Ozzie Rules Blogging

Meet the Parallel development team July 1st 9am PST

This week I have the PCP team (Stephen Toub; Andrea Nassisi and Dana Groff) doing the first of what I am guessing will be many sessions on the topic of getting ready for tomorrows multi core hardware…this both from managed and unmanaged code.   Please remember come early if you want a “seat” on the phone bridge and remember this is NOT an NDA conversation. – So anything you say/ask is fair game….

“See” you Wednesday

Date: Wednesday July 1^st.
Time: 9:00AM-10am PST
LiveMeeting:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/0000000379_103/join?id=76P755&role=attend&pw=p%2C%2Fzk2K%7CM
Conf call:
Toll Free: 866-500-6738
Toll: 203-480-8000
Participant code: #198585

How to get around Program Compatibility Assistant on Windows Server 2008

Today i needed to install Sharepoint Server 2007 non sp1 on Windows Server 2008 –despite the fact there are known issues. 

Unfortunately we have made Windows smarter so it won’t let you shoot yourself in the foot and when you attempt an install you get the following dialog from Program Compatibility Assistant blocking from doing exactly what i needed to do…

After doing some research i find there is this tool called the Application Compatibility Toolkit which looked like i wanted as it had an entry for Sharepoint 2007 containing the blocked setting –unfortunately no matter what i did the toolkit was read only…(even tried turning UAC off!) in either case in looking at how Program Compatibility Assistant works the answer is much easier than downloading a toolkit and mucking with Windows registry entries. Turns out Windows Program Compatibility works off the image name and meta data about the image (like version information). 

…So all you have to do is rename the sharepoint setup file: Setup.exe to well –anything.exe

Viola you have just enabled yourself to install broken software on your server computer!

.NET Framework 4 Application Compatibility with the Development Team June 24 10am PST

With any new version of software there will be ramifications in terms of compatibility and the .Net Framework 4 is no exception. June 24^th the .Net Framework development team will be hosting a live conference call to walk through issues to watch out at for and how best to prepare for the pending release of Visual Studio 2010 and the .Net Framework 4.

Date: Wednesday June 24^th
Time: 10:00AM-11am PST
LiveMeeting:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/0000000379_103/join?id=76P755&role=attend&pw=p%2C%2Fzk2K%7CM

Seattle User Group June 16: Team Foundation Developers Unleashed (Dashboards)

Two of our senior Team Foundation Server developers Phil Hodgson and Ben Amodio will be joining us tonight at the Seattle user Group!

Title: Using and creating actionable Dashboards using Team Foundation Server 2008 and 2010.

Abstract:

The typical user group has the Microsoft Program Managers doing the presentation while the developers are safely locked creating the features for the next version… For this session we have found the keys to two of the key Team Foundation Server developers Phil Hodgson and Ben Amodio and will be letting them out for a play in the wild!  Ben Amodio will be start the session with a demo of how he builds actionable dashboards with Team Foundation Server to see how he and his team is doing on their features.   Phil Hodgson will then take us on a tour of the features he has been building the dashboards shipping with Team Foundation Server 2010.
Speaker:  Phil Hodgson, Ben Amodio.

Please remember to RSVP and bring the print out for the security folks at the door.

Date: Monday 6/15/2009

Event: General Meeting

Location: Microsoft Building 40, Steptoe Room #1450

Meeting Leader: Steven Borg

Time:  7:00 PM

Topic: Team Foundation Developers Unleashed (Dashboards)

Up close and personal with the Visual Studio 2010 Editor Team

Once again I would like to thank you for joining us last week on the topic of Visual Studio Setup.

This week, we have something even better with the team that has built the new editor: Sean Laberee; Kav Latiolais; Selma Ikizto and Brittany Behrens (whom many of you may have already met on the forums) to do a quick walk through of their new features -and of course gather your feedback for the work of sorting through their Beta2 DCRs.

“See” you in the morning!

