SSMS Utility Explorer

One of the features of SSMS 2008R2 is the Utility Explorer window, which "connects to Database Engine instances to provide a tree view of all the objects in the SQL Server Utility." (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee210556%28v=sql.105%29.aspx)

This feature is available in the Enterprise & Developer Editions.

Out of curiosity, I opened that window to check it out, and then closed the window. Thought that would turn off the feature. However, every time I opened SSMS, the UE window opened too. Easy enough to close it with a single click, but could not turn it off.

I found that there is a config file windows.prf located here:
C:\Users\first_name.last_name\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Shell

(whew!)

... and luckily there was a backup file in there, so all I had to do is close SSMS, rename the windows.prf to something else, and then rename the backup to windows.prf and Voila! the Utility Explorer window does not open when you launch SSMS.

TortoiseSVN and SSMS icon overlays

Tortoise SVN is one of the popular source-control systems, which we use at our office. If you've used this product, when you commit you'll sometimes see a message that a new version is available; I had 1.8.x installed, so this time I did the update but - got bit by version 1.9.2 ...

This is using a recent Windows 7 x64 machine, by the way.

After the update, the Windows folders all had the familiar icon overlays, but when I launched SQL Server Management Studio & hit the File Open dialog, none of the colored icons were present. Hmmm. Google'd about looking for a solution & found numerous registry hacks involving icon overlay keys, keys that were added by/for Groove and/or Windows 10; finally found the answer: version 1.9.2 seems to have a problem.

So I uninstalled the 1.9.2 client and downloaded the previous 1.9.1 version, and Voila! the icons all came back. Good times.