Visual Studio 2010 – Developer Forum (Minneapolis)

Hanging out at the Microsoft Office in Bloomington at the Visual Studio 2010 development presentation.  I thought I would blog a few notes during the session (typos are free of charge).

The day is broken into three sessions

• Drive Your Process, Kevin Grossnicklaus (ArchitectNow)
• Drive Your Design, Clint Edmonson (Microsoft)
• Drive Your Code Jeff Fattic (Scottrade)

SKU’s get simplified with this release

• Ultimate (only available with MSDN purchase)
• Premium (only available with MSDN purchase)
• Professional

Premium is the new SKU that contains both the combination of what was known as Database Edition and Professional edition.

Visual Studio is support on a go-live license so you can use it today with support.

Team Foundation Server RC1 and Beta use SharePoint 2007 and does not have a dependency on SharePoint 2010 currently.

UML and Application Diagramming support

• Layer or System Diagram
• Activity Diagram
• Sequence Diagram
• Use Case Diagram
• Component Diagram
• Class Diagram
• Dependency Diagram

There are few diagrams that support some level of round tripping with actual code and/or reverse engineering.

A feature that is really nice to the ability to select a section of code and request Visual Studio to create a sequence diagram.  In this scenario the code can generate what the code is doing. It does not defer meaning. It can not tell you what the code should do. Important to know the difference when reverse engineering into diagrams.

Question from people in the session:

Q: Can I import Visio diagrams?

A: No. XML Model Interchange (XMI) is also not supported in this release.

Q: What about database diagrams in Visual Studio 2010?

A: No, there is no (new) support for diagramming databases. You still have the database diagrams available from SQL Server and available in current releases of Visual Studio thru Server Explorer.

Resources

Download the slides from the session here.

Get access to Visual Studio 2010

• Download Visual Studio 2010 RC 1
• Virtual Machines with TFS and VS2010
• Windows 7 (Windows Virtual PC)
• Windows Vista/XP (Virtual PC 2007)
• Hyper-V (Windows Server 2008)

Learn Visual Studio 2010

• Video/Web Cast – Walkthroughs
• ASP.NET 4 Quick Hits Videos
• Visual Studio 2010 Quick Hit Videos
• Visual Studio Training Kit 

Visual Studio 2008 Web Designer locks up - Fix

When installing Office 2010 on a machine with Visual Studio 2008 installed you may run into a scenario where the web designer (aka VWD) locks up and does not respond to any clicks or keyboard events. 

The strange thing about the lock up is that Visual Studio does not report as an application that is not responding in task manager.  However using Task Manager is the only way to kill the process that I have found.

Fortunately the fix the problem is easy (if you are reading this post you either follow my blog or found it via search and you are already frustrated), so here goes…

Click the Start (or some call it the Windows Flag) Button and enter the following command in the search bar:

c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\office12\office setup controller\setup.exe

if you are running x86 version of Office you will need to run this from the Program Files (x86) folder (see the command below).

c:\program files (x86)\common files\microsoft shared\office12\office setup controller\setup.exe

Right click on setup and run it as an administrator.

When setup starts select the Repair option

This process will repair Web Authoring Component causing the original problem.

Free AVG not as free as it used to be.

Ok, it is still free technically (http://free.avg.com/us-en/homepage).

I used to highly recommend free AVG because it was, well free! Now they have teamed up with trialpay where you have to sign up for a trial of one of their partners before you can get to the download.

To be clear, I like AVG’s product line, for both servers and clients, I think it is really good at what it does.  I purchased several licenses for a small business data center I used to run.  However I find it hard to continue to recommend the free AVG tool with the condition of signing up for a trail of some other service I may not want.  I understand their model, but I am not in favor of it when I have choices.

Microsoft Security Essentials to the rescue.  I have been running it on my Windows 7 desktop and laptop and it seems to work just fine. Check it out here

Why I will miss Windows Live OneCare

Sept 2009 Microsoft announced OneCare will be retired, in favor of it’s newer free Antivirus service Microsoft Security Essentials.