Date: Friday June 12^th
Time: 9:00AM-10am PST
LiveMeeting:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/0000000379_103/join?id=76P755&role=attend&pw=p%2C%2Fzk2K%7CM

Catching Halibut off of Westport

After code camp Portland last weekend (awesome event btw) i went to Westport with long time diving buddy Jesper to learn how to catch a couple of barn doors (any halibut over 50lbs is referred to as a barn door). 

After waking up at 3:30am and spending $235 what did we learn?

1. We still don’t know how to catch a barn door …while we did catch our limit of 10 fish for the boat none were barn doors
2. They live a LONG ways from the beach!  - we ended up fishing ~27 miles offshore
3. While you can catch Halibut on 24 oz Jigs (this is what i was using) you work 4X harder for no appreciable return.
4. Pulling up 2lbs of lead from 800ft with a fishing rod is A LOT of work
5. Halibut size doesn’t really equate to their fight or said another way the bigger fish didn’t tend to always fight harder than smaller fish.
6. Deeper doesn’t equate to bigger fish…our biggest fish was caught in the shallowest water (a mere 600’ feet)
7. Jesper is 100% better halibut fisherman than me (He caught two fish – i only caught one)
8. The best fisherman on the boat was the least attentive…”Lucas” a cook from Port Orchard caught three fish –and the largest!  The first fish took the bait while Lucas was getting a donut and the next two while Lucas was in the cabin getting another beer.

Well i can at least add one more “Game Fish” to my fishing Bingo Card

“Catch” ya later

VSTS User Group Meeting: Architecture and Testing Features of VSTS 2010 for the Developer (June 8th)

This month we have local VSTS expert Shad Timm share some of his VSTS expertise with the session:

Architecture and Testing Features of VSTS 2010 for the Developer

Session description:

In the last couple of months we shown the advanced developers features of Visual Studio 2010, what’s new for Testers in Visual Studio 2010…This month we will cover off the features that integrate the developer in the rest of the development lifecycle.   For instance you inherit a project and you need to seed how the code sequence fits together, or take a look at the dependencies or probably the most useful just how the project hangs together.  The first half of this presentation will show how the new Architecture tools isn’t just for Architects.  The second half of the presentation will then focus on the hand off and integration between your testers and developers.
Speaker:

Shad Timm is a Visual Studio Team System Consultant with Northwest Cadence. He has extensive experience with Team Build and MSBuild, Business Intelligence with Reporting Services, and implementing Software Configuration Management best practices with Visual Studio Team System. He has worked with several organizations to automate their build and deployment process, customize Team Foundation Server to gather specific metrics about their development process, and provide reports to facilitate process improvement. His passion knows no limits when it comes to increasing the effectiveness of Visual Studio Team System in order to provide real business value to an organization.

Date: Monday 6/8/2009

Event: General Meeting

Location: Microsoft Building 40, Steptoe Room #1450

Meeting Leader: Steven Borg

Time:  7:00 PM

Make sure and print out the invitation if you plan on attending:

Exploring Visual Studio 2010 Setup with the Product Team –Live Meeting and Chat

This week we will have Noah Coad, David Guyer, Heath Stewart and Aaron Ruckman from the Visual Studio Platform Team on the phone to cover off setup in Visual Studio 2010.  These sessions are hosted through live meeting with the stated goal to be 50% conversation and 50% Presentation.   Fair warning these calls are often frequented by our famous Visual Studio MVP’s – so if you want to get your question asked you can not be bashful!  Last week couple of the attendees requested we run a simultaneous Chat session to facilitate getting through more questions.

“See” you Wednesday!

Date: Wednesday June 3rd
Time: 9:00AM-10am PST
LiveMeeting:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/microsoft/join?id=HH4DRF&role=attend&pw=XZ*%28%5E5twB

Chat Session Login Link below:

http://www.microsoft.com/communities/chats/default.mspx

VSTS 2008 Training Portland July 16 and Tumwater July 25th

New Visual Studio 2010 Videos on Web Tooling Improvements and Downloading and Installing Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1

Okay the Video on Downloading and installing Visual Studio 2010 isn’t new but i keep getting the question “How do i easily create a virtual image with Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio 2010?” –and Brian Keller does such a great job on this video is really needs to be in your “Must See” category!

