David Gardiner - Windows 7

Windows 7 Boot to VHD

2011-04-04T07:25:00.000+09:30

For my own reference, some useful resources about boot to VHD:

Following instructions from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd979534%28WS.10%29.aspx

create vdisk file=C:\VHD\test.vhd maximum=25000 type=expandable select vdisk file=C:\VHD\test.vhd attach vdisk create partition primary assign letter=v format quick FS=NTFS label=VHD exit

PowerShell:

PS C:\VHDs> .\Install-WindowsImage.ps1 -WIM D:\sources\install.wim

Index Image Name [1] Windows 7 Home Basic [2] Windows 7 Home Premium [3] Windows 7 Professional [4] Windows 7 Ultimate

Done.

PS C:\VHDs> .\Install-WindowsImage.ps1 -WIM D:\sources\install.wim -Apply -Index 4 -Destination v: Applying "Windows 7 Ultimate" to v:... WARNING: This may take up to 15 minutes...

V:\Windows\System32\bcdboot V:\Windows

bcdedit -v

bcdedit /set {GUID} description=”Windows 7 VHD”

Useful utility BCDEdit - http://neosmart.net/downloads/software/EasyBCD/EasyBCD%202.0.2.exe

Australian Weather Radar Gadget v1.2

2010-06-15T21:34:00.001+09:30

It's been a few years since I've been able to update the Vista Sidebar Gadget that I wrote which displays the radar images from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. It's worth noting that while the sidebar doesn't exist in Windows 7, you can still add gadgets to your desktop.

I'm now hosting the source code on Google Code, and I've released a minor update to reflect some changes to radar locations:

Added:

Sydney (Terry Hills)
Norfolk Island
Emerald (QLD)
Bairnsdale (VIC)
Perth (Serpantine)

Removed:

East Sale

I've had a few reports of a memory leak when people run the gadget for extended periods of time. I think this may be an unfortunate side-effect of the way the gadget uses HTML. Maybe re-writing the gadget using WPF or Silverlight might help with that.

The gadget can be downloaded from the Windows Live Gallery from here (currently 1.1 but hopefully 1.2 will be approved shortly), or go to the Downloads page of the Google Code site.

My new laptop – A Dell Studio XPS 1645

2010-04-09T12:41:00.001+09:30

One tool that I was lacking in my new role as a Senior Consultant for LobsterPot Solutions was a laptop computer. Back in my UniSA days, if you needed a laptop for a presentation or a conference you just borrowed one, so it was never a problem. Post-UniSA I borrowed my Mum's nice Toshiba, or more recently the small (but capable) HP Mini Netbook that I got from Tech-Ed last year.

Rob and I did a fair bit of research, compared brands and options (including the Sony Z-series which I see Nigel chose), and settled on the Dell Studio XPS 16 model. Being a "laptop-newbie" I particularly valued Rob's good experience with his previous Dell laptop.

The XPS 16 comes with:

Intel® Core™ i7-820QM Processor (1.73GHz, 4 Cores/8 Threads, turbo up to 3.06GHz, 8MB Cache)
8GB RAM
640GB HDD (will replace with SSD soon)
15.6" Screen
ATI Mobility RADEON HD 4670 – 1GB
Backlit keyboard

The CPU and RAM are similar to the Hyper-V server I built – though happily, while this CPU is also a Core i7, unlike it’s desktop cousin it doesn’t require a great whopping heatsink/cooler stuck on top (which could make shutting the lid a bit tricky!)

Some nice things I’ve discovered so far:

It looks very nice, though the glossy surface does show up fingermarks very quickly.
You can do "two-finger zooming" on the touch pad – great for Google/Bing maps.
Windows 7 x64 runs very nicely.
Rob noticed you can disable battery charging when on AC power.
Doesn't seem to get too hot (though the AC transformer does)

After having a quick play I was pleasantly surprised to find that Dell had shipped it with the latest BIOS firmware - that is refreshing. Nevertheless, after a precautionary backup to my Windows Home Server, I did a clean install of Windows 7 x64 Ultimate and am proceeding to load up all the various "mandatory" applications (Office, SQL Server, Visual Studio, etc).

