The Latest Ain't Always the Greatest... Revisited

A few years ago, I posted The Latest Ain't Always the Greatest about upgrading applications for no real reason. Today, I would like to look at updating your Windows OS and whether it is really such a good thing to do.

Apache and Skype: Yet Another Reason to Keep Things (Virtually) Separate

I rarely use my always-on Windows desktop for anything other than office type of stuff, an occasional blog post, and communication. Still, when I am too lazy to boot up another machine (physical or virtual) for a quick test or something like that, I may run some web applications on it.

I guess, today was one of those "lazy" days. So, I started MySQL. No problem. Then, I tried to start Apache 2.2. It showed me the usual
The Apache2.2 service is starting.....
and then, all of a sudden, gave me this error message:
The Apache 2.2 service could not be started.
A service specific error occurred: 1.
More help is available by typing NET HELPMSG 3547.

How to Start and Stop PostgreSQL Service (Actually, Any Service) on Windows 7

On Windows XP, if you were logged in as a user with administrative rights, you could simply run cmd to start what in the old days we used to call a "DOS box" and run something like this:

NET START postgresql

NET STOP postgresql

from the Windows command prompt to start or stop PostgreSQL database server (or any other Windows service).

On Windows 7, however, it is a little more complicated than that. The problem is that, if you simply run cmd and try to start or stop a service, you will most probably get this error message:
System error 5 has occurred.
Access is denied.

PostgreSQL Installation Problem on Windows without WSH

PostgreSQL 8.3 and 8.4 may fail to install on Windows with the following error message: "An error occurred executing the Microsoft VC++ runtime installer". PostgreSQL 9.x may fail with a different message: "Unable to write inside TEMP environment variable path", but the actual reason appears to be the same.

DBF to MySQL Data Conversion on Windows Hands-Free

I spent several weeks looking for an easy way to import data from DBF files (the application was written in FoxPro for DOS some time around 1993) into MySQL on a regular basis. First, I looked for a utility to perform one-step conversion (DBF to MySQL). No luck there (not that I didn't find any - just none of them worked).

Then I figured I could convert DBF files to CSV files first and then import them into MySQL using LOAD DATA INFILE, but the question was how to do the DBF-to-CSV part. OpenOffice Calc and MS Excel were out of the question (converting 30 tables every night manually wasn't something I was eager to do; besides, many of them exceed the limit of 65536 rows), so I had to look for other options, preferably something that can run unattended at night while I am at home sleeping.