System

I work for Microsoft now

David Vidmar — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 20:00:27 GMT

It’s been quiet around here and for a good reason. As I hinted before there has been many changes in my life recently. In same week I became father for second time (father of three boys now, twins and a new baby!), finally finished my engineer’s degree and finally, I joined the ranks of best company in the world to work for – Microsoft.

I’ll be working as I consultant for Biztalk Server and Forefront Identity Manager and from time to time a Dynamics CRM consultant.

So, what can you expect? Occasional dry stints, lots of BTS and FIM links, Windows Phone 7, Azure and Windows 8 and other cool Microsoft stuff.

If you are fellow Microsoftie, please look me up and drop me a note – let’s connect!

Windows Homer Server 2011 is finally available on MSDN and TechNet!

David Vidmar — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 21:57:49 GMT

If you haven’t noticed, WHS 2011 is finally available to TechNet and MSDN subscribers!

Gentlemen, start your downloads and clear your schedule for the big reinstall!

Site troubles

David Vidmar — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 06:50:31 GMT

This site has been experiencing technical difficulties in last couple of days. As far as I can see, it’s been some hackers playground. Things are returning to normal.

Thank you all for your patience.

Yes, you CAN try Google Chrome OS today!

David Vidmar — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:13:02 GMT

If you go to gdgt you can download compiled version of Chrome OS pre-release in shape of virtual machine.

Don’t expect too much, since it’s quite unstable, slow and it freezes a lot. If I didn’t miss anything it’s just Chrome browser that boots on it’s own. So, it’s far from XP/Vista/7 killer for now.

So what would you rather do? Read more about Crome OS or try for yourself?

Here are quick instructions for running Chrome OS in VirtualBox:

Download and install VirtualBox or upgrade to latest version if you have it installed. If you have VMware, even better.
Download Chrome OS VMware image (don’t bother with VirtualBox image, it doesn’t work for many and it didn’t work for me).
Create new machine and

attach existing VMDK image as primary hard drive,
give it 1 GB of RAM,
leave network as it is (NAT),
give video card more RAM, I simply went with max - 128 MB.

Boot it! It should be up in seconds.
Login with Google Account.

If you get “wrong password” error message, remember that you have US keyboard!
If you get “no network” error message, turn network off/on, reboot and it will eventually start working.

Free copy of Windows 7 Ultimate

David Vidmar — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 18:18:22 GMT

I was pleasantly surprised today, when I found out I’m eligible for free copy of Windows 7 Ultimate as a beta tester.

Although I didn’t report any bugs, I was granted a retail license key and a download of x86 and x64 version of Windows 7.

That’s just great! Thank you, Microsoft!

After installing Windows 7 of my wife’s laptop and couple machine at work, I’m more than convinced that Microsoft did few things right and Windows 7 will be a great system for years to come. I’ll repave my main home machine in couple of days.

Windows 7 RTM on MSDN/TechNet

David Vidmar — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 17:33:18 GMT

Gentlemen, start you downloads! Windows 7 RTM is available for download on MSDN and TechNet.

I haven’t seen Windows Server 2008 R2 yet.

The best new feature in Windows 7

David Vidmar — Mon, 11 May 2009 23:09:40 GMT

I just installed Windows 7 RC in Virtual PC and found that Windows 7 has a keyboard shortcut for creating new folder. Just press CTRL + SHIFT + N and you got it! Finally!

This alone will be the reason I’ll install Windows 7 as soon as it RTM’s!

Windows Home Server available on MSDN

David Vidmar — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 10:53:30 GMT

Since today, Windows Home Server is available for download for MSDN subscribers. The main goal is to “ncrease awareness of Windows Home Server with a larger community of professional developers and help further grow the ecosystem of software applications built for Windows Home Server”.

For more info, jump to Windows Homer Server Blog.

On the same not Power Pack 2 is now available. Download via Windows Update. Philip has more info.

Windows Home Server 2.0

David Vidmar — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 22:53:52 GMT

My good old home server died. This 7 years old machine that I stacked with hard drives was happily running Windows Home Server and few more things on the top for little more than a year.

But just last week some capacitors on main board blew and it was time to find a substitute.

I quickly decided I need brand new machine I could trust. This were requirements for components:

Case with enough space for 3.5” drives that can be mounted without screws, can be ugly, nobody will see it.
Low energy consumption CPU, possibly dual core for extra power for occasionally building of my software, network video rendering and some light web hosting-
Motherboard with onboard graphics card and gigabit Ethernet, since I rewired home network with gigabit lan (man, it flies!).
Heat and loudness is not something I’m concerned about, since machine will be in the basement - far from anyone to hear it and where is cold enough.
2 GB RAM so I can start extra virtual machine if needed-
1 TB of disk space to add to my current ~2 TB array of drives-
Cheap.
On stock.

This is what I came up with:

Case: Cooler Master Elite RC-331 – 31.90 EUR

Simple and cheap, but with quite intelligent system for locking drives.

Power Supply Unit: be quite! Straight power 350W – 41.90 EUR

It’s rated “80 plus”, has lots of power cables for drives and I don’t need anything more than 300W.

Motherboard: ASUS M3N78 motherboard – 62.90 EUR

Probably little over the top, but I it was on sale.

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5050e – 59.90 EUR

As suggested by coworker, low consumption, more than enough performance.

RAM: 2x1GB Kingston ValueRAM DDR2-800 – 30.20 EUR

Trustworthy brand, but cheap-

Hard drive: Western Digital Caviar 1TB – 89.90 EUR

What a price for 1 TB of space! I want more! :)

Cooling: none

Stock fan that came with CPU, no need for anything more.

Optical drive: none

I’ll just pull SATA DVD-ROM from my main machine to do install, from then on I don’t need it.

Total cost: ~320 EUR

I’ll add 2 x 500GB WD and 2 x 240 WD ATA drives joined in RAID0 on FastTrack TX2000 controller from old machine and drop other smaller disks.

I’ll reuse Windows Home Server OEM from old machine.

Update: It’s up and running. I’ll move data from old drives over the night and it’s all set!

Windows Home Server – This computer cannot connect to you home server.

David Vidmar — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 20:42:09 GMT

If you get this error when trying to connect to your Home Server using Windows Home Server Console, welcome to the club.

When Googling you’ll find all kinds of advices to reinstall Connector software or even whole server. Luckily, all of those are wrong.

It turns out that all other components, like shared folder and backup connect to server using NETBIOS, but Console is using DNS resolution.

Sometimes (!) that resolves to server.your-isp.net or similar.

Solution? Stick servers IP in hosts, and restart!