I'm also thinking I might leverage Windows 7's "boot to VHD" feature to have separate Win7 instances where I can try out pre-release/beta software without "polluting" my primary OS.

We chose the red ones, because a) they go faster (obviously!) and b) it kind of matches the red of the LobsterPot logo :-)

Changing the location of "Import Pictures and Videos using Windows"

2010-02-27T20:24:00.001+10:30

For some reason, if you uncheck the "Prompt for a tag on import" under the "Import Settings" of the Windows 7 "Import Pictures and Videos" wizard, then as far as I can tell there is no way to get back the "Import settings" dialog again.

A quick search of the registry reveals that these settings are stored under the following key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Photo Acquisition

For example, there's a "Camera and Portable Device" subkey with a value named "RootDirectory", and also one named "FilenameTemplate". Changing these should alter where the wizard saves photos.

Comparing this subkey with the "OpticalMedia" and "Scanner" subkeys showed one interesting difference. All three have an AcquisitionFlags value, but the latter two had it set to 0x82 whilst the former was 0x8a.

Reverting the AcquisitionFlags value to 0x82 in the following registry key seems to restore the import wizard to prompting you for an optional tag, and allowing you to click on the "Import Settings" link again:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Photo Acquisition\Camera and Portable Device

To make this change yourself, follow the following steps (with the standard warning that editing the Windows Registry incorrectly can completely mess up everything!):

Run regedit.exe
Navigate through the registry tree to find the following subkey: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Photo Acquisition\Camera and Portable Device
Double-click on the "AcquisitionFlags" value
Type in "82"
Click on "OK" and close the Registry Editor

Hardware planning

2010-01-19T01:35:00.002+10:30

As my time at Viterra/ABB Grain is rapidly drawing to a close (more about that later), I've started to think about what would be useful (if not essential) for the next stage in my career (more about that later too!).

I think a laptop might be a useful tool. For the last couple of CodeCampSA events, I've borrowed my Mum's Toshiba. It's quite a nice machine, but I don't think she'd be too keen on lending it to me all the time! I don't know much about various models, but if I could manage to fit an SSD into the budget then I hear that can make a big difference.

For a while now I've also wanted to get up to speed with Hyper-V. The only thing preventing me has been access to suitable hardware. When Ben (the Virtual PC Guy) published the specs of the server he runs at home my eyes lit up, as it seems pretty similar to what I would like to achieve. Specifically

Hosting Windows Home Server
Running up VMs to run various server environments – particular different versions of SQL Server.

Finally if there was any room left in the budget, I'd really like to upgrade my main desktop machine too – it must be a joy to develop on machine like Scott Hanselman's.

Still, while my existing desktop is is an aging old box, it does the job and manages to run Windows 7 pretty well. One advantage of getting the Hyper-V server up and running would be that I could just RDP from my old box to a VM instead.

Upgrading the Media Center to Windows 7

2009-10-11T20:48:00.001+10:30

After my success with upgrading my not-so-modern PC to Windows 7, I thought I'd take another plunge and do an upgrade of my Vista Media Center machine. This is the family TV so any problems would not go down too well!

The Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor didn't flag any major showstoppers, but it did suggest uninstalling the ATI Control Center (which I did). It also warned that I may need to upgrade the drivers for the iMON device (this is the front-panel display on the Antec Fusion 430 Silver case and IR receiver for the remote control). Conveniently, just before I installed Win7, iMON reported that there was a new update available so I allowed that to go through, hoping it would help avoid some of the problem some people have had.

I inserted the Windows 7 Ultimate x86 DVD, ran setup and selected 'Upgrade'. Probably about an hour later (and 2-3 reboots) it was all done.

