Creating a self-executing installer with Winrar

You can use Winrar to create self-executing installer from the msi's and setup files you create from a Visual Studio Setup project.

Here are the steps:

1. Put your MSI and exe files in a folder.
2. Right click folder and select "Add to Archive"

3. Make sure that the archive format is set to "RAR" and check "Create SFX Archive" and "Create Solid Archive". The archive name extension automatically changes to ".exe"

4. Click on the "Advanced" tab and click on the "SFX Options" button.

5. In the "Advanced SFX Options" dialog - enter the path name to your .exe file. In my case "\Program\Setup.exe".

6. Click on the "Modes" tab and select "Hide all" under "Silent Mode" radio button group.

7. Click on Update tab. I set the "Overwrite All Files" as my  overwrite mode. This will replace all install files.

8. To set an icon to your installer, click on the "Text and Icon" tab and set your options

9. Click OK on both the open dialogs and you'll have your self-extracting exe

There are several other options you can change based on your needs.

Single sign on between a domain and a subdomain using forms authentication

I ran into an interesting situation on a site using forms authentication, where the user had to be logged into both a domain and its subdomain once authenticated. Here's what I had to do to get this to work.

Both sites being seperate applications in themselves the authentication cookies generated by asp.net would be different due the encryption keys used by the sites. The Auth cookie generate by domain.com cannot be read by subdomain.domain.com. To get over this issue we need to add a machine key element in the web.config's of the both the apps. This key is going to be the same in both apps.

There are several different options in setting up these keys. Read more about it in this page. It also includes some code on how to generate a machine key using a console app - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff649308.aspx

Once this is taken care of, the next issue we are going to have is the cookie itself. When a cookie is created - it is domain specific, so a cookie created by a sub domain will not be accessible to its parent level domain. In my case, the user authentication was to be performed on a subdomain using MVC. So I had to generate cookies for both the sub domain and domain upon authentication from my subdomain.

For Login

 public ActionResult LogOn(LogOnModel model, string returnUrl)
        {
            if (ModelState.IsValid)
            {
                if (Membership.ValidateUser(model.UserName, model.Password))
                {
                    FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie(model.UserName, model.RememberMe);

                    Account account = new Account();
                    //modify the Domain attribute of the cookie to the second level domain
                    HttpCookie MyCookie = FormsAuthentication.GetAuthCookie(model.UserName, model.RememberMe);
                    MyCookie.Domain = "domain.com";//the second level domain name
                    Response.AppendCookie(MyCookie);

                    string userName = account.GetUserName(model.UserName);
                    Session["ActualName"] = userName;
                    HttpCookie userCookie = new HttpCookie("IGNUS");
                    userCookie.Domain = "domain.com";
                    userCookie.Values["Name"] = userName;
                    if (model.RememberMe)
                        userCookie.Expires = DateTime.Now.AddDays(2);
                    Response.Cookies.Add(userCookie);

                    if (Url.IsLocalUrl(returnUrl) && returnUrl.Length > 1 && returnUrl.StartsWith("/")
                        && !returnUrl.StartsWith("//") && !returnUrl.StartsWith("/\\"))
                    {
                        return Redirect(returnUrl);
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        return RedirectToAction("Index", "Member");
                    }
                }
                else
                {
                    ModelState.AddModelError("", "The user name or password provided is incorrect.");
                }
            }

            // If we got this far, something failed, redisplay form
            return View(model);
        }

For LogOut

 public ActionResult LogOff()
        {
            FormsAuthentication.SignOut();

            HttpCookie userCookie = new HttpCookie("IGNUS");
            userCookie.Domain = "domain.com";
            userCookie.Expires = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-1);

            HttpCookie staticAuthCookie = new HttpCookie(".ASPXAUTH");
            staticAuthCookie.Domain = "domain.com";
            staticAuthCookie.Expires = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-1);

            Response.Cookies.Add(userCookie);
            Response.Cookies.Add(staticAuthCookie);

            return RedirectToAction("LogOn");
        }

How to get a Dell Service Tag remotely

If you are near the server you can just look around and find the Service Tag sticker. But, if you are logged in remotely here's how to get the service tag
Type "wmic bios get serialnumber" into the command prompt and press enter.