Some things to think about and do before installing Visual Studio 2005 SP1.

First off, a requirement:

• If you have installed the Web Application Project type from the MS downloads, you must uninstall it before installing the service pack. (Apparently the pack includes it)
  

Post is here - talks about the following:

• disable patch cache (save 1.3 GB of disk space and lots of I/O time during install)
  
• uninstall c++ if you're not using it
• will have to reinstall after upgrade to Vista

I've been working on an integration project for our client where we are wrapping some legacy data with a web service layer, and pointing an existing WinForms app at it. There is a bunch of client side code that calls DataSet.Merge and fails with the error Failed to enable constraints.

Many times, the problem is what the error is trying to tell you - you have a relationship defined in the dataset that is not satisfied when trying to merge the data - a child row in a relationship perhaps doesn't have a corresponding foreign key in the parent table...

Tonight I was getting this error, and double checked all relationships (spit out the relationships to the debug window), checked for null values and duplicate primary keys (again spewing to the debug window) -- where is my uber DataSet visualizer that I've been wanting to write? (more on that in another post)

Finally I google'd and found this thread. Sanjay explains the best way to find what is causing the error:

foreach ( DataTable dt in mergingSet.Tables )
{
if ( dt.HasErrors )
{
    foreach ( DataRow dr in dt.GetErrors() )
    {
        Debug.WriteLine( dr.RowError );
    }
}
}

That'll do it - so simple, huh? The big question - why couldn't the MS devs have just put this info in the exception text itself?

Additional note: HasErrors and GetErrors may not be available/set until AFTER you have attempted the Merge operation (depends on if it's a FK, PK, or unique constraint issue)

Well, after I realized this is using VirtualPC to run one of the versions, I was not as impressed. Given that, why are there 19 steps to this process?

Anyway - some decent info about various settings, etc.

via LifeHacker, here is a decent list of the top 30 Windows freeware apps. Things such as:

• Virus scan
• Photo editing
• RSS reader
• Media player
• Note taking
• IM client(s)