VS Express Edition - Start external program solution

"As you've noticed, this functionality is not available in Express. This is one of the many places where the IDE has been simplified..." words of Luke Hoban on social.msdn.microsoft.com.

It's not simplyfication, it is just taking away basic functionality and getting money from users. The postbuild event idea is not bad, but will start the application every time and I am not sure about debugging, if you need to attach to a process or it is done automatically. Here comes a solution, you need to edit the .user file of your project: .vcproj.user for C++ or .csproj.user for C#, probably similar for VB.

For C++ find a Configuration and edit|add DebugSettings:

    <debugsettings
        Command="C:\Program Files\Adobe\FrameMaker7.1\FrameMaker.exe"
        WorkingDirectory=""
        CommandArguments=""
        Attach="false"
        DebuggerType="3"
        Remote="1"
        RemoteMachine=""
        RemoteCommand=""
        HttpUrl=""
        PDBPath=""
        SQLDebugging=""
        Environment=""
        EnvironmentMerge="true"
        DebuggerFlavor="0"
        MPIRunCommand=""
        MPIRunArguments=""
        MPIRunWorkingDirectory=""
        ApplicationCommand=""
        ApplicationArguments=""
        ShimCommand=""
        MPIAcceptMode=""
        MPIAcceptFilter=""
    />

C#:

<project xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
  <propertygroup condition=" '$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Debug|AnyCPU' ">
    <startaction>Program</startaction>
    <startprogram>C:\Program Files\Adobe\FrameMaker7.1\FrameMaker.exe</startprogram>
    <startarguments/>
    <startworkingdirectory/>
  </propertygroup>
</project>

Good luck debugging your libraries with Express edition.

Annoying password policy - solution

Hi, for sure you have faced the welcome message of expired password. Then you thought you will change it quickly and continue. But, it needs uppercase, lowercase, numbers, signs, squirrel sounds as Dilbert said, zero is not allowed not to be missed by o and other specialties...

This happened to me last time and it made me quite angry. Finally when you have a new password, safety is still worthless because you are unable to remember your password and you write it down on your desk. Oups.

Keeping the same password is not allowed, you need to find out how many last passwords are remembered, change your password as many times and finally use your last one. It will take more time, but you can keep your old password. Is it right to do this? Hm, maybe not, but is it right to writing it down?