 

 

The biggest thing is that I will miss was OneCare seemed really good at not making me think about schedule multiple IO intensive processes.  For example when you have defrag, backup, scheduled, windows update and AV scan scheduled I have to do work to make sure they don’t all run at the same time and thrash the disk.

I know I can schedule each activity with a few days between each but leaving the PC on and thinking thru the whole process can be a bit annoying.  I know run a series of utilities (as stated in an earlier blog post) including the following:

One Care Service (or Windows Default Service)	Replaced by
Backup	Mozy Online Back
Defrag	Perfect Disc 10
PC Tune Up	PC Tools Registry Mechanic
A/V	Microsoft Security Essentials
Anti Spyware	Windows Defender (no real change here)
Firewall	Windows Firewall (again no real change here)

I have had two incidents where one or more of these tools have been triggered at the same time.  I like Perfect Disc 10 a lot however, it can be tough to stop when it gets going.

Mozy Online back is proving to be a very nice solution so far.

This is not an advertisement (at least not an intentional one). I just thought I would share my experience with my first online backup solution.  As you can see in the slightly blurred image below I have a lot of attached storage.  Two years ago a 1 TB irreplaceable drive went belly up, and I paid $2k to have on track recover the data (ouch)!

So I decided to try my hand at one of these online backup services finally.  First I was really surprised at the price $4 (and some change) a month for unlimited backup?! You pay by the year. That seems reasonable. Especially when I can request restore by DVD (have Mozy send me a DVD or download to one or more PC’s). I have over 5TB of attached storage currently backing up 47GB of selected files.

The one very nice featured I stumbled across is the remote drive that automatically points to my backup files in the cloud.  Makes accessing my files a snap (and I love it).  From explorer I just select MozyHome Remote Backup and navigate the file system (in the cloud) as it were local. I really like this feature.  The screens below show the remote drive from Windows Explorer.

Figure 1 – Access your files via the Windows Explorer like a mounted drive pointing the your storage in the cloud.

Figure 2. – Remote drives are organized by the drive the were backup from instead just grouping them together in one massive bucket of files. Very nice!

Figure 3. – Files appears as if they are local. 

You can also access files by logging on to your account from a web browser providing several options for accessing your remote storage.  All the standard features like encryption, bandwidth throttling, and have the backup only start when the computer is idle are all available.

All that said my first experience with online backup has been very positive.

What about home backup solutions. Over the years I have had several including and most recently Windows OneCare which worked well.  However one of the challenges is the problem seen in the screenshots above.  Some the attached storage is being used for back instead of real work.  I also thought about Windows Home Server WHS) (I still may invest in this toy). Everything I have seen and heard WHS is a great solution for backup, and streaming.  At the time this solution was cheaper and did not cost me any time in setup.

No, “Create virtual machine” menu item for Windows Virtual PC for Windows 7 - Fix

 

Here it is you have just installed Windows XP Mode and Windows Virtual PC on your Windows 7 PC. You see the Windows Virtual PC menu on the Start bar and you are day to go.

 

Then you click on it to create a new Virtual PC, and you cannot find the Create virtual machine option on the toolbar or in any menu.

This problem is common when upgrading from Vista to Windows 7 and installing Windows Virtual PC. The most common causes is the folder view state is somehow corrupted.  You will need to delete the folder view state from the registry and restart your machine.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\BagMRU

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\BagMRU

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\BagMRU

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags

You can download this registry file from Ben Armstrong’s blog that will fix the problem for you.  Download the DeleteFolderViewState.reg file. Save it locally and run it.  Restart your machine and off you go.

If for some reason that does not work you can run the Virtual Machine Wizard by running the VPWizard.exe application located in the Windows\System32 folder until you are able to resolve the problem.