A quick check confirmed that yes, live TV still worked (phew!) – and so did the remote control.

Going to the Guide showed the new layout, but oh dear – there were no listings for any of the ABC or SBS channels – hmm that could be a problem. But that was enough for one night, so I left it there.

The next morning, I woke up to discover that the kids had already figured out how to watch the previous night's recording of Ice Age – which was a good sign that nothing had changed too dramatically!

I recall seeing mention in the Australian Media Center Community forums that Windows 7 would finally allow use of the FM radio tuner included in the Hauppauge HVR-2200. I went to the FM Radio menu but it said I needed to add a tuner, even though the upgrade had found the 2 digital tuners ok, so I followed these steps:

Then I was able to go to the Radio menu item, choose FM Radio, then enter the frequency for a local radio station!

I was intrigued about what to do about the missing TV guide information for the ABC channels in the guide. Mike Hayton (from Microsoft) posted this explanation of how the guide gets updated, so I configured the Automatic Download setting to ensure the guide gets a chance to grab the latest listings..

So, thus far everything has gone very well. The upgrade went without a hitch and everything appears to be working at least as well as before. One problem I did have with Vista MCE was for some reason I was never able to upgrade the ATI video drivers beyond around version 8.4. Every time I tried a newer version, the machine would BSOD. So far the upgraded machine seems stable with the latest video drivers from Windows Update (8.632.1.2000 17-Oct-2009).

I see from New Magic's drivers page that there's an updated driver for the HVR-2200 for Windows 7. I'll have to check whether that got installed through Windows Update, otherwise I'll install that just to keep current.

From WinXP to Windows 7

2009-10-05T20:22:00.001+10:30

My home machine used to be pretty state of the art, but that was a few years ago now. It has an Intel D865PERL motherboard. When I first got the machine, I used the built-in RAID to strip the two SATA disks together to get better I/O performance. This has proved quite stable, but unfortunately Windows 7 does not natively support the Intel 82801ER SATA RAID controller (the Windows 7 Upgrade advisor will warn you about this).

So armed with this knowledge, I bought a brand new 1Tb SATA disk (a Hitachi HDT721010SLA360) and then attached it to a spare SATA card that was leftover from rebuilding Dad’s computer.

All looked good until I started up the computer, and was greeted by a message from the SATA card that had found the Hitachi disk, but then did not proceed any further.

This card identified itself as a Silicon Image SiI 3112 SATARaid Controller, with firmware version 4.1.34. I obtained the BIOS update utility and latest BIOS 4.2.84, upgraded the firmware and rebooted.

This solved that problem, and the machine was able to complete startup and boot Windows XP successfully.

I then tried to install Windows 7 from DVD onto the new Hitachi drive. First problem was that Windows 7 didn’t see the drive at all. Eventually I figured out that copying the "SiI3x12 32-bit Windows SATARAID Driver" to a USB flash drive, so then it could be loaded by the Windows 7 installer (don't make the mistake of trying the 'BASE' drivers – they're intended for motherboards, not cards).

Now Windows 7 could see the drive, but it refused to install on the drive. Next stop was to change the motherboard BIOS to make the Hitachi drive the first drive (instead of the original RAID drive)

That did it – Windows 7 was now able to install.

One final thing to try out was whether Windows 7 could actually use the old driver for the Intel RAID controller. I located the 'drivers' folder (Program Files\Intel\Intel Matrix Storage Manager\Driver) and copied those files to somewhere that the Windows 7 installation could see them. Fearing a possible BSOD, I located the 'Intel 82801ER SATA RAID controller' entry in Device Manager, and upgraded the driver to this driver.. and it worked!

So I was then able to backup files from the old RAID disks onto the new Hitachi (which I'd also split into two partitions).

The good news is Windows 7 runs pretty well. I've still got a fair bit of migrating of applications but so far so good.