Monday, April 21, 2008

Day of .NET - Wilmington, OH

CIMG5741

One more year of an awesome event. 

Jeff Blankenburg has started what seems like a great tradition: Poker night...!  After the appreciation dinner, we were all invited to room 506 for a poker night. It was amazing that almost everyone went up to the suite to just hang out.  There was an equally amount of people in there just watching than playing.

Hopefully, Jeff will remember to bring something *ELSE* for those of us that just want to hang out and don't play poker. [Xbox 360 / Wii ;).  It was a different way of bringing together all of the masses to a room where we could talk. thanks Jeff.

Sessions that I attended: 

  • Mobile with Nino: I thought that the topic was very interesting; however, I think Nino was not all there.  Maybe that trip to the MVP summit was too tiresome for him ;)  His presentation was good, but I think he could have done a lot better.  I could not attend his 2nd talk on Mobile development, but I heard it was very interesting as well...
  • XML Capabilities in SQL with Jason was great.  Learn a couple of things that I have added to my to-do task of things I want to try when I have some spare time.
  • Soft Skills with Brian.  What can I say, Brian delivered another thought provoking talk, good pointers in there.  I am lining up for the swag-monkey position for next time. ;)
  • Reliable messaging with WFC with James was good.  WFC is one of those topics that are so vast, and James really nail down the point that he was trying to make. He lived up to his *twitter promise* and in fact it was a MUCH improved talk from last year.
  • Agile Practices and TFS with the comrade was good.  I like the way that he show the agile implementation by using a tool like TFS.

I had a blast at this day of .NET event.  The new location was awesome.  We all got to eat sitting at a table.!! (unlike last year's... ;)

Following last year's tradition, it was Monish time to oversleep. And HE did.  I have never seen a Prius doing more than 70mph (or for that matter Monish driving THAT fast...;)  One thing is that me and Alexei learned is that Monish does not know how to avoid things on the road. On the way to finding a Bob Evans for early breakfast, he hit a dead skunk.! Even thought we smell the dead skunk and saw the body over 100ft ahead.!!

Looking forward next year's when it will be Alexei's turn to drive... ;)

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

VPC 2007 not running on Virtual Server 2005 R2

I have been trying to port a VPC 2007 to run on our Virtual Server 2005 R2 with no success. This is the error I am getting:

Virtual Machine
The "Virtual Hardware Standard" (Virtual PC 2007) in the configuration .vmc file for "XXX Server" was not created by Virtual Server. "XXX Server" can start, but some settings may be changed and some settings may not be used.

other errors that I am getting:

Virtual Server
The virtual machine “XXX Server” could not be started. An unexpected error occurred.

Virtual Machine
"XXX Server" could not be started because a disk-related error occurred.

I am still not sure as to what the error is. So I ran the Inspect and also the compact utility on the hard drive hoping that this action might *magically* fixed this issue.

Virtual Server 2005 R2 Pending Actions

I get the message that it did succeed compacting:

Virtual Disk Operation
The virtual hard disk "E:\Virtual Machines\XXXServer\BaseWin2K3 Hard Disk.vhd" was compacted.

However, I still get the unexpected error message. At this point, I decided to merge the diff disk with the parent and then keep a single file. Clicking on the Merge virtual hard disk link yielded this:

Virtual Server 2005 R2 Merging Disk

After this is done, I get this message:

The parent virtual hard disk appears to have been modified without using the differencing virtual hard disk located at "E:\Virtual Machines\XXXServer\W2K3 Diff.vhd". Modifying the parent virtual hard disk may result in data corruption. It is strongly recommended that you lock the parent virtual hard disk to prevent this in the future. If you recently changed time zones on your computer, you can safely continue using this virtual hard disk.

So, I decided to create a new virtual machine. First step, I deleted the VMC file. Then create a new Virtual Machine with no Virtual Hard Disk defined.

Attach a virtual hard disk later (None)

After that was done, clicked on the Configurations for that new Virtual Server, then clicked on the Virtual Hard Disk properties, and added the Virtual Hard Drive that was merged earlier:

Virtual Server 2005 R2 - add existing VHD

Started the New Virtual machine, and PRESTO..!! it's alive [muahh, muahh, muahh] and it has all of my latest changes into it.

