David Gardiner - Windows 8

Windows 8.1 VPN Settings

2013-09-24T20:52:00.001+09:30

In Windows 8 after you had configured a VPN, you could right-click on a VPN connection and a context menu gave you two options:

View connection properties
Clear cached credentials

The second item is really useful when your password for the VPN has changed, and you need to enter the new password.

Upgrading to Windows 8.1, this context menu doesn't seem to exist anymore. It seems that to modify connection properties or credentials, the only option is to search for "Change VPN Settings".

Selecting a VPN connection then enables Edit and Remove buttons. Clicking Edit takes you to the Connection Properties screen, where you can update credentials and VPN proxy settings.

Strange that this is a bit harder under 8.1.

Upgrading to Windows 8.1

2013-09-15T20:32:00.001+09:30

With Microsoft making Windows 8.1 available through MSDN, I thought I'd try upgrading an existing Windows 8 instance. The process was very smooth:

I downloaded the appropriate .iso
Opened the .iso file in Windows 8
Ran setup.exe
Entered license key
Chose to keep existing settings and applications
Wait a while and reboot
Wait a while and then log in
All done

The only problem I've noticed is that connecting the Mail and Calendar apps to an Exchange server with a self-signed certificate no longer works. I'd previously figured out a way to work around this for Windows 8, but it no longer works for 8.1.

Windows 8 weird errors

2013-05-02T21:20:00.001+09:30

I went to fire up Remote Desktop on my home PC on Wednesday and was greeted with this unusual error:

"The procedure entry point could not be located in the dynamic link library C:\windows\System32\WINMM.dll"

(Yes, there's an extra space between 'point' and 'could' – I think that's where the name of the entry point would normally be displayed). Taking a screenshot was quite tricky as even Paint refused to start, but I managed to get the Snipping Tool to save a .png (despite a few error along the way)

Very odd, as I had used RDP a few days earlier, and most other things still worked fine (launching IE etc).

Using the Windows 8 keyboard shortcut of Win-X and choosing the 'Command Prompt (Admin)' resulted in "File system error (-1073741511)"

This is not looking good. I could use the Refresh option but the downside of that is that you need to reinstall all your non Store apps. So I thought I'd try some of the other options before resorting to this.

First up, I brought up the Advanced Startup Options menu by Choosing 'Restart' and hold down 'Shift' key.

After reading Fixing component store corruption in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012, I tried running

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

But that failed with:

Error 0x800f0906 The source files could not be downloaded

This might be because this PC uses a Wireless USB NIC which doesn't get enabled when running in safe mode?

I then mounted the Windows 8 .iso and re-ran DISM with /source:i:\sources\SxS option, but surprisingly that failed too.

Next, I found a network cable, and rebooted to Safe Mode with Networking, and ran DISM again.. but no luck

Then I tried sfc /scannow

This reported corruption that was it unable to repair.

I had a bit more success using the PowerShell cmdlet Repair-WindowsImage -RestoreHealth and using the -Sources argument to point it to the Windows folder on my laptop (I'd shared this folder). That seemed to update some of the SxS files, but didn't fix the actual problem.

Back to the Advanced Startup Options to Choosing System Restore. I selected the restore item, but that failed because there was a problem with it!

Finally, I went back to the Advanced Startup Options and chose the Command Prompt option. This is the one that brings up the command prompt and sets the current directory to X:\Windows\System32. I decided to give SFC one more try, but this time using the offline options. I first ran diskpart and then list volume, which told me that the boot drive (the one with the name 'System Reserved' was C: and my Windows drive was E:.

I then ran:

SFC /SCANNOW /OFFBOOTDIR=C: /OFFWINDIR=E:\Windows

This ran for about 10 minutes and then reported it had successfully fixed some corrupted files.

For good measure, I then ran a CHKDSK and then re-ran the SFC command. This time it reported not finding any errors.

Rebooting and FINALLY(!) it looks like everything is working ok again.

Now to make a good restore point and ensure I have better backups in place in case this happens again. Not sure what the cause was – I'll have to keep an eye on the hardware incase it's an SSD on the way out.

