Ricardo Calejo

Boot Windows 2008 RC from VHD from Windows 7

calejo — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 03:44:53 -0700

Few days ago I decided to exploit this opportunity and to install Windows 2008 R2 RC in VHD and use it as boot option on my laptop. There are basically two ways you can do this.

First I created new virtual machine in Microsoft Hyper-V console and tried to implant it on my existing Windows 7 installation. I successfully modified boot sector to include VHD file but when I tried to boot from it I got BSOD.

Then I tried another possibility, I installed Windows 2008 R2 to VHD directly from its installation procedure. And it works great! Here is procedure on how to do it:

Bare in mind that I already have Windows 7 installed.

Physical disk that will hold VHD file must be formatted (does not have to be empty, can not be USB)
Boot from Windows Server 2008 R2 DVD
When first installation dialog box appears pres SHIFT + F10 to open command prompt
Launch diskpart
At diskpart prompt enter following command create vdisk file=c:\win2k8r2.vhd type=fixed maximum=20000 (this will create VHD file of 20 GB and it will be fixed size, you can even use expandable as type. You can also change name and location of vdisk file)
Next, run select vdisk file=c:\win2k8r2.vhd
Run attach vdisk
Exit from diskpart and command prompt
When selecting partition on which to install Windows Server 2008 R2, select newly created and attached VHD partition. Ignore any warnings like ". cannot boot from this partition".

When installation finishes, you will have an option to boot from Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2 RC. If you want to remove Windows 2008 R2 RC, all you need to do is edit boot menu with bcdedit command and delete or move VHD file.

Microsoft Office System 2007 SP2 Released

calejo — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 05:28:50 -0700

Microsoft has yesterday released Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Microsoft Office System de 2007, with lots of optimizations on stability, performance and interoperability.

These tweaks include:

� Performance optimizations on Microsoft Office Outlook.

� Additional support to file formats ODF, PDF e XPS.

The SP2 optimizations will benefit server and client applications highlighting:

Office Desktop

� Outlook 2007 SP2 is 26% faster than it's ancestor in box of usual tasks and even more faster (35%) with large mail boxes;

� Capacity to ungroup SmartArt� graphics (and, as result, capacity to animate them on PowerPoint);

� A tool that allows to uninstall Office Service Packs.

Servers - performance and availability

� Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Service Pack 2 improves a series of questions like security level, performance and stability on the ECM areas, Search, Excel Services and Form Services;

� Together with Office 2007 client, with Service Pack 2 it's possible to record and open files in ODF formats directly in Sharepoint.

� Finally, Service Pack 2 will offer different tools for developers which become easier the developing process for Office.

Knowledge Base article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968170 includes a complete list of updates.

The developing team elements of Office offer a vast of interesting and relevant information on the following blogs:

� Sustained Engineering blog - A detailed view about SP2

� Office Interoperability blog, Doug Mahugh - The additional formats supported by Office.

� Microsoft on the Issues blog - Discussion on format options of files.

� Gray Matter, Gray Knowlton - The perspective for community and development.

Where can you get Service Pack 2?

SP2 can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b444bf18-79ea-46c6-8a81-9db49b4ab6e5, which will also be available on Microsoft Update maximum term of 3 months.

MyBrute - The Portuguese Latest Crazyness!

calejo — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 03:55:00 -0700

It's a simple game that can easily get you hooked. You create a fighter, called a Brute, to fight other Brutes. When you challenge other players, you don't even have to do anything once the fight starts. Matches are automatically resolved based on your Brute's stats and weapons. The game is viral because if you recruit people to become your pupils, you earn experience points per new recruit, and whenever your pupil gains a level. Sounds like MLM or a pyramid scheme, huh?

The game is pretty easy to play, and it seems your stats and weapons/items are randomly generated. Sometimes you also get pets when you level up, and these creatures will fight for you. On that note, let me rant a bit: Why the heck do some of the Brutes I've fought have a freaking BEAR for a pet? It's unfair, man! LOL.

One thing that may puzzle you about My Brute though is that the site has no game guide. If you're wondering how you recruit people or become a Brute's pupil, it's like this. You go to the URL of a Brute and create a new Brute to fight it--your new Brute automatically becomes his or her pupil. That's why it's important to promote your Brute's URL.
You're also limited to a number of fights a day.

On the first day, you can fight up to six times, but after that you can have three matches a day. I'm not sure yet if this will change when you reach a certain level.
You can also enter tournaments--these are automatically resolved as well, even when you're not playing. Same as when other Brutes challenge your fighter in normal matches.

If you'd like to see the game in action, click here for a replay of my Brute's fight.

To fight against me. Just click on Mybrute below.

Thank you Easter Rabbit. You brought me those little eggs!

calejo — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 05:14:03 -0700

I'm glad I'm not a designer cause I don't have any ability to design websites, specially Sharepoint Websites.

But there is someone that does. This will surely come in hand. At Daniel's Blog we can found a WSP wit 10 themes for MoSS and at codeplex we can find a tool than helps managing the brand at our site.

Download @ http://brandingtool.codeplex.com/

Definitely a great help for me.

