Deleting Salesforce apex classes from production org

Goal Scenario

Some temporary apex classes have been created in production and need to be deleted.

For change control reasons the developer does not have rights to use the Force.com IDE to achieve this.

The production administrator doesn't use Eclipse and only has the ability to do the following:

• Manual configuration
• Change sets
• ANT deployments

Solution

Provide a package for ANT deployment containing only the meta files for the classes to be deleted.

Inside the meta, change the value of the status tag to Deleted.

     <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

     <ApexClass xmlns="http://soap.sforce.com/2006/04/metadata">

         <apiVersion>23.0</apiVersion>

         <status>Deleted</status>

     </ApexClass>

Reference

http://salesforce.stackexchange.com/questions/5776/deleting-triggers-classes-from-production

Force.com IDE - Password Required

Symptom

On startup, Eclipse Force.com IDE sits at "Pre-fetch SObjects" step for a long time, and then asks for username/password.

Possible Causes
Java seems to cause this problem.

First time I experienced it, it appeared that Java had become corrupted.
Second time was immediately after installing a Java update.

Update: this happened a third time and messing around with Java didn't fix it.

It turns out that the  Eclipse proxy settings screen is a bit buggy. A lot of corporate firewalls don't support SOCKS so this has to be disabled. When selecting Manual settings, it appears to be impossible to disable the SOCKS proxy settings. However selecting the setting and clicking Clear seems to fix the problem.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5857499/how-do-i-have-to-configure-the-proxy-settings-so-eclipse-can-download-new-plugin

Possible Resolutions

1. Check and correct Java proxy settings. It appears these can be lost sometimes

Start | Settings | Control Panel | Java | General tab | Network Settings...
Tick Use proxy server and enter the address and port
Click OK until all dialogs closed

If not sure what to use, see your Eclipse proxy settings (Window | Preferences | General | Network Connections)

2. Repair Java
3. If this doesn't work, uninstall and reinstall
4. It may be necessary to go back to a previous version

Windows Phone 8 to Windows tethering issues

Tethering a Windows Phone to Windows is surprisingly more problematic than tethering to iOS/Android. Various problems can occur including BSOD(!!!)

The fix is to enable FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards) on the connection. The post below is a starting point for resolving issues and describes how to configure the wireless lan without triggering a BSOD and losing  your configuration.

http://waveformation.com/2013/10/02/win8-internet-connection-sharing-with-windows-phone-htc-8x-
fixed/

However this only works if there has been one successful tether to the phone in the past, as the fix is dependent on the existence of network "profiles" and "interfaces".

A solution that gets around this is to:

1. Boot the PC into Safe Mode with Networking. See the link for how to do this for various OS versions http://www.computerhope.com/issues/chsafe.htm
2. Tether to your phone. You'll get an annoying Limited Connectivity message, but the PC shouldn't crash
3. Right-click your network connection (in the System Tray) and select Properties | select Security tab | click Advanced Settings | tick "Enable Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) compliance for this network" | click OK until all dialogs are closed
4. Restart Windows into normal mode