Warning: Be careful when modifying the registry …

Visual Studio 2008 support for SQL Server 2008 – GDR R2

Go grab it here.

What’s changed/new?

• The database edition of SQL Server no longer requires SQL Server Express being installed on the local machine for the design database (and the crowd goes wild)!!
• This release produces the schema separately in the build and deploy to allow for setup to be run independently (very nice).
• The new dependency viewer allows you to find relationships with objects in your database event at the column level.

Ok, for some of you this is old news (the GDR R2 release has been out since April 2009).

Important make sure you uninstall any database edition power tools at the command line type:

msiexec /X {EA016DAB-E08A-46FB-BBF0-ED6EB8FD4671}

Make sure you have elevated privileges.  Also make sure you have Visual Studio Service Pack 1 handy.  You will need to apply that before installing this drop.

BTW – GDR stands for General Distribution Release

Your Face is your password from Lenovo …

Other vendors may have this as well, but I seen it first on the Lenovo site. Very cool face security.

(from http://www.lenovo.com/us/en/)

When you navigate to the site click on the 3rd flash button (see the image below).

Microsoft SharedView

In the absence of a commercial web conferencing tool from time to time, I have used a utility called SharedView from Microsoft.  This tool has been out for at least a few years now, but still there are lot of people who do not know about it.  Microsoft SharedView is a screen sharing utility that works over most network connections including thru and over the internet using ports

SharedView works really well for sharing applications/screens across a network connection, regardless if you are across the internet, using a cell network or on the same local network.  It is easy fast and lightweight.  Think of it as a lightweight version of livemeeting (or webex), without out all the heavy infrastructure and for free.

You can share your app or desktop with 15 people (great for developer collaboration, among other types of business collaboration).

(Figure 1 – From the SharedView connect site)

Now meetings are ad-hoc, and there are no pre-scheduling of meetings, VoIP or saving shared resources to a conferencing server.

I have found this tool great for quick screen/desktop app sharing between developers, and business users.

You can download SharedView or find out more here

Note: You do not require a hotmail, live, or msn e-mail address, to get a live or passport id.  You can associate your yahoo, aol, gmail, corporate or other e-mail accounts with live id (aka passport). 

Here is the official sharedview team blog (with a better description of SharedView v1) also note the last entry on this blog was back in Q1 2008.

My experience is that this tool just works and works well. Good luck and have fun!

Installing the Outlook Social Connector (OSC) causes Outlook 2010 to crash

After installing the new Outlook Social Connector (OSC) you may find Outlook crashing.  The event reported to the Application Log is something along the lines of:

Faulting application name: OUTLOOK.EXE, version: 14.0.4536.1000, time stamp: 0x4af1d60f
Faulting module name: SOCIALCONNECTOR.DLL, version: 14.0.4734.1000, time stamp: 0x4b5828d9

Interested in getting started with the OSC for Office 2010, I rushed to the download ran the install program and quickly watched Outlook crash after the install.  Assumed that I needed to reboot the computer, I did so and yep, you guessed it.  Outlook crashed again.

After reading the instructions (go figure), you must remove the OSC that installs by default with the 2010 beta.

Uninstall the crashing social connector that you downloaded thru the Programs and Features control panel applet (or Add/Remove Programs control panel applet for XP users).

Close Office programs including Outlook

In the Programs and Features control panel (or Add/Remove Programs for XP users) select the the Microsoft Office 2010 entry (not the Outlook entry). Click the change button.

The Office setup dialogue will run.  Click Add/Remove Features

Expand the Microsoft Outlook/Outlook Add Ins branch until you see section, until you see the Microsoft Outlook Social Connector.

Mark the Outlook Social Connector as unavailable (basically your are uninstalling this feature).

Download if needed or reinstall the OSC (ocs.msi) application downloaded from the link below.

Good luck I look forward to diving into the social networking features of Outlook over the next few weeks.