Thursday, April 03, 2008

Blue Screen on Vista SP1

Do blue screen still exists in the new and latest Operating system from Microsoft... ?

image 

[Main Instruction]
Windows has recovered from an unexpected shutdown

Problem signature:
  Problem Event Name:    BlueScreen
  OS Version:    6.0.6001.2.1.0.256.4
  Locale ID:    1033

Additional information about the problem:
  BCCode:    a
  BCP1:    0000000000000000
  BCP2:    000000000000000C
  BCP3:    0000000000000001
  BCP4:    FFFFF800026742D4
  OS Version:    6_0_6001
  Service Pack:    1_0
  Product:    256_1

Files that help describe the problem:
  C:\Windows\Minidump\Mini040208-01.dmp
  c:\temp\WER-374105-0.sysdata.xml
  c:\temp\WER6B5F.tmp.version.txt

Clicking on the Check for Solution button, it deleted those files and close the dialog box really quick.  So I went and check on the Windows Error Reporting folder located at C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportArchive

In there I found two files:  Report.cab and Report.wer.  Opening the Report.cab yield those 3 files reported on the Dialog box.

image

Now I went and open the version.txt file:

Windows NT  Version 6.0 Build: 6001 Service Pack 1
Product (0x4): Windows Vista (TM) Enterprise
Edition: Enterprise
BuildString: 6001.18000.amd64fre.longhorn_rtm.080118-1840
Flavor: Multiprocessor Free
Architecture: X64
LCID: 1033

The sysdata.xml contains a list of all of the drivers currently loaded:

image

so right now I don't know what caused the blue screen, and I am not sure if this information was ever transmitted to Microsoft.  For the record I have a Dell D820 with 4GB Ram running Vista Enterprise 64bits.

I have started to see more and more people getting blue screen's on Vista after they installed SP1. Coincidence?  ;)

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

MOCSDG: Mid Ohio Connected System Developer's Group - OSLO

Yeah, the first meeting of this group will be kicked off this Thrusday.!! Don't miss it. If you want to be on the mailing list, email Monish and he will add you to the list. The meeting will be held at the Microsoft Office in Columbus, OH.

This first meeting, is going to be started with a presentation from Delbert Murphy. He is one out of 90 MCA's that holds this certification. He is the only Certified Architect in both Microsoft .NET and Java that I have met. So this is a good opportunity to meet him (even if you DONT believe in Certifications... blog post coming....;)

He will be talking about OSLO, which is not just the next version of BizTalk, but the next generation of a unified platform for integrating applications and services. (lots of buzzwords... ;) This is all part of the Connected Systems Division at Microsoft and I believe these set of technologies that Microsoft is working on will have everything including the kitchen sink!! Elkay Mystic Kitchen sink Don't believe me?

... the technology to deliver these capabilities will be delivered through BizTalk Server "V6", System Center "V5", Visual Studio "V10", BizTalk Services "V1" and .NET Framework "V4". The code name for this effort is "Oslo"...[read whole article]

  1. Visual Studio v.10
  2. System Center v.5
  3. Biztalk Services v.1
  4. .NET framework v4.0
  5. Biztalk Server v.6

and that is very powerful.! And if you are a Challenge Junkie like Brian said, then OSLO will give you something to get excited about.

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

ReSharper 4.0 upgrade

I am taking the plunge and going for the EAP nightly builds of ReSharper.  Since I have started using Visual Studio 2008, and it is REALLY annoying having to disable ReSharper everytime I want to do any work on it. Plus Harman talks so much about the new features and how they are very stable. So if HE uses it, why not me. ;)

So far, I have an un-easy feeling about this and the message does not provide any comfort...image

Hope that QSI Management hurries up and approved that PO to buy us personal licenses of ReSharper before I run out of trial days.

Here is what happened to my v.3.1 License: License to version 3.x is not acceptable since issued before 12/21/2007.

image

30-days trial vs Full license... argghhh..

image

 

let's see what happens after 30-days.!

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