IBlog<Johan> : Windows 7

Writespace Updated with Command Line Version and Some IronRuby Fun

jdanforth — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 13:47:41 GMT

I had a few minutes to fix a few issues and release an updated version (1.3) of Writespace – the full screen editing environment addin for Word.

So what’s new? I removed the annoying illuminated animation for row and column when typing. Added F4 shortcut for the Options dialog. Also added a command line program and a sample ditto to run Writespace with IronRuby.

IronRuby can be downloaded from http://ironruby.codeplex.com

The command line programs are optional downloads, but it seems to run pretty well if pinned to the Windows 7 TaskBar:

Have fun!

Visual Studio 2008 Web Test Not Recording on 64-bit Windows 7

jdanforth — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 14:49:06 GMT

I was about to record a web test in Visual Studio 2008 Team System today, and the recorder refused to record anything. And the Recorder “bar” in IE 8 was not showing. After some digging around, the issue was fixed by deleting a few registry keys. Found it on Michael Taute's Blog : Diagnosing and fixing Web Test recorder bar issues.

Quote from his blog page:

Vista caches the list of explorer bars you have available and the recorder bar was not included in your list. The fix is to force Windows to rebuild that cache. To do this, first make sure you have all Internet Explorer instances shut down, then open the 32 bit registry editor and delete the following keys:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Discardable\PostSetup\Component Categories\{00021493-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Discardable\PostSetup\Component Categories\{00021494-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}

[Note: by default, the 32 bit registry editor is located in %WINDIR%\SysWow64\RegEdt32.exe]

The next time you boot Internet Explorer, your explorer bar cache will be rebuilt and the recorder bar should be available.

Windows 7 RC Feels Very Stable

jdanforth — Wed, 13 May 2009 08:04:34 GMT

I upgraded to Win7rc as fast as I could from the beta and pretty much all the problems I had on the beta are gone! I’ve never experienced a beta OS as stable as this one, it’s nothing short of impressive.

Hangs on reboot/shutdown are gone.

Annoying stuttering sound probs are gone.

File copy probs are gone.

Screen update probs gone.

I’m running 64-bit on a DELL Precision M4400 and the funny thing is that think I’ve not installed any extra drivers except for the touchpad and the initial network drivers, and it runs like a charm. It was a nightmare to get it working properly on 64-bit Vista, even when it came pre-installed with it from DELL! (Shame on you DELL to ship a box that doesn’t even run properly on the pre-installed software!!)

I will have to install the extra software to get the built-in 3G mobile network running and that was kind of tricky on the beta, and the finger-print reader I’m not even going to bother with.

Windows 7 Release Candidate Availability

jdanforth — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 07:49:09 GMT

Glad to read about the upcoming RC release of Windows 7. Just wondering how I should “migrate” to the RC from by current beta as I’ve spent days and days to get it in pretty good shape. Lots of job, but Win7 is just worth it.

From the Askperf webby:

We now have some dates that we can share with you. The RC build is slated to be available for download by MSDN / TechNet subscribers this Thursday (April 30, 2009). Broader, public availability will begin the following Tuesday (May 5, 2009). If you haven’t already started using Windows 7, there are plenty of changes since the Beta release. You can read more about these changes in the following posts from the Engineering Windows 7 blog: Some Changes Since Beta for the RC and A few more changes from Beta to RC…

Restored 64-bit Windows 7 Beta from Windows Home Server Backup on a DELL Laptop

jdanforth — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 08:25:26 GMT

The HD of the new DELL Precision M4400 I have crashed, burned and died yesterday. I heard the screams 3 rooms away while drinking my morning coffee. It was horrific.

Luckily it was powered on during the night, so the Windows Home Server (WHS) had a full backup. Had a few probs though:

- the recovery cd didn’t have network drivers for my LAN card

- the drivers stored in the special folder on the backup were 64-bit, which isn’t supported by the recovery cd (DUH!!)

- had to download 32-bit drivers from DELL and put on USB drive

Tip: make sure your c-drive matches the size of the backup, and create a “dummy” FAT recovery partition on your new HD which mimics the DELL RECOVERY partition. Also, make sure your USB drive is disconnected once you don’t need it anymore. Make sure it’s disconnected before you finish the backup. Also, eject the recovery cd when rebooting, just to be sure! I had to do the restore 3 times before it managed to make my c-drive bootable! Quite annoying…

7-Zip on 64 Bit Windows 7 Beta

jdanforth — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:26:02 GMT

I’m having problems in my 64 bit Windows 7 beta with the built in support for unzipping zip-files containing *lots* of files. It often hangs near the end and I have to reboot to sort things out.

Downloaded 64 bit version of 7-Zip and it work fine – so far. You might want to try that one out if you have the same problems. Eventually it may also hang, but I’ll try it for a while and shout out if I notice any probs.

