doesn't appear to be a simple way of changing this setting from within SQL Server Management Studio.

you can however change this setting by modifying this registry key:

This is very handy if you are wanting to restore a load of databases from backup (e.g. when migrating databases from another server...)

I'm in the process of specifying a new web server, which will be running ColdFusion 8.01 Enterprise (as well as IIS etc.).

The server will be running ~6 active instances of ColdFusion - and will initially be configured with 4GB RAM - with the option of upgrading in the future as required.

We will be using Windows 2003 Enterprise as the operating system.

What will the benefits and downsides be of going for the x64 OS compared with the x32 OS, taking the following into consideration:

• The system will only be used as web application server
• The system will initially be set up with 4GB RAM - and will never have more than 8GB.
• The high number of instances of CF mean that if we did set the JVM Heap size over the ~1200 MB x32 limit, then we'd run a distinct possibility of running out of memory. (The reason for having so many instances of CF is to enable separation of CF Mail queues - 2 of the instances don't get any front end traffic at all, and are just responsible for sending out large batches of email)

Any advice would be appreciated...

I'm currently in the process of setting up a new development machine with all the software I need (Oh what fun!)

I was working may way through my list of essentials (about 90 items and counting!) - installing from disk for stuff on disk, and downloading the most recent versions of apps available on line.

Shortly after installing MS-Office (and running MS Update and rebooting), I tried to download iTunes... I.E. crashed as soon as I had clicked the save to disk button.  I tried again... I.E. crashed again.  So I thought - lets download FireFox and use that instead... I.E. crashed again.

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