Microsoft

Windows7 installs fast.

I downloaded Windows7 as part of my technet plus subscription and got a few minutes to try the installation whilst listening to the Hyper-V deep dive training session this evening. The time taken to install from my iso image to  a running installation was 31 minutes – thats VERY good going.

The client not surprisingly uses ie8 which was a bit of a pain for me. I use SGP for my online password management and that relies on the links bar within the browser. Now called the Favorites bar, for some reason this would not allow me to save the SGP bookmarklet in the bar – instead I had to add it to my favourites and then drag it into the bar afterwards.

It is too soon to make any more comments on it at the moment as it is time for bed, but so far it looks nice.

The one big plus is that Microsoft have FINALLY got the time zone problem fixed. Now they actually remember the timezone preference set during the installation and keep it afterwards rather than setting it to GMT-8 which theyhave been doing ever since Windows95!

I am getting some quirky things going on with my keyboard missing some characters, but I’m not sure if that is due to my bluetooth keyboard, ie8 or the fact I’m running in a hyper-v client where the parent server has been up for several days now.

70-649 passed.

Took the exam this morning – I would say this is probably one of the easier exams, especially if you are familiar with the product (well duh!) A lot of the questions have keywords in them which means that instantly you know the answer has to be this particular one. Hard to explain, but in some exams you narrow down to two possibles and then you have to reread to get the correct one – in this case, keywords in the question instantly narrowed down to 1.
The annoying/scary bit is that it’s really 3 short exams in one and your worst score counts – if you fail one section you fail the lot. Fortunately I got 100% in the first two and 970 in the last one – I think I got one question wrong. Out of all the questions there were only 3 questions I wasn’t sure about – the others I knew were correct.

70-649 exam booked.

I booked my 70-649 exam last night for next Monday which gives me the weekend to do any last minute prep work and testing. I finished my 973 pages of reading the Syngress book – The Real MCTS/MCITP Exam 70-649 Prep Kit: by Brian Posey. The book wasn’t bad but there were quite a few errors in the book. There was only one sample answer that I totally agreed with (and therefore it must be wrong 😉 but there were a couple of times where text was repeated twice due to sloppy copy/paste editing and several times words were spelt wrong or letters missing. The last chapter for example, on Network Access Protection, seemed to be short on finishing the actual testing of the NAP client and unfortunately spent more time going on about tips for the exam. I would have thought this would be better in a separate chapter and instead actually go through the steps of testing the client machine for compatibility
Anyway, the exam is booked with the second chance offer .and if I pass I’ll be able to give the book a glowing review 😉
This exam is pretty good in that it is needed to upgrade my MCSE qualification to the 2008 equivalent but also gives me 3 MCTS qualifications,

SBS2008 loadfest in Springfield 2008.

I’ve never been to Springfield (any of them) before and tomorrow is the SBS2008 loadfest in Springfield, Ohio where people bring their machines to load SBS2008 on them and find out ways to automate the installation and demos and discussions about the new features in SBS2008.  I’m really looking forward to this as it will be some great training and also a chance to network with some peers. I’m curious to see how it all works as SBS insists it is the only DHCP server on the network when the connect to internet wizard is run so I’m not sure how it will like all the SBS machines being plugged into the Lan.

I must admit I cheated/was too impatient/needed to test the installation of SBS2008 on my hardware so I kicked off an install before work this morning ,answered the remaining questions at lunch time today and now have an installation on the hardware. I wanted to make sure that the installation would work with my hardware and my disk layout. Now that I know it works I will either reinstall over the top tomorrow or install it into a virtual environment under hyper-v. The latter will enable me to snapshot the machine when playing with various what-if configurations.

This is all really good timing as yesterday I received my “fee” exam voucher from Microsoft for SBS2008 – there was a typo in the subject of the email that gave me the free voucher code for the exam.  The only downside is that this will have to wait until I’ve passed at least one of my Windows2008 exams.

I had the beta of 2008 on my home training machine but it ran really slow as it was a virtual machine and the server didn’t have enough memory. Yesterday I purchased 4GB of ram for $70 (plus tax) and added that to the pc. I had an added bonus in that 1gb of ram had to be removed to make way for the 2gb sticks so I put these two sticks into my normal home pc.