WCF Certificates with IIS on Windows 7 Beta

jdanforth — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 11:29:49 GMT

I’ve blogged earlier about the problems with Cassini and WCF on Windows 7 Beta (build 7000) and your best bet is to install IIS locally test your services in there. Now, there might be some problems getting IIS to read your service certificate and my colleague Tomas helped me get things running. I thought I might as well blog it here so that I got it documented…

Open a VS2008 Command Prompt (I ran it as administrator) and create a certificate, then add it to your local store:

makecert.exe -sr LocalMachine -ss My -a sha1 -n CN=localhost -sky exchange -pe

certmgr.exe -add -r LocalMachine -s My -c -n localhost -r CurrentUser -s TrustedPeople

Then you have to give IIS access to the private part of the certificate and Tomas found some sample code to let you do that. The FindPrivateKey.exe source code is available on MSDN. Keep working on the command prompt:

FindPrivateKey.exe My LocalMachine -n "CN=localhost"

Note the output for private key directory and filename, for example:

Private key directory: C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Crypto\RSA\MachineKeys

Private key file name: 288538e27a2aebe9f77d2506bf6c836a_adf55683-4eae-4544-bbd1-d6844a44e538

Then use them to feed the final call to give the default IIS-user access to the private key, for example:

CACLS.exe C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Crypto\RSA\MachineKeys\288538e27a2aebe9f77d2506bf6c836a_adf55683-4eae-4544-bbd1-d6844a44e538 /G "IIS_IUSRS":R

That should be it, and it worked on our machines.

Bad Request With WCF Service in Cassini On Windows 7 Beta

jdanforth — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 15:29:41 GMT

Trying to run a WCF service in Cassini on your Windows 7 Beta (7000) machine and get this error?

The remote server returned an unexpected response: (400) Bad Request.

Unless you’re running your service with basic http binding or with security specifically set to None in your bindings, you will get this security-related error. This problem was confirmed by Microsoft and will (hopefully) be fixed in next Windows 7 release.

The options you got:

Create and run your own service host with code (I’ve been doing this in my integration tests until I tried Cassini and got the error)
Use IIS (which I’m going to go for)
Self-host it with WcfSvcHost.exe (which I’ve not tried yet)

Note that you need to add quite a few features to get WCF running in IIS running on Windows 7. See my previous post about this.

Richard Fennell had the same problems as well as a few others out there brave enough to try out a beta operating system.

Turn Windows 7 Features On or Off

jdanforth — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 13:35:30 GMT

I’m trying to install/add IIS features to my Windows 7 beta build 7000 laptop. You got pretty fine grained control over these features in Windows 7, and it’s not easy to know what you really need. I need to run WCF services on my machine, so I’m turning most things on, including WCF Activation stuff:

Then I’m adding these things that I think I need for your average ASP.NET application:

Finally I’m adding the management tools, including the IIS 6 compatibility stuff which I’ve been told is needed to play properly with VS2008:

Then restart and make sure you got everything in place.

My Windows 7 Beta Installation is More Stable Now

jdanforth — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:03:06 GMT

I think I got most things sorted with my Windows 7 Beta installation now. When I uninstalled the “half new” version of Virtual CloneDrive I had, things started to work way, way better. There is now a newer version of Virtual CloneDrive (5.4.2.3 or later) that is reported to work quite well. Until you really need an ISO mounting tool, I suggest you wait installing one!

Small Issue with Multiple Monitors

I found a new, small issue though when I got my laptop connected to an external monitor. Sometimes when I start it up from Sleep or Hibernation it fails to display the Desktop properly and I have to bring up the “Change display settings” control dialog and re-apply my setting there to have it redraw the Desktop and Taskbar properly. Not a big deal, and it works properly after that until I put it to Sleep and start it up without the external monitor.

This is something that I’ve not seen on Vista before anyway, and it sure seems like Windows 7 has more than a few changes around how external displays are managed.

New Windows 7 Features I Just Discovered

jdanforth — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 11:16:45 GMT

There are several new features in Windows 7, and as I’ve not had the chance to read about them yet, I keep discovering them as I use the OS in my daily work.

Note that I would not recommend anyone to use Windows 7 beta on their production/working machine as it’s not stable enough – I always have my old Vista environment close by and all work I do is backed up in real time by Outlook, TFS or Live Sync. Actually Live Sync (or Mesh) is wonderful in this case!

Docking Windows Using Keys

The first thing I noticed today was that I could move around the active window to the various Windows 7 “docking points” by pressing WINDOW KEY + ARROW. By doing this, the window can be attached to the left or right side of the screen, or even maximized or minimized by pressing the UP/DOWN keys. If you got multiple monitors, the window will travel over to the other monitor. Neat! It’s a quick way to move programs to the second monitor once you get used to it.

