Disabling the Shut Down button on Windows Server 2008

The very first thing I do when building an Amazon EC2 image is too disable the Shut Down button.

Shutting Down an instance has the same effect of terminating the instance, meaning you lose all data not stored on EBS volumes.

Click Start > Run > Type “gpedit.msc” and press enter

Go to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Start Menu and Toolbar

The option you are looking for is “Remove and prevent access to the Shut Down, Restart, Sleep, and Hibernate commands”

Right Click > Properties > Select Enabled > Click Apply > Click OK

Now when you go to the Start Menu you will see this with the only options being Lock and Log Off. Now you can use the AWS Management Console to manage reboots or terminations.

Freeing Disk Space on C:\ Windows Server 2008

I just spent the last little while trying to clear space on our servers in order to install .NET 4.5 . Decided to post so my future self can find the information when I next have to do this. I performed all the usual tasks: Deleting any files/folders from C:\windows\temp and C:\Users\%UserName%\AppData\Local\Temp Delete all EventViewer logs Save to another Disk if you want to keep them Remove any unused programs, e.g. Firefox Remove anything in C:\inetpub\logs Remove any file/folders C:\Windows\System32\LogFiles Remove any file/folders from C:\Users\%UserName%\Downloads Remove any file/folders able to be removed from C:\Users\%UserName%\Desktop Remove any file/folders able to be removed from C:\Users\%UserName%\My Documents Stop Windows Update service and remove all files/folders from C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution Deleting an Event Logs Run COMPCLN.exe Move the Virtual Memory file to another disk However this wasn’t enough & I found the most space was

3 Reasons Why Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) Won’t Replace Native Apps

Many people believe Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are the future of the mobile web, but in my opinion, PWAs are not a replacement for native mobile apps. Here are three reasons why: 1. Native mobile apps provide a smoother & faster experience Mobile websites, progressive or otherwise are slower and not as smooth. 90% of the time spent is spent using apps vs the browser . The single most significant contributing factor to a smooth experience on mobile is the speed of the network and latency of the data downloaded and uploaded. When you visit websites on desktop or mobile, there is a lot of third-party code/data that gets downloaded to your device, which more often than not has zero impact on the user experience. This includes: CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) JavaScript Ad network code Facebook tracking code Google tracking code The median number of requests a mobile website makes is a shocking 69 . On the other hand, native apps only get the data that is requi

Consuming the SSRS ReportExecutionService from a .NET Client

I’ve just finished writing a nice wrapper which internally calls the SSRS ReportExecutionService to generate reports. Whilst it was fairly simple to implement there has been some major changes between 2005 and 2008 and the majority of online and documentation is based on the 2005 implementation. The most important change is that the Report Server and Report Manager are no longer hosted in IIS which will be a welcomed change to Sys Admins but makes the security model and hosting model vastly different. So far I’ve yet to figure out how to allow Anonymous Access, if anyone knows how to do this leave a comment and it will be most appreciated. Getting Started To get started you’ll want to add a service reference to http://localhost/ReportServer_SQL2008/ReportExecution2005.asmx where ReportServer_SQL2008 is the name you configure in the Reporting Services Configuration Manager. The Web Application files are located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSRS10.SQL2008\R

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