These instructions and the download for the connector can be found on the microsoft.com/downloads page for OSC (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c87e257c-d76f-4785-a09b-af36babd6e32&displaylang=en).

Will x32 be better than x64?

…so the young man (not super technical) asks what is the difference between x86 and x64 and which one is better? After some very surface technical jargon, the customer service guy basically explains x64 is faster, bigger and better.  There is no explanation the old 286/386 aka x86 computer architecture where x86 comes from.  So the young man logically thinks to himself the number behind the smaller the number behind the x the better it must be.  So the progression must be x86, x64 and soon to come x32! Smiling and walking away the young man simply says I wait until x32 comes out around the holidays.

It made me grin and laugh to myself.

Over capacity?!

I was going to do some tweeting and I got this message.  Awesome…

TwitterFeed

Big shout out to TwitterFeed! I was looking for a way to publish my blog postings to my Twitter account. A quick bing search and I find TweeterFeed. A very nice solution for creating a bridge between my blog and my twitter posts. It also has a host of url shortening services including one of my favorites bit.ly.

The interface for signing up and getting my feed going was also very well done. A very nice service!

Visual Studio ve-####.tmp files

While in Visual Studio you may start seeing temp files start to appear in your solution. You delete them and all of a sudden they reappear again.  In many cases this a problem with your anti-virus solution.  Go into your AV solution and exclude the Visual Studio types from being scanned, especially the *.vb and *.cs extensions.

In my case this happened with Microsoft Security Essentials. I did not have this problem when running Microsoft OneCare or earlier versions of Free AVG. It also seems like this problem surfaces a lot with Trend Micro solutions as well.

Windows Virtual PC Integration Components – Setup Interrupted Error

When configuring a virtual machine from other Virtualization technologies like Hyper-V or Virtual PC 2007, you may into an error stating, “Setup Interrupted” for no apparent reason causing the setup to fail (Figure 1).

Figure 1

One of the reasons for this error is because the Virtual Machine Additions from the other virtualization instance may still be installed (Figure 2).

Figure 2

Be sure to uninstall the Virtual Machine Additions before attempting to add the new integration components.

Microsoft Operating System Security

I am not sure why I would purchase any commercial security suite these days at least for a Windows PC.  I can understand the reasoning for a non technical consumer to purchase a security suite, maybe for convenience (either perceived or real), however for tech savvy it just does not seem to make sense.

• Windows Defender (included with every install)
• Microsoft Security Essentials (free download for anti-virus)
• Windows Firewall (including in every install)
• Microsoft Malicious Software Removal tool (provided by Windows Update or by download)
• Windows Update (included with every install)

Seem to do a great job at protecting my Windows installation.  Before Microsoft Security Essentials I used Free AVG which worked great and is a really good product. I realize there are several other free spyware and anti-virus solutions on the market.  I also realize there are pros and cons to a single vendor solution. The point here is I am not sure how much longer companies that sell security suites will remain relevant with current offerings. What and how will the innovate to convince (somewhat educated) consumers to buy their products.

Over the years it seems like some of the larger players in the industry have gone backwards in performance, reliability, innovation and only upward in price. As always only time will tell.

Windows Virtual PC is different from Virtual PC 2007

There seems to be some market confusion over Microsoft Virtualization stack especially when it comes to the client OS. I have talked a number of colleagues (Microsoft developers) that have simply jumped shipped to other virtualization stacks because of the lack of clarity, or because they have attempted to install the wrong virtualization technology onto their client OS.   Let’s see if we can help.

Virtual PC 2007 is designed for Windows XP and Windows Vista, this is what we have been living with for the past 3 or so years.

Windows Virtual PC new and a different product designed for Windows 7 and is available via download because it is an optional component.

You cannot run Windows Virtual PC on Vista or XP, you need to use Virtual PC 2007.

