The Working Directory Does not Exists C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\…

I am working on a shared Add-in for Excel in Visual Studio 2005 and got that message. The add-in is under development by somebody else and I am to help him in implementing a part of it. When i click on Start Debugging [F5] then I got this message: The Working Directory Does not Exists C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\…

Well my Windows is installed on Q:\ directory (weired, isn’t it) and Visual Studio is also there. Since it is somebody else’s program whose Windows is naturally in the C:\ drive I know I need to figure out where to setup the working directory of a visual studio project.

And here is that. Under  Project -> [my project name goes here] Properties -> Debug tab in the IDE. Setting the options that I need to correct is “Working directiry” to my drive/path and also “Start external program” to one of my target apps such as Excel’s drive/path that would lauch that application with the debugger attached when I press F5.

DotNetNuke 4.08.01 Installation Tips

I was having trouble installing DotNetNuke (DNN) on SQL server 2000. It was giving me the error message that user cannot be recognized etc. Although user and database was properly set up. What was wrong is that by default the database connection string which is active (uncommented) in web.config file is for SQL Server Express 2005. The connection string for SQL Server 2000 is actually commented out.

I could not notice it – although i was making changes to the SQL 2000 settings it was not making any sense. Finally i could catch the culprit comment in both “connectionStrings” and “appSettings” section of the web.config file.

The active SQL Server 2000 settings for my web.config file is as below. The SQL Express 2005 settings are commented out:



<connectionStrings>
<!-- Connection String for SQL Server 2005 Express
<add name="SiteSqlServer" connectionString="Data Source=.SQLExpress;Integrated Security=True;User Instance=True;AttachDBFilename=|DataDirectory|Database.mdf;" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
-->
<!-- Connection String for SQL Server 2000/2005 -->
<add
name="SiteSqlServer"
connectionString="Server=(local); Database=DotNetNuke; uid=dnn; pwd=dnn;"
providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
</connectionStrings>

<appSettings>
<!-- Connection String for SQL Server 2005 Express - kept for backwards compatability - legacy modules
<add key="SiteSqlServer" value="Data Source=.SQLExpress;Integrated Security=True;User Instance=True;AttachDBFilename=|DataDirectory|Database.mdf;" />
-->
<!-- Connection String for SQL Server 2000/2005 - kept for backwards compatability - legacy modules -->
<add key="SiteSqlServer" value="Server=(local); Database=DotNetNuke; uid=dnn; pwd=dnn;"/>

…

</appSettings>