How can I find the serial number of my windows laptop?

You can find your computer’s serial number using a few different methods. Here’s my preferred method…

Using Command Prompt (cmd)

  1. Open Command Prompt
    • Press the Windows key and type cmd.
    • Right-click on Command Prompt and select Run as administrator.
  2. Enter the Command:
    • Type wmic bios get serial number and press Enter.
    • Your serial number will be displayed.

SQL Server 2019 Service Wont Start

I recently had an issue where a 2019 SQL Server service would not start. It advised to look at the application event log for more details.

I found an event “Unable to find the user-specified certificate [Cert Hash(sha1) “######################################”] in the certificate store of the local computer. Please verify that certificate exists.” followed by another saying “Unable to load user-specified certificate [Cert Hash(sha1) “######################################”]. The server will not accept a connection. You should verify that the certificate is correctly installed. See “Configuring Certificate for Use by SSL” in Books Online.” followed by a few other messages basically saying something is wrong with the SSL certificate it was using to try start the SQL service.

After a little googling I found a solution that worked for me which was a relatively easy fix.

First thing is to find the registry key in question that stores the certificate thumbprint

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.<Version>\InstanceName\MSSQLServer\SuperSocketNetLib\Certificate

If you are not using a certificate, then you can rename “Certificate” to “Certificate_old” then create a new String Value entry (REZ_SZ) called “Certificate” with an empty data value.

Once this has been done go ahead and try start the SQL service.

If you are using certificate, then it’s best not to play with that key. The other possible reason for such an error while using a certificate is that the SQL Server Service account doesn’t have full permission on Certificate private key. To fix this issue, you need to find the certificate in right-click on the certificate and in manage private key, grant full permission to SQL Server service account.

Credit goes to Pinal Dave over at https://blogs.SQLAuthority.com for this workaround.

Completely remove Microsoft Teams

If you’re having problems with your Microsoft Teams installation and you cant seem to fix it then sometimes it’s worth fully removing and reinstalling.

To thoroughly uninstall Microsoft Teams from your Windows profile, follow these steps:

  1. Close all active Teams windows and processes.
  2. Open the Windows Settings app.
  3. Click on “Apps & features.”
  4. In the search bar at the top, type “Teams.”
  5. Select the Microsoft Teams application icon with the purple background.
  6. Click on “Uninstall.”
  7. Confirm the uninstallation by clicking “Uninstall” again.
  8. A dialog box will appear, asking for permission to make changes to your device. Click “Yes” to proceed.
  9. Microsoft Teams will be uninstalled from your computer.

Once Teams is uninstalled, you can remove any remaining Teams files by deleting the following folders:

  • %appdata%\Microsoft\Teams
  • %localappdata%\Microsoft\Teams

Additionally, you can delete the following registry keys:

  • HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Teams
  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Teams

To delete a registry key:

  1. Open the Registry Editor.
  2. Navigate to the registry key you want to delete.
  3. Right-click on the registry key and select “Delete.”
  4. Confirm by clicking “Yes.”

After deleting the Teams folders and registry keys, restart your computer to ensure that Teams is completely uninstalled from your Windows profile.

For addressing other accounts showing up in the sign-out screen:

These accounts are likely stored in the Windows Credential Manager. To remove them, follow these steps:

  1. Open the Control Panel.
  2. Click on “User Accounts.”
  3. Select “Manage your credentials.”
  4. In the “Windows Credentials” window, click on the “Windows Credentials” tab.
  5. Locate the credentials associated with the accounts you want to delete and click on them.
  6. Click “Remove.”
  7. Confirm by clicking “Yes.”

After deleting the credentials, the accounts should no longer appear in the sign-out screen.

How can I find my Wi-Fi password in Windows?

Connected to your Wi-Fi but cant remember the password? Here’s how to find out what it is.

Windows 11

To do this, select the Start  button, then select Settings  > Network & internet  > Properties  > View Wi-Fi security key.

Note: You can also view the password of saved networks on the Manage known networks page by selecting any network and then View Wi-Fi security key.

Windows 10

  1. Select the Start  button, then select Settings  > Network & Internet  > Status  > Network and Sharing Center.
  2. In Network and Sharing Center, next to Connections, select your Wi-Fi network name.
  3. In Wi-Fi Status, select Wireless Properties.
  4. In Wireless Network Properties, select the Security tab, then select the Show characters check box.
    Your Wi-Fi network password is displayed in the Network security key box.

