Random Technical Thoughts

Back to Microsoft

2010-05-06T19:28:00.000-07:00

I will no longer blog here. I will resume my blogging back over on blogs.msdn.com/eferron

Apple QuickTime Error –1856 and Error -43

2010-04-21T03:50:00.001-07:00

I am on the hook for delivering media services for my local church, so I spend a fair amount of time creating videos, commercials, and editing for any number of broadcast. I depend heavily on Apple’s Quicktime (QT) software, so when all of a sudden I started getting, Error –1856: an unknown error occurred (filename.mov) when trying to use tools like Sony Vegas which also draws a quicktime dependency, I started hitting the search engines to find out how to solve this on PC platform.

Note: I am running Windows 7 x64. There are a few search results that have surfaced but most are for one of the many Apple OS’s.

After installing, uninstalling, purchasing two different registry cleaning applications, rolling back to a previous restore point to when I knew things were working, a variety of debugging tools including Windows debuggers, and Process Viewer from system internals and last but not least rebooting several times, all to no avail, I finally came up with a work around / fix. I still have not discovered root cause, I am thinking something changed between the latest version of QT and Sony Vegas 9.0d.

If you flag QuickTime to run as administrator and Vegas to run as administrator QT will operate as expected. I still get the error if I do not run QT as administrator. This got me past my problem and I am able to work with .MOV files again.

As another note I did try to install other codecs like K-Lite as others who had this problem attempted to do. I could get .MOV files to play fine with other codecs, however many of my tools both the ADOBE editing suite and the Sony Creative Software suite draw dependencies on QT for some reason. The error is not well documented and almost all of the discussion forums I have come across have not posted resolutions, so hopefully this will save someone the heartache I have experienced over the past four or five days.

Ever Email yourself?

2010-04-09T13:38:00.001-07:00

There have been times when Emailing myself was the best or fastest way to get something stored on a server for quick access to it from another location.

If you are Outlook or an Outlook Web Access (OWA) user you can post an item to a given folder instead of being forced to send a message to yourself (see the screen shots below).

Outlook 2007 Interface

Outlook Web Access Interface

Text Messaging while driving?

2010-03-25T10:47:00.001-07:00

You have people who love you, so go sign up for this free service today! http://www.drivesafe.ly

From the site

What is DriveSafe.ly?

DriveSafe.ly is a mobile application that reads text (SMS) messages and emails aloud in real time and automatically responds without drivers touching the mobile phone. DriveSafe.ly is the solution to texting while driving.

ScottGu’s lots of list of links…

2010-03-23T07:22:00.001-07:00

March 21st Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, AJAX, Visual Studio, Silverlight

I am not a big fan of pointing to other blog entries with long list of more links. However I will make an occasional exception. Scott Guthrie’s has posted 15 or more really interesting links to help us get up to speed on the latest development technologies including Silverlight, ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC.

Enjoy!

VB and C# Coevolution

2010-03-18T21:05:00.001-07:00

Product Unit Manager for Visual Studio languages, Scott Wiltamuth blogs about the shift in strategy for VB and C#. Read more here

MIX Keynote Day 1 – Windows Mobile 7

2010-03-17T02:34:00.001-07:00

Finally Microsoft takes a real swing at Android, iPhone and Blackberry!

View the Day 1 keynote here

Where other phone competitors continue to fail at delivering Flash to the mobile device, Windows Mobile 7 delivers Silverlight on Windows Mobile 7.

In addition Windows Mobile 7 also delivers Zune Market place and 3rd party content music/video services as well. The Zune market place subscription model provides one of the best user experiences around.

Great mail and calendar support for the business users in addition to finally delivering a compelling social networking platform.

One key for Microsoft to really thrive past launch is a great application market where it easy to download and plenty of free/trial software.

I am really look forward to Windows Mobile 7!

March Release of Silverlight 4 Tools – The price of early adoption

2010-03-15T18:59:00.001-07:00

There has been a number of releases for early adopters/developers for the Silverlight 4 and tooling. Make sure you get the March release of software so everything works together are you will be in a for a world of hurt, debugging and crashes.

On the microsoft.com/downloads site. Search for Silverlight 4 and sort by release date. You will notice the 3/12/2010 and up released dates. You will need to refresh the Silverlight4_Tools, and WCF RIA Services candidate to name a few.

The price of early adoption!

Blend 4 Preview – Crash when you create a new project

2010-03-15T18:29:00.001-07:00

If you have downloaded the preview version of Blend 4 and installed it on a machine with Visual Studio 2010 RC, the Blend 4 preview will crash when you create a new project.

The Nov Preview only works with Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2. You need to update to the newly released Blend 4 download it here

I am now a Kindle user

2010-03-13T17:52:00.001-08:00

I have purchased my 2nd Kindle. Kindle #1 went to my wonderful wife. I never even used it (and neither does she for that matter). So why did I not just swipe her Kindle if she does not use it? The answer is simple; I like breathing, so I better get my own.

