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WordPress automatic update goes wrong with 404 and URL of wp-admin/upgrade.php?_wp_http_referer=%2Fwp-admin%2F

I haven’t entered any post lately and when I jumped on the admin to enter one I got the nag screen about updating WordPress. Foolishly without thinking I just did the automatic update. I normally go through the GoDaddy upgrade script and have not had problems with it but launching this update from the admin I could not enter login to the admin. I kept getting a 404 error page and the URL was wp-admin/upgrade.php?_wp_http_referer=%2Fwp-admin%2F.

The actual blog did not go done and seem to survive the upgrade. It was only the admin that was not accessible.

Doing some looking around on the web for the simplest way to fix this I saw post about doing a manual install over the update. A number of other suggestions that seemed to much effort. I got a hint from one of the post indicating copying files over similar to a manual install.

Since the page not found was coming from the wp-admin directory I took a gamble and downloaded WordPress 3.4.2 to my local machine. I then uploaded only the wp-admin over my upgraded site. Presto error page is gone.

Upon doing this when logging into the admin page I was prompted to upgrade the WP database. I did and all is well.

Posted on by admin

Screen Captures In Terminal Services

I spend a lot of time in Terminal Services working on any number of computers. Frequently I’m two levels deep in it. That is I’m remoting into a machine and then remoting into another one from that. One of the annoyance with our current system vendor is that they know so little about their system that they require extensive screen shots for any and all issues.

To accomodate while being in terminal sessions I found this person’s blog to be helpful.

http://www.christiano.ch/wordpress/2010/08/21/capture-alt-print-screen-focused-window-in-rdp-session-in-clipboard/

The crux of it is to use CTRL-ALT-Minus to accomplish this. I have tried it and it works like a charm.

Handy!

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Compare two SQL Tables

I was updating one table with data from another. However, when I did this there was a discrepancy between the number of rows I had in the update table and the number of rows updated.

Here the SQL that allowed me to compare and return the rows that were in the source but not the destination.

select * from TableA where not exists
(select * from TableB where TableA.ProductID =TableB.ProductID)

Handy!

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Change domain registrar from Network Solutions to GoDaddy

I’m doing this more frequently as Network Solution wants $34.99 to renew domains. I have six domains so to renew would be 209.94. With GoDaddy the cost for renewing 6 domains is 46.02.

First if you have DNS settings for the domains with Network Solution get the information so that this can be transferred over to GoDaddy DNS later.

I called GoDaddy to begin this transfer. Quick and painless. I got an email with instructions.

http://community.godaddy.com/help/article/1592?prog_id=GoDaddy&isc=gdbba2

 

Next login to Network Solutions. Manage Domains > Select Domain to move >

 

 

 

 

Scroll down the page and locate Details for domainname.com > Domain Protect and choose Turn Off and Request Authorization Code.

 

This will generate an email account to the whois contact for the domain.

Login to GoDaddy > My Account > My Products > Domain Manager

From the Domain Manager Menu > Pending Transfers

 

Enter codes sent in email.

 

Network Solution will send an email after requesting an authorization code.

 

Enter this in GoDaddy

 

 

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Restarting a Computer via Terminal Session

I can never remember the key combo to do a shut down or restart of a remote computer in Terminal Session. So I’m posting this on my online memory board here.

Ctrl + Alt + End.

Please note unless you have quick access to the computer in question be sure to select Restart instead of Shut Down.

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Trouble removing trailing space in Excel 2010

I could not remove the trailing space in an Excel 2010 column with the Trim() function. Doing a little research led me to believe this might possibly be caused by the space being something other than the ASCII code for space. (Decimal 32).

The function I used to find this.
=CODE(RIGHT(A1))

It returned a code of 160. This is ASCII for the HTML non-breaking space ( )

To fix this I found some information posted on a help board. By opening the Find & Replace dialog in Excel you hold down the Alt key while typing 0160 in the Find what: input.

For whatever reason, either bad typing or belligerent application it took me a couple of time both times I needed to do this.

BTW – the reason this occurred was I copied a report generated from a web application and got returned as HTML. While I didn’t copy the source Excel made the determination that it should include the HTML code.