.NET From India

ReFS–A new File System

ReFs, which stands for Resilient File System, is a new File Systems that will make an appearance in Windows 8 Server (and possibly into the client OS at a later date). This is the first major update to the FS after the FAT to NTFS move and the first attempt from Microsoft after the WinFS fiasco.

You can read about the implementation of ReFs in this post

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/01/16/building-the-next-generation-file-system-for-windows-refs.aspx

 

ReFs along with StorageSpaces seems to be a very interesting proposition and can ease recovery and stability of the FS.

A couple of photos from the Dec 2011 Lunar Eclipse

Technorati Tags: Lunar Eclipse,Dec 9 2011,India,Photos

Just got around to moving some of the photos from the Dec 9th Lunar eclipse that was visible from India. Just a couple of photos from that here.

 

 

Enjoy…

 

Related articles

• Year's last total lunar eclipse left enthusiasts spellbound - NDTV (ndtv.com)

PowerView – SQL Server 2012 Feature

This seems to be a new feature in SQL 2012 ‘Denali’ RC0.

The following blog post has more information. Seems quite interesting. They also have a sandbox where you can play around with it, but this site has been down for the last two days.

What’s New In Power View

 

Update – More demos available in the sandbox now. Check out : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oneclickbi/archive/2011/12/27/more-demos-of-power-view-available.aspx

Currently still seems to be a number of bugs especially with some charts etc. I am unable to find a connect program to submit the bugs though as yet.

Windows 8 Developers have a sense of humor!!

Now that the Windows 8 Developer Preview is out, I got it installed on a VirtualBox instance. As I was reading thru some of the dialogs that popup during installation, I got a sense that since this is an early release, the developers got more freedom and have displayed a sense of humor in some of the messages.

Here are some of the ones that I found interesting:

I liked this the best (something you don’t say often for a license dialog )

 

This one, though not humorous, seems to be less formal that what you usually see

Age of Empire Online

It has been quite sometime since the last Age of Empire came out. If I remember right it was the Asian Chiefs Expansion for AOE III a couple of years ago at least.

Now Microsoft Games has come out with a new version. The difference is that this is an online version and it is free to play!! Even though it is called Age of Empire Online, it actually requires an install (of around 60 MB) and also download a number of updates once installed. But it uses Live Online for Windows (equivalent of XBOX online for Windows Games) to store your games state and so you basically do not need to save anything on the local machine itself. But the catch is that you cannot save a game in the middle, but only save the state of your capital city.

Also this works on a free for initial play and then buy premium features. I just started playing last week and for people who have played any of the previous AOE version, most of the game play remains the same.

There are also quite a number of things that you can use only if you buy a premium pack and obviously that is where the money is..

Fixing Bugcheck 6B in Windows 7

I just got a new Laptop (well my older one conked out and had no choice :()

I had just used it for 1 day and when I tried booting it today morning I was getting blue screen "Procces1_initialization_failed". So basically could not get the thing started.

So I tried seeing if startup repair could fix it. It could'nt. But the detailed error description from startup repair did throw up the info that the root cause was Bugcheck 6B...

A web search turned up a number of pages, but most were just error description. I found an post on one of the groups that mentioned that this was due to a corrupted boot cached and recommended booting from the source media and then deleting the bootcache.

In Win 7 startup repair (in advanced options) you have the option of starting a console/command window. So I just opened up a command window. The boot cache is a file called bootcat.cache and can be found in <Window>\system32\Code Integrity.

Just cd'ed into that dir and deleted the .cache file.

A reboot set everything right...

Why is Salesforce.com So Worried about Microsoft? Really??

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/crm/archive/2011/06/09/why-is-salesforce-com-so-worried-about-microsoft.aspx

Came across this.. Well MS CRM is growing fast, but does just saying we are better than x makes you better?? The post remainds me of a marketing collateral... :)

SOASchool.com Workshop in India

As people who read my blog know, last year I completed the Certified SOA Architect certification. This is award by a company called soaschool.com, which is run by Thomas Erl, who is a well know author on SOA.

They also run workshops that help you prepare for the exams. I attended one of those before I took my exams. Even if you do not plan to take the certifications, these workshops can help you understand SOA.

They now have a workshop scheduled in Bengaluru (Bangalore), the first in India, in August.

Check it out at http://soaschool.com/workshops/bangalore0811

Home Server 2011 Connector and Problems with .NET Framework..

I had setup the new Home Server 2011 on one of my servers and have been transitioning stuff off my Home Server v1.

So after all of the data has been transferred and I had setup the server in a way that makes sense to me (given that Drive Extender, DE, is not there anymore and how much I miss that… That is a completely separate post by itself)

Then I started moving my client machines over. I left my main desktop off till the last and I came to it yesterday.

The Connect installation is quite simple and it just asks around 2-3 simple questions and that’s it. The problem is that they have made it so simple that it becomes very difficult when there is a problem. So the only error the setup reports is a wonderfully descriptive – “The Windows Home Server 2011 Connector has encountered an unexpected error” or something like that (Well everyone knows what an unexpected error is and can easily fix that. Right )..

After some searching, I found an KB article saying that a few services need to be running and I was still getting this error after I confirmed those services were good.

Then I came upon this post on the forum that talks about this problem occurring if a beta .NET 4.0 was installed..

Then it stuck me.. I had installed the VS 2010 Beta on this machine a long time back and then after playing around for a few days, forgotten about that (as I rarely use that machine for any development). So I uninstalled all the pieces that was installed with VS 2010 Beta and then also uninstalled .NET 4.0 Beta.

Only problem was, half way thru the uninstall something happened and my machine blue screened. The Beta disappeared from the Program and Features screen. So I went ahead and installed the full .NET 4.0 RTM. But still Connector will not install. Same Problem as before.

So I tried to uninstall .NET 4.0 RTM thinking I will clean everything and try again. Now it wouldn’t uninstall cleanly. It would go half way and crash. So basically I got stuck with a half installed .NET 4.0.

Then I came upon the .NET cleanup utility. Downloaded the latest version and set it up to clean up .NET 4.0. It actually went half way and then the system re-booted. Not sure if this was the planned way, but when I checked the log, it seemed as if there was an error. So I just ran the utility again and it went through fine.

Then I went and installed the full .NET 4.0 RTM and then the Connector install went thru fine with no problems.

It would have been a lot easier and saved me around 5+ hours if the setup had just said, there was a wrong version of the .NET Framework, instead of the great “unexpected error”…

Windows Virtual PC–Launching Virtual Machine Wizard Manually

I use Windows Virtual PC for running some of the test VPCs and also for learning new features etc. Since I also play around with multiple versions of virtualization software (VirtBox, VMWare etc), I suddenly found that my Virtual PC directory settings were kind of screwed up (after many installs/uninstall of multiple virtualization software). So now I do not get the options to create a new virtual machine.

The good thing is that Windows Virtual PC is made up of multiple EXEs and you can manually launch then as required.

The easiest way is to directly type the command into the run bar as all of these EXEs reside in the system32 directory.

The command to launch the new virtual machine wizard is vpcwizard.exe.

You can find more about the different EXEs that ship with Windows Virtual PC on this post: Windows Virtual PC Executable