As you know if you have WinHost $5 or $10 plans, you cannot backup databases from SSMS, you have to do it from the Web Control Panel. After getting tired of doing this manually, I decided to automate this… as I have always been a big fan of automating things. This is how you can do it:

Software Requirements:
1. Selenium IDE
2. Visual Studio (if you’re going to use C#)
3. Java
4. Selenium Server
5. Firefox browser

Steps involved:
1. Install Selenium IDE from here , or open Firefox browser and install from the Add-On page. You should have Firefox installed in your machine.
2. Launch the IDE after installing. This is how the IDE looks:



3. The Selenium IDE starts in recording mode, the red button on the top right corner can be used to start or stop recording.
4. Open a Firefox window, and go to WinHost’s control panel page.
5. Enter your username, password, and follow all the steps that you do for manual database backup. The IDE will record every click event, and you should be able to see the events in the IDE getting added.
6. Once you are done with all the tasks, stop recording.
7. Go to File menu, Export Test Case As and choose C# / NUnit / Remote Control, which will generate a C# class.
8. Create a Console Application or a Service. Console Application works well for me.
9. You need to copy parts of code from the IDE generated class. You can put everything in a method, something like this:

            
               1:  ISelenium
selenium;
          

            
               2:  StringBuilder
verificationErrors;
          

            
               3:  
          

            
               4:  selenium
= new DefaultSelenium("localhost",
4444, "*chrome", "https://cp.winhost.com/");
          

            
               5:  selenium.Start();
          

            
               6:  verificationErrors
= new StringBuilder();
          

            
               7:  
          

            
               8:  selenium.Open("/login.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2fdefault.aspx");
          

            
               9:  selenium.Type("id=ctl00_cphMain_loginCP_UserName", "YourUserId");
          

            
               10:  selenium.Type("id=ctl00_cphMain_loginCP_Password", "YourPassword");
          

            
               11:  selenium.Click("id=ctl00_cphMain_loginCP_Login");
          

            
               12:  selenium.WaitForPageToLoad("30000");
          

            
               13:  selenium.Click("id=sites");
          

            
               14:  selenium.WaitForPageToLoad("30000");
          

            
               15:  selenium.Click("id=ctl00_cphMain_gvSites_ctl02_lbManage");
          

            
               16:  selenium.WaitForPageToLoad("30000");
          

            
               17:  selenium.Click("css=img[alt=\"Microsoft
SQL Manager\"]");
          

            
               18:  selenium.WaitForPageToLoad("30000");
          

            
               19:  selenium.Click("id=" +
labelName);
          

            
               20:  selenium.WaitForPageToLoad("30000");
          

            
               21:  selenium.Click("link=Backup");
          

            
               22:  selenium.WaitForPageToLoad("30000");
          

            
               23:  selenium.Click("id=ctl00_cphMain_btnBackup");
          

            
               24:  var
confirmation = Regex.IsMatch(selenium.GetConfirmation(), "^Create
backup\\. Are you sure[\\s\\S]$");
          

            
               25:  selenium.WaitForPageToLoad("30000");
          

10. Install Selenium related DLLs from Nuget. Open Visual Studio’s Package Manager Console, and install packages - Selenium.RC and Selenium.Support
11. Download Selenium Server from here , you SHOULD have Java installed in your machine to start the server.
12. The server should be started before executing the above code, you can create a .bat file, with this line “java -jar D:\Utils\selenium-server-standalone-2.25.0.jar” in it.
13. You can execute the bat file like this - System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(@"D:\Utils\startSeleniumServer.bat");
14. Now, when you start the console app, it will repeat the recorded steps, and backup your database.
15. Remember, the database will be backed up in the app_data folder; and if the folder already has a backup file, you need to delete it. You could write a FTP module or use the FTP Utility that I wrote (attached) to delete and download the backup file.
16. You have to pass the file path and the credentials if you’re using my FTP utility. The file path will be something like this - ftp://FTP_IP/app_data/SEE_WHAT_THE_MANUAL_BACKUP_GENERATES.bak

Note: You could use Selenium.WebDriver instead of RC Server, however, it doesn’t handle popup or confirmation window properly; as our process opens a confirmation window, I went with the RC Server.

My WCF Data Service worked fine in the VS Web Server, but when I deployed it to IIS (7.5), it stopped working. I was able to view the service page listing all the entities, but when I tried to access the entities in a RESTFUL manner, I wasn’t.

I found out the problem by setting

config.UseVerboseErrors = true; 

publicstaticvoid InitializeService(DataServiceConfiguration
config)

If audio is not working in your server, check whether Windows Audio service is started…

How to do:
1. On Windows Run (windows key + R key), type services.msc
2. Look for Windows Audio service and check whether it is started, if not, start it

If this doesn't resolve your problem, try updating your audio drivers.

If audio is not working only when remoting, try the following:

1. On Windows Run (windows key + R key), type gpedit.msc
2. Go to Local Computer Policy/Computer Configuration/Administrative Templates/Windows Components/Terminal Services/ClientServer redirection
3. Enable Allow audio redirection

and then do this too:
1. On Windows Run (windows key + R key), type tscc.msc
2. Open the Connections folder in the left sidebar
3. Right-click RDP-Tcp, select Properties
4. Click Client Settings tab
5. UNCHECK the "Audio mapping" checkbox under the section "Disable the following:"
7. Click OK, and close tscc
8. You may see a warning which says this change will not take effect for any currently-connected RDP sessions. Click out of that
9. Logoff
10. Login

If you are remoting from a Windows XP machine, try to remote into the console by typing "mstsc /console" on run window.
If you are remoting from a Windows 7 or a Vista machine, try to remote into the console by typing "mstsc /admin" on run window.

After upgrading my PC from Windows XP to Windows 7, an external hard drive which was working fine on XP lost write permissions.

Found a solution:

1. Right click on the drive icon for the external drive.
2. Select Properties
3. Click Security Tab
4. Click Advanced Button
5. Click Owner Tab
6. Click Edit Button
7. Choose your account or administrators group, whichever you want to give permissions
8. Check 'Replace owner on subcontainers and objects'
9. Click OK

If this doesn’t resolve your problem, choose the user from “Group or user names” list, click “Edit”, and give appropriate permissions.

Hope this works for you!