If you have a large number of laptops with all of thier home directories using offline caching to a networked share and that share fails or is migrated then you are in deep trouble.

With several machines lots of forced GPUpdate /Yes etc just didnt do the trick.  Even if you did manage to get your home directory to connect to the new server then all the registry links for applications like VS2005 still need to be changed.

After spending a lot of time trying to fix this I used 2 tools to assist.  The first is a Client-Side Caching Command Line Tool from Microsoft.  This includes the ability to change the share that cached files reference and the exporting of the whole or just modified versions of files in the cache to a specified location. The Microsoft KB article here

The second is a registry editing app from Macecraft software called JV16 power tools that allows you to find and replace registry entries.  It found 69 entries and replaced them intelligently saving a couple of hours hunting around manually.  JV16 has a suite of other useful utilities beyond find and replace as well - highly recommended!  (obviously use at own risk....;)

Peter Maddern posted this entry about OneNote 2007 searching in the Microsoft.Public.OneNote discussion

(Note this is pre Beta2TR)

For a couple of days, searching my newly downloaded OneNote 2007 multiple 
notebooks using Windows desktop search 3 didn't work for me at all.  I was 
able to search within the page I was in but not in multiple notebooks. I 
tried every combination of actions to fix this, for example, uninstalling 
WDS3, rebooting and reinstalling as well as repairing OneNote 2007.

I did the following and it fixed things for me:-

Control panel
Indexing options
Modify
Deselected all folders except my OneNote folders (I figured that I only 
wanted to index my OneNote folders - indexing my whole hard drive was 
unnecessary and too time-consuming and in any case, I use Yahoo desktop 
search for that)
Advanced
File types
Scroll down to file type ".one"
Select "Index Properties and File Contents" in the button selection area at 
the bottom
Close

I left indexing to run overnight.

Result - full OneNote indexing now worked well and was extremely fast too!

Prior to this procedure I had selected "Index Properties and File Contents" 
and thought that this selection applied globally to all file types.  Then I 
realised you have to make that selection for each specific file type.

Graphite is a drawing program that allows you to generate Visio-style diagrams using digital ink. I use Visio a lot in my work and, frankly, it's not a very Tablet PC-friendly application. Graphite looks like a great way to augment Visio with and ink-friendly environment for capturing ideas quickly.

More information can be found on the Graphite blog. 

Visual Xpath is a free Visual Studio addin that helps you test your XPATH statements against a source XML file.

One of my current projects is to use Microsoft SSIS to import a complex type XML file into SQL.  As I only need certain types and data from the XML file, an XPATH query using the SSIS XML Task seems like a good idea. Trouble is I have to learn XPath.  I'll add any good references I find to this post.

A good allround tool for XML work is http://www.stylusstudio.com

Reusable Functions for Reading and Writing Variables in SSIS Script Tasks

• It substitutes HTML entities for all non-ascii characters and HTML reserved characters
• It colour-codes the SQL according to the classic style of the Query Analyser
• It substitutes hard spaces for tabs
• it converts all SQL Keywords to upper case

All you need to do is to paste your code in the SQL window, and the results are rendered in the results window. You can click between the windows using the tabs.

SELECT c.*, s.*
FROM tblasd c
left outer join tblS s on s.St = c.Ct
where Office ='London'
order by s.St, c.ca

Becomes......

SELECT c.*, s.*
FROM tblasd c
LEFT OUTER JOIN tblS s ON s.St = c.Ct
WHERE Office ='London'
ORDER BY s.St, c.ca  

Bakers Hall is a fantastic venue for a Lodge meeting and dinner.  It is just round the corner from the Tower of London.  The CITO Lodge is extremely friendly and myself and my 2 guests had a very humorous and enjoyable evening.  Somehow we found our way home by train at about 2am after finishing the Dalwhinnie single malt scotch.

VNC (an abbreviation for Virtual Network Computing) is a great client/server software package allowing remote network access to graphical desktops. http://www.tightvnc.com/intro.html

I'm very fortunate to be recently acquainted with Charles Hughes, the president of the BCS.  He is a very genuine and passionate chap, and I was pleased to be able to join him for his BCS residents dinner at "The Banqueting House" in Whitehall.  It was designed in 1619 and completed in 1622 with the ceiling paneling decorated with paintings by Rubens.  The guests of honor were the Duke of Kent and Lord Sainsbury.  After dinner entertainment was most spectacular with the band of the Royal Corps of Signals marching up and down between the tables playing excellent marches and other tunes.