 

SQL Server Error: 14607, profile name is not valid [SQLSTATE 42000]

SQL Email Failures, Failed to notify via email, issues?

For some reason emailing of SQL Server Agent job reports stopped working when I disabled the ‘sa’ account and created a different admin user. Never could figure out why until today!

I’m not even sure if disabling the ‘sa’ account had anything to do with it because when I checked the properties of the job in question it wasn’t even configured to send alerts!

Anyway, the way I fixed it was to right click the SQL Server Agent node in SQL Management Studio and select Properties. Click the Alert System node and Enable the Mail profile you’d like to allow the SQL Server Agent to use, restart the SQL Server Agent Service (just the service, not the server!) and it should start working.

 

How do you turn off the Outlook email sidebar in Microsoft Edge?

Microsoft have recently made a change to how internet links open from within Outlook. The link now opens in Microsoft Edge and also shows the email content in a box to the right known as the side pane.

Some people like it, some don’t. Here’s how to turn it off.

  1. Open Microsoft Edge and click the ellipsis button (top right)
  2. Go to Settings (cog icon)
  3. Under the Settings heading click “Sidebar
  4. Under the heading “App and notification settings” then sub heading “App specific settings” look for Outlook and click it
  5. Turn it off by clicking the “Automatically open Outlook email context in the side pane” toggle.

Visual Voicemail not working on iPhone o2

If you are having issues with visual voicemail not working on iPhone then here’s a few tips on how to get it working! It’s happened to me a few times whether it’s because I switched phones, changed plans or got a new sim.

  1. Contact o2 customer support. You can do this from your o2 phone by dialling 202, or contact them on social media at facebook, twitter or instagram and drop them a message.
  2. Ask them to turn on the “iData Bolt On”
  3. On your iPhone go to Settings > General > Transfer or Rest iPhone > Reset > Reset Network Settings

After you’ve done step 3 your phone should reboot and hopefully visual voicemail will start working.

Quickly delete all records from a MSSQL database table

How can you remove all data from a table efficiently? Using the delete command can take a very long time if you have lots of data.

If you want to delete all rows from the table – the simplest way to do this is to use the TRUNCATE command.

TRUNCATE TABLE table_name

Remember that the table cannot have foreign keys constraints, but there is a workaround. You can delete foreign keys temporarily and recreate them afterward.

Action steps:

  • Drop the FK constraints
  • Execute TRUNCATE command
  • Recreate the FK constraints

Once you removed all rows – consider resetting the identity value as follows:

DBCC CHECKIDENT ('table_name', RESEED, 0)

Shout out to Piotr Bach for the article that can be found here

Update multiple SSL certificate site bindings in IIS in one go

If you have to deal with updating SSL certificates in IIS then you probably know how much of a pain it can be if you have lots of sites and bindings that all use the same certificate. I found a really simple PowerShell script that can go through and match the thumbprint of your old certificate on all bindings in IIS and replace them with the thumbprint of your new certificate! This is particularly useful if you have a wildcard multi-domain certificate that you can use on all sites regardless of hostname!

Open up a PowerShell window with administrative rights then enter the following commands. Obviously you will need to replace the thumbprint values below with yours.

The first one will set a variable for the old certificate

$OLDCertificateThumbprint = "123456789abcdefgh1a2b3c4d5e6f7g8h9a1a1a1"

The second will set a variable for the old certificate

$NEWCertificateThumbprint = "7a3b5a1g1a6a2j2a262a3343a333a5a64a4a4a4a"

The following will show bindings where the old certificate is in use

Get-WebBinding | Where-Object { $_.certificateHash -eq $OLDCertificateThumbprint} | Format-Table

This will select bindings where the old certificate is in use and switch it to the new certificate

Get-WebBinding | Where-Object { $_.certificateHash -eq $OLDCertificateThumbprint} | ForEach-Object {
Write-Host "Working on" $_
$_.RemoveSslCertificate()
$_.AddSslCertificate($NEWCertificateThumbprint, 'My')
}

Once the script above has completed you can use this to show bindings where the new certificate is in use

Get-WebBinding | Where-Object { $_.certificateHash -eq $NEWCertificateThumbprint}

Now that everything has been updated you can go into IIS to check it out.  Big thank you to the following people here and here for providing these solutions.