Windows 8 Mail and Exchange using a self-signed certificate

2012-08-17T15:33:00.001+09:30

The following steps allowed me to get the Windows 8 Mail app to talk to an Exchange server which uses a self-signed certificate:

Open up Internet Explorer in 'Administrator' mode
1. Go to the Windows 8 desktop
2. Right-click on the Internet Explorer icon
3. Highlight 'Internet Explorer'
4. press Shift-Ctrl-Enter to launch IE in 'Administrator' (elevated permission) mode
Browse to the Exchange server's Outlook Web Access page – eg. https://yourexchangeserver.com/owa
Ignore any warning about certificates – click on 'Continue to this website'
Click on the red certificate warning in the address bar
Click on 'View certificates'
Click on 'Install certificate' button
The 'Certificate Import Wizard' appears
Leave 'Store Location' as current user
Select 'Place all certificates in the following store', and click on the 'Browse' button to select 'Trusted Root Certification Authorities'
Complete wizard
Click on 'Yes' to install certificate
Close IE and reopen (in non-admin mode) to confirm when browsing to the OWA URL that you no longer are warned about an invalid certificate

You should now be able to use the 'Add an account' to add your Exchange account.

MetroYam–a .NET Yammer client (or three)

2012-03-12T20:37:00.001+10:30

I first came across Yammer via Rob Farley when I was working at LobsterPot Solutions. Imagine Twitter and Facebook morphed together, but just for a single organisation instead of publishing your thoughts for all the world (or your friends) to see. Yammer knows what information to show you because it's based around your email address – so for example everyone who has a @gardiner.net.au email address would be able to collaborate on Yammer together, without worrying that their posts would be seen by non @gardiner.net.au users.

It's quite a useful platform for sharing resources and information amongst colleagues, and a useful adjunct to other communication methods (face to face, phone, email, IM). The basic offering is free, but if you want to have more administrative control you pay for the privilege.

Access is via their website, but they also provide a number of platform-specific clients too. Unfortunately the Windows client isn't the greatest. I've had problems where it wouldn't auto-update, and the current version doesn't seem to have working notifications. It also uses Adobe AIR, which is just one more think to keep patched. It's enough to make you want to write a decent client and maybe learn a few things along the way – queue 'MetroYam' – my name for a Yammer client built on .NET.

My plans are to build a number of clients:

a WPF-based Windows desktop application
a Metro-style app for Windows 8 (WinRT)
a Windows Phone app

It will be interesting to see how much code I can share and reuse between the 3 different platforms.

The inspiration for the user interface I plan to build is MetroTwit (my Twitter client of choice) – a great example of the Metro design that Microsoft are building into Windows 8.

It won't be a carbon-copy but they've got some good ideas worth emulating.

Resources

Yammer API

Lucky for me, Yammer have a REST API that they provide for things just like this. It uses OAuth for authentication and JSON.

Caliburn Micro

I plan to use Caliburn Micro for all three clients. I've used CM before, for my 'Aussie Toilets' Windows Phone app, so this will be a chance to explore it's support for WPF and WinRT.

RestSharp

For the WPF and Windows Phone clients, I'm going to make use of the RestSharp library to access the Yammer API as it provides support for JSON as well as OAuth. RestSharp doesn't support support WinRT, so I'll need to take a different approach there.

Visual Studio 2010 + 2012 beta

And finally it's happened! You can open solutions and projects in 2012 not be restricted from still using them in 2010. I'll need to use VS 2012 to build the WinRT projects, but I'll also need to still use VS2010 to build the phone app (as the 2012 beta doesn't come with Windows Phone support yet).

Windows 8 first impressions

2012-03-02T17:34:00.001+10:30

Microsoft made the "Consumer Preview" of Windows 8 available yesterday, and last night I downloaded it and installed it on my laptop (using Boot to VHD so I wouldn't affect my existing Windows 7 install).

First impressions are very positive. The install went smoothly, and I was able to add in my GMail account for the email and calendar apps.

One of the first things that I noticed was the weather app was using Fahrenheit. This is when I discovered a handy keyboard shortcut [Windows]+[C], which brings up the 'Charms' which are where you can change settings for the current application (and so it was changed to Celsius).

The new interface is quite a contrast from the traditional Windows desktop. Windows Phone users will find more similarities with the new desktop Metro interface. You can see the 'Metro-style' apps on the screen-shot above. They're the ones with the nice icons/tiles. The other icons are from the install of Visual Studio 2011. (This is a regular Windows application so you get regular icons). Again, like Windows Phone, the tiles for the new apps can update themselves (eg. the calendar, email etc).

The email and calendar apps are simple but functional. A number of other apps aren't fully working at the moment (most due to 'regional' restrictions).

So far it has been rock solid - no crashes to speak of.

The Metro interface lends itself well to touch interaction. Unfortunately I don't have a touch screen on my laptop but I can certainly see how touch would work pretty well with it - again the similarities to Windows Phone help.

I'll be experimenting with seeing what's involved with porting some of my Windows Phone apps to work on Windows 8.