Virtual PC 2007 does not support the following

• Windows XP Mode
• Clipboard sharing
• Multithreading
• High Resolution (1600x1200 and higher)
• Drive Sharing
• Windows Explorer Integration
• (there are a few others)

So if you need any of the features listed above you need three things:

• Windows 7 Operating System
• A hardware assisted virtualization detection CPU
• Windows Virtual PC

Note: The hardware virtualization detection tool will help you determine if AMD-V, Intel VT or VIA VT is enabled or possible on your machine.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0ee2a17f-8538-4619-8d1c-05d27e11adb2&displaylang=en

For more information on Windows Virtual PC see http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc

e-Books on your PC

Don’t have a fancy Kindle device (or you are already carrying to many devices around). No worries try using kindle on your current laptop or PC.

I am hoping long gone are the days of over crowding of my book shelves at home and outdated tech books, that I just refuse to recycle.

No more lazy installer programs

I have review far to many install programs using both Install shield, the windows installer, and Symantec’s installer (formerly known as Wise by Alteris). Time and time again I see the force reboot switch set.  This is not necessary especially in the Windows installer.  Please do not do this out of uncertainty.

1) Test your installs to see if they really require a reboot

2) The windows installer will automatically notify the user if it needs to be rebooted unless you suppress the prompting.

I have found in talking to many developers (the worst offenders), because most developers are not experts on the OS. They just do not know that the Windows installer will automatically prompt for a reboot if needed. Otherwise your app should run just fine. Especially Java and .NET applications.  I feel the same problem with deployments wanting to restart the web server without cause. I will post another entry discussing the right time to reset your web server (using IIS) and the type of restart you should take.  Everything does not warrant an IISRESET command.

Happy coding (installing)…

Google Chrome – Change the default search engine

I am starting to like this browser more and more as I use it. However I had to get rid of Google as the search engine, simply because I like the user experience provided by the bing search engine.

Click the gear in the upper left corner (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Now scroll down to Default Search Provider and select bing (Figure 2).

 

Figure 2.

We will see how bing continues to measure up in the coming weeks. I created a previous post discussing why I like the downloading user experience in Chrome.  Now that I have the search user experience I am looking for, I will be using Chrome for some time here.

One thing that Chrome is missing that is very big for me is Silverlight support. Silverlight is a great technology that will continue to gain market share so I am hoping Microsoft and Google can get this figured out soon.

Upgrading to Windows 7 – Some items you should get before upgrading…

There was a time where I would consider the release of a new operating system as a chance to really clean up my windows installation.  It was almost an unwritten rule that we do not do upgrades because of all the gremlins that used to go wrong when performing an upgrade.  You just never know what would be left over from the old operating system, that would cause problems in the new operating system.  Well for me times have changed and when you have hundreds of applications that you depend on from day to day, I just don’t have the time or desire to go and reinstall, or in many cases re-purchase these applications over again.  Now I have selected to upgrade my systems whenever possible. A few years back I purchased an iMac installed boot camp, partitioned the drive and ran Windows XP native for a few months (yes, I was doing every day development as if the thing were a PC.  Then I decided to get crazy and upgrade the XP partition to Vista!  I have since passed down my iMac hardware Vista running machine to my eight year old in exchange for a machine that was easier to upgrade and not limited to 3gb of RAM.

I have recently upgraded two heavily used development machines from Windows Vista to Windows 7.

One machine was my Dell XPS 420 desktop, while the other was my Lenovo T61p laptop.  Both machines are used to do a wide a variety of development tasks from application development to multimedia development.  Needless to say I have hundreds of tools and applications installed on both machines.

Both machines run 64 bit versions of Vista and were upgraded to 64 bit versions of Windows 7. During the process I have found that a few utilities make the upgrade process a go a lot smoother so here goes:

PC Tools Registry Mechanic

I am sure there are other registry cleaning tools out there, and I have tried a few, but I am throwing my support behind PC Tools. It was lighting fast, and did a great job at getting rid of registry errors.  I must admit when I initially went to purchase the product I encountered some serious challenges with the web site. This was was extremely frustrating, they have since seem to work out these issues.