Live Messenger 2009 Supports Windows 7 “Recent Files”

Eventually I managed to update and install Messenger to version 2009 and I noticed that it supports the new “Recent Files and Browsing History” feature from the Start Menu. It’s not like you can see the active chat windows (which I first thought), but you can sign out, change your status and such things:

I wouldn’t be surprised if a future update of Messenger will let you get to recent chats. That you be more consistent with how this particular feature works with Word, Notepad etc. Not that all Windows 7 programs works this way, but for Messenger it would make sense I think.

Windows 7 Beta Issues (Hanging Threads)

jdanforth — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 15:38:02 GMT

Something that also seems to be an issue with build 7000 is threads that cannot be killed. Right now I’m stuck in a situation where I cannot open more (file) Explorer windows and I cannot close Internet Explorer. Even though I’m trying to end threads from Task Manager. Looks like this in Task Manager right now:

I’ve had the same problems with the Messenger process that couldn’t be killed. Could be because I’m not running as Admin? Time for a reboot.

Edit: I have just uninstalled Virtual CloneDrive (5.4.1.1) to see of it was causing problems related to restart and file handling, which some reports indicate. I’ve also downloaded a newer beta version of CloneDrive (5.4.2.3) which should support 64-bit Windows 7 better I’ve heard. Follow the discussion on TechNet.

Windows 7 Beta Issues (Explorer and External USB Drives)

jdanforth — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 11:26:53 GMT

I’m continuing my adventures with Build 7000, and right now the biggest problems I have seems to be related to the File/Windows Explorer itself. I’ve had issues with removing external USB drives. Something seems to hang on to the drive even though it’s removed and I’ve noticed that I cannot do a Windows Restart after that. It hangs on the “Logging off” screen.

Also, I’ve had problems several times now when copying files from machines on the network and from USB drives. The file copying progress dialog just sits there and refuse to complete. When clicking on dialog Cancel or Close, it tries to cancel but never completes. If I try to kill the dialog from Task Manager, it goes away, Explorer (you know the whole Desktop reboot thingy) restarts but some explorer processes seems to stick.

Hoping for a newer release soon, build 7000 is just a tad too shaky :)

If some Windows 7 guy from Microsoft (Jeff?) reads this, can I please have access to a fresh build? *plplplplease*

But I love the new Task Bar and the option to drag/drop System Tray icons. That part works very well and I hope Microsoft will keep it. Currently I got Outlook new mail notifications and Messenger there together with the standard white (dull colors!!) Windows 7 systray icons.

More Setting Up Windows 7

jdanforth — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 16:18:54 GMT

I keep installing programs on my new Dell m4400 running Windows 7 (build 7000). Unfortunately the “Easy Transfer” didn’t go all the way. I tried to transfer over the network and left it running for 6 hours then shut it off because it seem to hang at 35%. Had to restart the machine to get rid of the transfer window. Maybe a transfer to USB/External hard drive is more stable. Seems that some 75% of my files and settings had transferred properly so I got Outlook and most of my other things moved over ok. I moved the rest of the stuff over manually with a (more or less) major copy/paste from my documents and settings.

I had to do this twice because there seems to be a glitch with copying many files with this build.

A couple of times my machine has stopped during restart and require a hard boot. No big deal as long as it is stable while I’m using it – which it is so far. New programs installed (yes, those are tools dear to me):

VS2008 Team Explorer – seems to work perfectly
TestDriven.Net – runs just fine today, no problems so far
Resharper 4.1 – runs just fine as well (phew)
Live Writer – installed just fine with the live installer program (messenger didn’t)

The program I’ve had most problems with today is Messenger 8. It stopped redrawing it’s main window, tried to close it but it refused, tried to kill it and the program closed but the process refused to die. Weird.

But so far no show stoppers. Too soon to say but it looks pretty good for an early build of a new OS. I’m starting to like the new task bar and everything seems faster than Vista (that’s not hard) but we’ll see what happens once I’ve got a gazillion of programs installed on it.

The big question is - How do I avoid getting the “spyware” from Adobe and HP on it?!?!

Add Domain User to Local Windows 7 Administrators Group

jdanforth — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 14:11:00 GMT

I just moved my new Windows 7 laptop to the domain and needed to give my domain user local administrator access. I couldn’t find a way to do that via the users and groups tool, but Manoj Nagpal (cool name) blogged about a way to do it in Vista, and it works perfect in Windows 7 as well:

net localgroup Administrators /add domain\username

Good stuff. Now I’m about to try “Easy Transfer” to move stuff from my old laptop to the new one. Hope it works…

Edit: I had to install an updated version of the "easy transfer" program on my old Vista machine, and the transfer started fine. The problem now is that it's been running for 3 hours and the progress bar is kind of stuck at 30-40%. I think I'll let it run for 3-4 hours more before I decide to terminate it and move the files manually.