80GB Zune and Team System Suite to be raffled off at Code Camp Portland

Just had a visit from Doug Seven and the VSTS marketing team is donating an 80gb Zune and a full version of Team System Suite for the Portland Code Camp!

YEAH DOUG!!!

I also received email from Arnie Rowland, one of the Code Camp organizers and my session time is at 3:00pm. (now to figure out what I am going to present!)

The new session times has Suzan Moran doing her “MVP Program Introduction” at 4:30pm…which means i get to sleep in and shop at Cabelas a little longer.

My session abstract:

Test, Performance and Diagnostic Tools in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010:

The largest enhancements for Visual Studio Team System 2010 is an entire suite of tools specialized for testers. In this all demo session Charles Sterling will walk you through several of these new features including a new tool for Test case management and how it not only simplifies test case management but will help determine if new build should be examined and which test cases should be run for a given build – potentially saving testers huge amounts of time. The presentation will then look at tools for recording and running User Interface Tests and finally how to ease the transition from test to development – and even help developers understand which tests they should be running.

Core Coding Experience Live Meeting the Visual Studio Team

If you are US based I hope you enjoyed your long weekend…we had glorious weather Seattle.  I realize i should have posted this yesterday…but my weekend just didn’t want to stop!

The languages team is getting together tomorrow to walk through their Core Coding Experience in Managed Languages walk through to see if you have any feedback or difficulties getting through this walk through.

Core Coding Experience Live Meeting the Visual Studio Team

Visual C# and Visual Basic languages continue to evolve towards feature parity, strive to simplify programming and deployment with the Microsoft Office APIs, and allow easy interop to dynamic languages.  In the tools space, Visual Studio 2010 offers greater support for Test-Driven Development, where tests are written before product code as an iterative approach to software design. In this interactive session you will get a chance to connect with the two Program Managers DJ Park and Dustin Campbell as they walk through the feature areas they feel will have the greatest impact to you and your development teams.

Date: Wednesday May 27^th
Time: 9:00AM-10am PST
LiveMeeting:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/microsoft/join?id=HH4DRF&role=attend&pw=XZ*%28%5E5twB

Visual Studio Team System 2010 Beta1 FAQ: Third Edition

Just been trolling through the forums and it looks like my team mates didn’t leave me much to answer.  -Just more time to pull together another FAQ!  If you haven’t checked out the first two they can be seen at:

Visual Studio 2010 Beta1 Day One FAQ

Visual Studio 2010 Beta1 Day Two FAQ

Q: Installing Team Foundation Server and only see Build and components as the install options.

A:  The TFS install guide indicates the OS MUST be one of the following:

Unfortunately it doesn’t mention the server can NOT also be a Domain Controller!  We are looking at enabling this for the RTM of 2010 but for the present we have the same restrictions 2008 that you can not run Team Foundation Server on a Domain Controller.  (I have asked the author of the Install guide to update it)

Q: I can not seem to find the Work Flow Designer for Team Build?

A: Entry into the workflow designer doesn’t have any UI. The way you access it is to simply open the build definition in Visual Studio 2010 from the Source Control Explorer.

By default it is called: <Team Project Name>/TeamBuildProcessTemplates/DefaultTemplate.xaml

(Screen shot of the WorkFlow Designer for Team Build)

Q: TF255147: The following server that is running SQL Server is not listening on the expected TCP port: <Server Name>

Hopefully we fix this error text at release but this is because by default SQL doesn’t enable the TCP/IP Network listener required to Team Foundation Server…Simply enabling it in the SQL Configuration Tools is all that is required.

Q:  Where is the 64 bit version of Team Foundation Server and/or Visual Studio 2010?

A:  Visual Studio 2010 is only a 32 bit application.   Team Foundation Server is both a native 64 bit and 32 bit and both are included in the one beta1 Team Foundation Server download and you must install the matching version or you will get the error like the one below:  “You are trying to install the 32bit version of the product on a server that is running a 64-bit operating system.  You must install the 64 bit version of the

To install browse to the folder that matches the operating system for your computer (for a 64-bit operating system, \TFS-x64\, for a 32-bit operating system, \TFS-x86\), and then run Setup.exe.