I’m not sure if there are still spaces available – the click to register page still seems to work.

MCSE upgrade time.

It’s been a while since I got my MCSE qualification and I’m now starting to use Windows 2008 and Exchange 2007 so it is time to update the certifications!  Microsoft has a useful page on the transition path from MCSE on Windows2003 to MCITP (Microsoft Certified IT Professional) – looks like a lot more studying to do, although the first exam 70-649 gives me three new MCTS (Microsoft Certified Technical Specialist )qualifications immediately which is nice. The good thing is that I have until the end of the year to pass with the second shot offer AND to fulfill my annual review goals.

The training book has been ordered from the library and the virtual server has been fired up, updated and my vpn configuration tested to allow remote access back home (I managed to break this when upgrading my dd-wrt router)

SQL2008 installation failed to install with 0x84b30001

I got the 0x84b30001 error when trying to install the latest Microsoft Assessment and Planning tool (MAP) this evening. Taking a look through the error logs gave me the message “A network error occurred while attempting to read from the file: c:\e….0\x86\setup\x86\sqlncli10.msi”, each time the directory name was different. I tried running the SQL2008 express installation manually and got the same message. However double clicking on the sqlncli10.msi file from the log file would work – or seem to. Trying to do a repair gave me the same message. I then chose to delete the 2008 native client installation (the sqlncli10.msi package) as I knew that a successful installation would result in the client being installed again. The uninstall was successful so I then reran the sql2008 installation with no problems.  MAP then installed successfully. I posted a note on the technet forums here in case anyone else has some follow up comments/questions.  Now that I’m home I can’t actually run the assessment tool, but I’ll be able to do this tomorrow – hopefully it will give me the results I am after.

Windows 958644 direct download locations.

I have spent all day patching servers, workstations and trying to find a direct download for the 958644 patch that got released last night. I was amazed when Microsoft even called us to join in a webconference for Microsoft partners about this patch – that is something new.
I was not so pleased when I called PSS to ask for a direct download to the patch as kb958644 does not have direct links, windows update services was timing out and the catalog website is badly broken. PSS informed me that as it was not a hotfix they could not provide me with the file and there was an 8-12 hour delay on callback from the server team. So instead I’ve been configuring wsus for servers (that were not already configured), approving patches and downloading by visiting windows updates – a VERY time consuming.
Anyway, without wasting more time – here are the download locations – I’d grab them before the server falls over too.

Thanks to Larry and Derek for the help in finding these.

Second Shot enhancements

The Second Shot promotion is still running on Microsoft’s website, but now has an extra reward if you pass the exam on the first attempt. If you take a test before the end of the year and pass on the first attempt, you will now get a 25% discount on your next exam (if you take it by June 30th). Looks like it’s time to get the study books out again and push the guys at work to study too. So far for me the second shot promotion has just taken the pressure off of taking exams as I’ve passed each one, so this will be a nice reward. Thanks to Born to Learn for the heads up.

Live Mesh Update

I have been using Live Mesh on the home computer and work computer for a couple of weeks and the synching of data between the two computers has been very useful.  The synch process works the same that foldershare does and copies files between the machines (and the web site) well. The only issue I have had so far is if I move the location of the data files by hand. The default location for a new Live Mesh folder is on the Desktop. As I don’t want this location I used explorer to cut and paste the folder from the desktop and put it in a different location such as c:\andy\livemesh.  However, going to My Computer/Live Mesh folders then shows the folder as not synched on this computer and in the original location.  By double clicking on the folder a browse dialog box appears and the new folder location can be selected. If the new folder is the new location a merge data prompt will be given.  Selecting yes will then set the folder up to be synchronised again.

Teched hands on lab – behind the scenes.

A 3 or 4 minute video on the infrastructure behind the 900 machines used to build the hands on labs at TechEd. It was interesting to see that most of the main servers were all virtual servers and that the virtual images stored on the lab pc’s themselves were deployed using Ghost but the actual OS of the desktop was deployed using Windows Deployment Services (WDS). I’ve never been to TechEd but hope to go one day but it makes me wonder what they used to do before virtual machines existed?