Invested Development

This morning as I started Visual Studio it bugged me that the splash screen reported my registration information as “User” at “Microsoft”. My name isn’t “User” and I don’t work for “Microsoft”, at least not directly. This is something that has bothered me in the past but I’ve never dug into it far enough to figure out how to fix it.

This afternoon after a little research I was able to piece together the steps necessary to update the information. I found this question on Stack Overflow that had some useful information but not a complete solution. I also came across this post on John Robbins’ blog and between the two of them I was able to close the gap.

Updating Company Name and User for Windows
The first step is to open the registry editor and navigate to:

32 bit: HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion
64 bit: HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion

Here you can edit the RegisteredOrganization and RegisteredOwner values.

Updating Visual Studio User Registry Key
The next step is to update the user name for your Visual Studio registration. This is also a key in the registry at:

32 bit: HKLM\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\Registration
64 bit: HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\Registration

Getting Visual Studio to Use the New Information
Modifying the keys is the first step. However, it turns out that Visual Studio actually stores the information to be displayed in a SplashInfo key. The info is stored in binary data. Fortunately we do not need to modify the binary value in the registry. Instead simply run devenv /setup and the information will be updated automatically.

Verifying the Information
To verify that the information was updated correctly you can either view the SplashInfo key in the registry or simply run Visual Studio. I’m now “Stuart Thompson” at “SoftSource Consulting”. Much better!

Disclaimer
This process worked for me. Your mileage may vary. This information is provided as is without any implied warranty of fitness for any purpose. I am not responsible for corrupted Visual Studio installations or registry hives nor for any other problems that may arise as a result of using these steps. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Tools Registration, Visual Studio

Convert a collection of SQL parameters into a name:value string suitable for writing to a log.

/// <summary>
/// Serializes a collection of
/// <see cref="System.Data.SqlClient.SqlParameter"/>s.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="parameters">
/// The collection of parameters to serialize.
/// </param>
/// <returns>
/// A <see cref="System.String"/> that contains the parameter values.
/// </returns>
public string SerializeSqlParameterCollection(
    SqlParameterCollection parameters)
{
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    foreach (SqlParameter parameter in parameters)
        sb.Append(
            String.Format("{0}:{1} ",
                parameter.ParameterName, parameter.Value));
    return sb.ToString();
}

.NET Framework, Programming, Snippets .NET, Coding, csharp, sql

This article gives a great overview of the new features that are coming in the next version of the .NET framework.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms171868(v=VS.100).aspx#core_new_features_and_improvements

I’m very excited for April 12th 2010.

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