Q: Team Foundation services not running after restart

A: In the current build of Team Foundation Server it is possible for the IIS Service to start before SQL Server –putting Team Foundation Server in situation where it can not contact the database. In this scenario Team Foundation Server will not start.  The work around/fix is straight forward; issue the command IISRESET from a command prompt on the Team Foundation Server that has failed to start.  NOTE:   This is particularly prevalent on faster hard drives in Virtual machines.

Q: Using a shared reporting server for Team Foundation Server 2010

A: In Team Foundation Server 2010 you can specify to not use a Reporting Server or which Reporting Server you want to use…but that Reporting Server instance can not be share amongst other Team Foundation Servers.

Windows 7 Release Candidate Ultimate: Adding a machine to a Domain Broken?

With Visual Studio 2010 Beta1 now becoming mainstream i needed to format my work laptop to be able to install it natively –as there was no install for the previous VS 2010 CTP.  

Friday i download the Windows 7 RC ISO then realized i didn’t have a DVD burner on my laptop.  Too Lazy to get off the couch i downloaded Virtual CloneDrive(Very nice!)  watched an episode of Simpsons and it was done! 

During the commercial break i kicked off the install of Visual Studio 2010 Beta1 after the two episodes of Phineas and Ferb (Natasha my 8 year old daughter was running the remote) and it too was done with no errors.  Pretty cool considering i just installed two beta Microsoft products back to back!

Of course the first thing i do with this machine was try to add it to the domain on the Microsoft corporate network…the same i have been doing for the last !5 years.  Unfortunately my tried and true:

Right click the computer choose properties, select change settings and select the button:

“To Rename this computer or change its domain or workgroup, click change”

Typed in “Redmond”

Where i would normally would expect to get a prompt for my credentials i received an error…hmm…

So i applied updates to see if it was quarantine issue –nope .

I rebooted – which typically fixes everything else – Nope

Then just for grins i take a look at my ipconfig and noticed the DNS information has all Redmond.Microsoft.com suffix information ….hmm…

Okay so i try adding that as my Domain name and SUCCESS i am prompted for credentials!! – Yeah!

Then at the credentials dialog I tried Redmond.Microsoft.com\chass and my password…Failure- boo!

The reason was bad user account/password!  ..hmmm..

Switching back to the time proven domain_name\User_name worked like a charm –in this dialog- YEAH!!!

Now i don’t know if this is a change to Windows 7 RC (definitely didn’t behave this way at the last Beta) or a change to our internal network but even if it is just our internal network hopefully this will save some other blue badge some time!

Chuck

(I am including the error dialog below for Search engines)

Note: This information is intended for a network administrator.  If you are not your network's administrator, notify the administrator that you received this information, which has been recorded in the file D:\Windows\debug\dcdiag.txt.

The domain name "Redmond" might be a NetBIOS domain name.  If this is the case, verify that the domain name is properly registered with WINS.

If you are certain that the name is not a NetBIOS domain name, then the following information can help you troubleshoot your DNS configuration.

The following error occurred when DNS was queried for the service location (SRV) resource record used to locate an Active Directory Domain Controller (AD DC) for domain "Redmond":

The error was: "DNS name does not exist."
(error code 0x0000232B RCODE_NAME_ERROR)

The query was for the SRV record for _ldap._tcp.dc._msdcs.Redmond

Common causes of this error include the following:

- The DNS SRV records required to locate a AD DC for the domain are not registered in DNS. These records are registered with a DNS server automatically when a AD DC is added to a domain. They are updated by the AD DC at set intervals. This computer is configured to use DNS servers with the following IP addresses:

XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX

- One or more of the following zones do not include delegation to its child zone:

Redmond
. (the root zone)

Visual Studio 2010 Beta1 Walkthroughs now live

If you haven’t visited the Visual Studio Beta1 2010 home page i would highly recommend it! In addition to listing all the downloads key bloggers and great resources we have just posted a bunch of new walkthroughs to get you started!