SWAT: The best team for you

calejo — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 04:56:00 -0700

SharePoint Work Acceleration Toolkit (SWAT) is a windows based utility aimed at simplifying and accelerating the creation and testing of SharePoint Solutions. With a whole host of time saving capabilities and planned integration with Universal SharePoint Manager 2007, you'll never want to take on SharePoint without it again.
SWAT Features and Capabilities:
Here is a short list of just some of the things SWAT can do. For a complete overview checkout the SWAT User Guide.

Site Diagramming
- Show a Site Structure as a Diagram
- Save a Site Structure Diagram as a Image
- Save a Site Structure Diagram as a SVG file (for importing into Visio)
- Print a Site Diagram
- Drag and Drop the design of a Site Structure
Generate Test Data and Sites
- Generate Random Sites for Testing
- Auto Populate Lists/Libraries with Test Data (including Documents)
Work with SharePoint Logs
- View SharePoint Log Files in a preview window
- Group and Filter Log file entries
Work with Sites
- Show a Site Structure in a Tree View (including security inheritence)
- Create a Site Collection
- Export and Import Site Structures
- Backup and Restore Site Collections
- View and Interact with site objects (Lists, Users, Roles, Features, Events, etc..)
- Delete Sites and entire Site Structures
Work with SharePoint Features
- View Feature Status in Farm and on a Site
- Install and Uninstall Features
- Activate and Deactivate Features
Work with SharePoint Solution Packages
- Install and Deploy Solution Packages
- View Solution Deployment Locations (Servers and Web Apps)
- Deploy, Retract and Delete Solutions
Work with SharePoint Jobs
- View Job Status
- Add and Schedule Jobs
- Enable and Disable Jobs
- Force Execution of Jobs
Work with Event Receviers
- Install Event Receivers for Sites and Lists
- View and Manage Event Receivers
- Delete Event Receivers
Work with Web Parts
- Add (Deploy) Web Parts to multiple sites/pages
- Replicate Web Parts
- Delete Web Parts from multiple sites/pages

. and much more.

Download @ http://www.idevfactory.com/products/swat/default.aspx

Let's ShareRock this joint!

calejo — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 11:37:00 -0700

First: April's Fool is gone! So i'm not gonna lie about this.

Second: Sharepoint Designer is free!! Oh no, the beast was unleashed, please grab it! You can find all you need below:

a) Letter to Customers

b) Frequently Asked Questions

c) Free Download

Third: "Great things expect you in the future, my son!" (Some news about what's coming..)

� Small size video (6MB)

� Medium size video (17 MB)

� Large size video (83 MB)

Have fun!

Webcast4Share: Videos on Demand Sharepoint

calejo — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 11:02:00 -0700

Now that we did the webcasts about Sharepoint, they are available at the Webcast4Share site.

You can find the sessions at:

- Como disponibilizar componentes de mapping no Sharepoint. Orador: Ricardo Calejo

- Sharepoint em Cenários de Internet. Orador: Luís Calado

- Microsoft Enterprise Search. Orador: Nuno Leitão

Virtual Earth Silverlight Map Control CTP announced at Mix

calejo — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 14:55:16 -0700

Microsoft Virtual Earth Silverlight Map Control was announced at Mix09 as a CTP. Download the Microsoft Virtual Earth Silverlight Map Control CTP on Microsoft Connect.

And you must be thinking. Ok, this shouldn't be so easy to have at my site. You are wrong!

First thing you'll do is download the control (a .dll) from Microsoft Connect (bits available later this week). Add the .dll to your Silverlight project as a resource. In your default XAML template, you'll add 2, count 'em, 2 lines of code to get a Virtual Earth Silverlight map into your site.

Add a reference to the common language runtime namespace (Microsoft.VirtualEarth.MapControl) and the assembly of the same name:
- xmlns:m="clr-namespace:Microsoft.VirtualEarth.MapControl;assembly:Microsoft.VirtualEarth.MapControl"
Add one line of XAML to your code in the grid element:
- <m:Map/>

It's awesome, you even don't need to write almost any code. Thanks guys!

You can see some videos of Chris Pendleton's at Mix09.

MSDN Flash and Technet Flash

calejo — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 10:55:00 -0700

Micrcosoft Portugal MSDN & Technet asked me to ask you to subscribe the latest news about Microsoft both ITPro & Developers mailing letters.

Click on the banners in order to register them.

MSDN (Developers)

Technet (ITPro)

Start Windows

calejo — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 11:44:19 -0700

This video was shown at Mobile World Congress a few weeks ago. It's the beginning of a whole new Windows Phone experience. What will you start doing with your Windows Phone?

Sessões WebCasts 4 Share - Sharepoint 2007

calejo — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 10:51:00 -0700

Microsoft Portugal is doing a series of webcasts for Sharepoint 2007 and I’m doing the first one. Register and enjoy it!

Sessão 1 - Como disponibilizar componentes mapping com Sharepoint

Nesta sessão serão descritos os processos de integração do Virtual Earth no Sharepoint.