What drove me to getting a Kindle? I was reading a 500 page PDF across my desktop and laptop whenever I had time. I had also started to dislike the number of books piled up around the house that I can’t bring myself to throwing away. So I decided to use Kindle for the PC and go with eBooks. The issue I had was wanting to do some reading without busting out the laptop or not being tied to the desktop.

I thought I like the Kindle for PC, so I will just grab a device and the nice black book cover. So far I love it. The nice thing is you get a kindle email address so you can send PDF documents to your kindle via email (very nice). So now that 500 page PDF is now on my Kindle and I can read it anywhere whenever I am ready to do so.

I really tried to wait on HP and the rumored slate device (I will probably get one anyway I love the tablet PC form factor, and I am thinking a slate would fit me fine. The kindle does seem to lag in the screen display a little bit. I have not figured out how to get it on my on WiFi network at home either for faster web browsing. I still have a bit to learn, but so far I am really liking my Kindle.

Why not an iPad? Because it is an iPad! Don’t get me wrong there are some services from Apple I like, the OS is not one of them, and iTunes has started to fall out of favor with me.

Each day I find more useful Amazon services that keep me spending more money than I actually should.

Force Visual Studio 2010 RC to use Silverlight 4

2010-03-13T09:12:00.001-08:00

If you have installed the Silverlight 4 tools with the RC of Visual Studio 2010 you may need to make a registry update to force Visual Studio to use Silverlight 4 instead of Silverlight 3.

In the Registry editor (regedit.exe) change the following values

Open the hive HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStuio\10.0_Config\DesignerPlatforms\Silverlight
Change the value SilverlightHost from v3.0 to v4.0
Navigate to the next hive
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\DesignPlatforms\Silverlight
Change the value here for SilverlightHost from v3.0. to 4.0
Navigate to the Hive
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0_Config\DesignPlatforms
Change the value here for SilverlightHost from v3.0. to 4.0

If you need help getting the Silverlight 4 tools installed with the RC see my earlier blog post here.

Visual Studio 2010 RC1 and Silverlight 4 Tools

2010-03-13T08:55:00.001-08:00

The current Silverlight Tools are currently targeting Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2. If you attempt to run the Silverlight4_Tools.exe with the release candidate for Visual Studio 2010 installed you will encounter the following error:

Visual Studio 2010 RC1 works just fine with the Silverlight 4 tools. To install them and get around the error, run the Silverlight4_Tools.exe when the error comes up in the screen shot above.

Leave this screen up and find the temporary install folder on the root of your windows drive (for most of you it will be in the root of the c:\ drive). The temporary install folder will have the current date and time and look something like a long guid with no braces ‘{‘ or dashes ‘-‘.

Examples include:

C:\7729222c5765f31a2b3cbe75fd15d0f6

or

C:\be8ce60a1b13d3b959edb1a4dfdd50

Again you can also tell by just looking at the newest folder created on the root drive.

Create a new folder (anywhere on the computer) and give a name like SL4Install.

Copy contents of the temp folder to the SL4Install folder (remember don’t close the error dialogue yet).

Once you have folder content copied into the SL4Install folder click the close button on error dialogue

In the SL4Install open the ParameterInfo.xml file in a text editor like notepad.

Modify the following lines

Add a start comment to line 13 and the corresponding end comment to line 41. Effectively commenting out the entire <BlockIf>…</BlockIf> node.

Save the file and close your text editor.

In the SL4Install folder run the SPInstaller.exe file (make sure Visual Studio, Blend and any other installs are closed or completed).

That’s it you should be able to use the Silverlight 4 Tools with Visual Studio 2010 RC.

Happy Programming!

Visual Studio 2010 – Developer Forum (Minneapolis)

2010-02-23T09:09:00.001-08:00

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

Learn Visual Studio 2010

Visual Studio 2008 Web Designer locks up - Fix

2010-02-23T03:45:00.001-08:00

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.

2010-02-22T17:09:00.001-08:00

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

2010-02-20T18:47:00.001-08:00

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.

2010-02-20T16:59:00.001-08:00

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

2010-02-20T03:48:00.001-08:00

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

2010-02-18T18:15:00.001-08:00

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 …

2010-02-18T14:41:00.001-08:00

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

2010-02-18T09:17:00.001-08:00

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

2010-02-17T11:21:00.001-08:00

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?

2010-02-16T16:22:00.001-08:00

…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?!

2010-02-15T15:04:00.001-08:00

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

TwitterFeed

2010-02-12T16:52:00.001-08:00

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

2010-02-12T16:37:00.001-08:00

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

2010-02-11T23:01:00.001-08:00

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

2010-02-11T13:23:00.001-08:00

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

2010-02-11T08:56:00.001-08:00

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

2010-02-11T04:15:00.001-08:00

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

2010-02-10T14:43:00.001-08:00

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

2010-02-10T07:59:00.001-08:00

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…

2010-02-10T07:30:00.001-08:00

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!

2010-02-08T17:21:00.001-08:00

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

2010-02-05T14:31:00.001-08:00

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…