Tuesday, November 26, 2013

How to get your Firefox "Sync Recovery Key" (sort of)

I had an old test box running XP and it was upgraded to Win7. In the process I lost my Firefox Sync with my main development box. Firefox Sync is wonderful, but it makes Byzantine bureaucracy look like a Manual for Dummies. It's full of blind alleys and circular mazes. Going to "about:home" and clicking on the "sync" icon at the bottom put me in an Alice In Wonderland world where I needed my Sync Recovery Key to log in, but couldn't get those magic numbers until I was logged in. Hmmmm. My solution:
1. Delete your account at https://account.services.mozilla.com
2. Recreate it with the same username and password, but be careful to get the "Sync Recovery Key" from the "Manage Account". The interface is a little odd, because it's assuming you want to change the key, not copy it. On the panel select "Cancel" after you have copied the key to a warm, dry place.

3. Went to my new device and started the process to pair the device. Then it all worked. Good luck.

Thursday, November 07, 2013

Visual Studio 2012 - Cannot evaluate expression because the code of the current method is optimized

While trying to debug my C# project, I kept getting the dreaded "Cannot evaluate expression because the code of the current method is optimized" message - meaning the compiler optimized away all the details of the methods to increase execution speed. To see if your library is optimized, start the debugger and then go to "Debug/Windows/Modules" and see if your library is optimized. My problem child .dll was optimized. Right clicking on the project and selecting "Properties", I looked at the "Build" tab. I made sure the "Optimize code" checkbox was unchecked, but that is not enough.

My missing piece was on the same "Build" tab, but further down under "Advanced". I needed to set the "Output / Debug to "full", it's not enough just to be "pdb-only".

Now the project compiles with full debugging info.

Wednesday, November 06, 2013

"synwinxt.dll is missing or invalid" error after 1.4.14 upgrade on Windows XP

After loving synergy for the last few years, I decided to upgrade since it had one minor annoyance: When ever my server machine got a new IP address, the client couldn't find it - I had to manually reset it by reentering a different version of the host name which caused synergy to lookup the IP address.
Well, nothing is as easy as it looks.
I upgraded my windows7 server to the 64 bit version and windows XP client to the latest 32-bit version, 1.4.15.  Didn't work.  My XP box keep getting "synwinxt.dll is missing or invalid".
I downgraded to version 1.4.14 on both machines and still couldn't get them to communicate.
I finally installed the 1.4.15 32-bit version on my Windows 7 server and it all worked beautifully again.
Synergy is wonderful for sharing keyboard and mouse across multiple machines.