Como mostrar informação georeferenciada no Sharepoint
Como utilizar o Sharepoint e o Virtual Earth para georeferenciar conteúdos
Como construir uma componente de apresentação para estas funcionalidades

Orador: Ricardo Calejo
Data: 15 horas - 18 de Março 2009

>> Inscreva-se nesta sessão

Sessão 2 - SharePoint em Cenários Internet

O processo de implementação de websites com Sharepoint.

Descrição das Boas práticas de desenvolvimento
Como responder a requisitos de compliance do HTML produzido pelo MOSS
Como integrar componentes de Silverlight em websites Sharepoint
Como deve ser desenhado o processo de deployment das soluções desenvolvidas para Sharepoint e como devem ser asseguradas as passagens de desenvolvimento para Produção.

Orador: Luís Calado
Data: 15 horas - 19 de Março 2009

>> Inscreva-se nesta sessão

Sessão 3 - Microsoft Enterprise Search

Esta sessão irá enquadrar a plataforma Fast ESP na oferta de Enterprise Search da Microsoft. Vai ser apresentado um cenário de uma implementação de Fast e descrita a forma como o mesmo foi construído.

Oradores: Luís Calado e Nuno Leitão
Data: 15 horas - 20 de Março 2009

>> Inscreva-se nesta sessão

Está ainda a concurso um conjunto de prémios de entre os quais uma Xbox 360 para o participante que convidar mais amigos.

O site Oficial do Evento é:

http://www.microsoft.com/portugal/msdn/webcasts4share/default.mspx

Is your Remote Desktop too busy to eat sandwich?

calejo — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 10:43:17 -0700

These days I've doing some demos with Virtual Earth and Sharepoint, so I had this problem cause I want to use multiple profiles to show the different interactions we can have with Sharepoint.

So, the first tried to use Remote Desktop to access the server itself, I was unable to connect to it. The message was:

The client could not connect to the remote computer. Remote connections might not be enabled or the computer might be too busy to accept new connections. It is also possible that network problems are preventing your connection. Please try your connection again later. If the problem continues to occur, contact your administrator.

Searched and searched all over the Internet for a reason, but it seemed something wasn't alright. I've asked myself for the reason and because the remote desktop service is a native one, you aren't able to uninstall it.

But there is the smallest chance to change one of the libraries. And that was what I tried!

You got go to the I386 folder of your SO installation cd and copy the "rdpwsx.dl_" to your desktop. Rename it to "rdpwsx.dll" and then delete the one in "C:\Windows\System32" folder. Copy that one quicly and restart you machine.

Hopefully you'll get it to work.

Error: Specified driver could not be loaded due to system error 5 (Oracle in OraHome92)

calejo — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 08:32:00 -0700

I'm doing an integration on a client and they have OracleDB (this is like working for the devil :D) and I got this error.

What I did?

Provide the ASPNET, IUSR_MACHINENAME and IWAM_MACHINENAME, Read & Execute, List Folder Contents, and Read permissions accounts to the ora92 (Oracle installation) directory and all sub-directories and files. (An ASP.NET account will be created and added to your users list when you install the .NET framework). You must restart your machine for the permission changes to take effect.

Magic happens Oracly!

Where the hell is Aero Peek?

calejo — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 07:51:00 -0700

So, lately I decided to upgrade to Windows 7 and turned out to be the right choice, but one of the best features 7 has, it is Aero Peek the new UI.

Though I had the latest drivers, I didn’t find a way to enable it. And I had 3.5 in my assessment test, so everything indicated that was possible to enable it.

So I did the following steps and voilá!

Make sure that Windows Experience Index has been calculated and computed.
Click on Start menu.
Type the following text into the Start Search box:
Aero
Click on a search result listing under Control Panel group that named as the following:
Find and fix problems with transparency and other visual effects

Trick: If you don’t see “Find and fix problems with transparency and other visual effects” in the search results, click on Control Panel to see all Aero related items in Control Panel.
An “Aero - Troubleshoot computer problems” wizard dialog will appear. Click on Next button.
The troubleshooting wizard will try to detect any problem by running a series of checks against various components required to make Aero works and running, such as video memory, Desktop Windows Manager (DWM) service, color depth, theme, power settings and etc. At the end of the analysis, the wizard will attempt to fix the issues related to Aero service and restart the Aero feature.

Tip: If there is still items that are marked with red cross which indicates is the problems that prevent Aero from working properly, fix the issues and then rerun the “Find and fix problems with transparency and other visual effects” troubleshooting wizard again.

Windows 7: Microsoft Launchs New Site “Personalize Your PC”

calejo — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 05:10:00 -0700

Microsoft has launched a new site dedicated to desktop personalization of Windows 7. The access it pretty simple, you simply need to be on the Desktop area, click on the right button and select "Personalize > Get More Themes Online". You'll be redirected to a new site where are available 15 themes, 13 wallpapers, 8 gadgets and 5 gadgets for SideShow (in this case, in devices compatible with Windows Sideshow).

Microsoft says that the final version of Windows 7 will have even more options that allow you to customize the new operating system.

Here's my desktop.