Acronis Migrate Easy 7

In both upgrades I needed a larger drive just because I was running near capacity on my current drives.  Keeping in the theme of not wanting run around and reinstall a bunch of applications, Acronis Migrate Easy to the rescue. Now I purchased Seagate drives which I love for their reliability. My Seagate drive came with a copy of this software that made cloning my current smaller drives over to my new drive a snap! I installed Acronis click next three or four times (accepting mostly the defaults) and in an hour or so the new drive was bootable with all my apps in place, and a lot more room to perform the OS upgrade. Just perfect! If you do not use Seagate drives and you do not get a cloning solution with your new hard drive (assuming you are upgrading your hard drive), then you can purchase Acronis from their web site.

Note: I am not going to provide a link because no one is paying me for advertisement. I am only sharing with you the tools I used in my upgrade and what worked for me.  Feel free to try other solutions you are familiar with or comfortable with. A quick web search in your favorite search engine will get you to their web site.  :-)

[Optional]

PerfectDisc 10 – Defragmentation Tool

This is optional because the defrag app in Windows seems to do a good job. I took this recommendation from another friend in the industry (thanks JB), who works for a storage company. So I am giving it spin.  It seems to work really well, and there is a SKU for Windows Home Server. When you do a lot of multimedia development as I do, defragmentation becomes very important. It also helps a lot when developing on a mobile workstation.

After a registry cleaning, cloned drived and defrag, the Windows 7 upgrades ran it’s compatibility checker flagged two or three apps that would not work any longer (nothing big some small utilities, I just uninstalled).  I am now up and running a Windows 7 and very happy with the experience of not having to re-install or re-purchase a ton of applications.  All in all I was out around $70 or $90 in utilities I listed above, but it was worth it!

Google Chrome does multi file downloads the right way!

I keep most of the major browsers installed for testing and research (Opera, Safari, FireFox, IE, and Chrome).

I often find myself downloading large virtual machines split across multiple files via http (microsoft.com/downloads) not much of a choice to use other download protocols at least that I know of.

By default the download system in IE is so bare bones it is barely useful outside of downloading one file at a time.  I am aware there are many download managers available as add-ons for IE, however I simply choose to not install yet another add-on to IE or freestanding component if I don’t have to.  I really hope the IE team invest some time in making good download manager that is a core component of the browser.  Downloading content is far more useful than the send e-mail button in the toolbar that launches your default e-mail program. Especially since the vast majority of consumer users (not enterprise) use a webmail based solution (yahoo, Gmail, msn/live) and the web mail interface.  I tried the Firefox download manager and it is just as clumsy as IE. Enter the Chrome!

I have found Google Chrome delivers a very well put together download user experience that allows for multiple file downloading, monitoring and managing. 

I have not navigated to Chrome for my everyday browsing just yet, IE and Firefox still have my fanfare in this department, but I have to admit the browser is starting to grow on me.  I am really looking forward to the next wave of innovation from the IE team and hoping for a better download user experience.

Gmail Experience

A few months ago I purchased the Motorola DROID, and I must say I really like the mobile OS. The Amazon store, Pandora experience Google maps, voice recognition and web browser provide a great experience over my previous windows mobile experiences.

Google however has a real hole in webmail experience. I have had a tough time finding simple functions that I used everyday in hotmail.

Here are the top issues I have experienced so far.

• The ability to sort mail by columns (this is a big one for me)
• I have not figured out how to create rules so messages that come in are put into different views (or folders).
• The DROID mobile client makes me scroll all the way to the bottom of a message to reply or forward the message (gasp)

There are a few other features that I have not listed. The point of this quick post is I am a bit surprised that Gmail is popular, I just don’t see it yet. I have invested in the DROID phone which I for the most part enjoy and I am really trying figure out the Gmail experience.

Wish me luck…