I’d been round in circles a few times and had eventually settled on a technique that involved a 2nd drive in the UltraBay slot of my Lenovo W510 to host “expanded” VHDs when @GarryMartin tweeted me to point out there’s a registry setting that controls whether or not a native-boot VHD gets expanded on...

I keep returning to this issue and this time I think I might have cracked it. Here’s my problem: I have an existing Windows 7 install on a 160GB SSD drive. From time to time I’d like to create a “branch” to install software that either [a] I will only need for a short space of time [b] might interfere...

It’s that that time of year again when the big one approaches – the big event that gives us an opportunity to get out and about and tell the story of the platform, current and future. This year Tech.Days will run from 23-25 May at a venue in London. It’s an event for both developer and IT professionals...

Looks like I’ll be presenting on the Tech Days Online Conference “Build an app for that” on 20th January 2011. It’s an online conference featuring demo-rich sessions on building applications for the browser, Windows 7, and Windows Phone 7. The online day will offer three tracks, letting you choose which...

I’ve created a list of my favourite PDC10 videos for next week’s MSDN Flash and thought I’d share it here first so you get early access. The Future of C# and Visual Basic The Future of F# Lambdas, Lambdas Everywhere LINQ, Take Two – Realizing the LINQ to Everything Dream Inside Internet Explorer 9 Performance...

A full week of activities for both Developers and ITPros from 12-16th April. From the dev perspective, days are themed as: VS2010 Launch VS2010 and .NET 4 The Essential MIX Windows 7 Applications Windows Phone All the Microsoft events take place in London at either the Vue Cinema...

My blog reader’s bursting at the seams so I thought I’d try and play catch-up this morning – not quite down to a 0 inbox but not a bad effort. Here are a few things that grabbed me: ASP.NET Related WebForms aren’t dead – Dave Sussman has his say on Web Forms vs MVC ASP.NET MVC 2 – A few posts...

Inspired by Eric doing this first , I thought I’d dig out my most popular posts of 2009. Most popular by average time on page An Introduction to the IE8 Developer Tools (Posted in April) Dominick Baier on Identity, Geneva and OpenID (Posted in April) ASP.NET MVC and iWantGreatCare.org (Posted in May...

Yes, it’s that time of year again when March (and MIX) seem to be both in the distant future and almost upon us at the same time. The conference is billed as: “A 3 day conference for web designers and developers building the world's most innovative web sites.” But it’s even broader than that. If I understood...

If you want to access Windows 7 features like Jump Lists, Libraries, Common File Dialogs, Sensor Platform, Power Management etc from managed code then you need to get your hands on the Windows API Code Pack for Microsoft .NET Framework. Read all about it and download it here Might try and have a play...

I’m sure this is documented somewhere but as I’ve just run into it I thought I would share. As I’m sure you know, Windows 7 (and IIRC Windows Vista) will generate a backup for you in a VHD format. When I was rebuilding my machine earlier this week, I decided to do a full machine backup and simply mount...

I’d already started to install Windows 7 as a “host OS” on an old machine simply to be able to use boot from VHD to fire up an existing (VHD based) Windows 7 installation when I stopped myself with the thought “surely you don’t need to install a whole OS just to be able to use boot from VHD”. I was right...

A little while ago I wrote about how impressed I was with boot from VHD in Windows 7 . This morning I was trying to convince Mike that using this technique with a base Windows 7 VHD and differencing disks would be a great way to get VS2010 Beta1 and Beta2 (when it arrives) installed on his machine. ...

Some time back I did a video and some demos on how to create IE8 accelerators, search providers and web slices based around a traffic information site I called Trafficify (I know, it’s not pretty, it was never meant to be published but Ian wanted it up on the IE Add-On Gallery so up it went). Since then...

I should have done it earlier and I’m kicking myself now. After Eric mentioned Scott Hanselman’s posts and then we had a team chat with James and Andrew I was intrigued enough to give it a go. This morning I took the plunge, following the instructions in Scott’s posts . Now I’m completely converted....

I’m one of those people who got on okay with Vista on the whole. I enjoyed its new look and feel, it seldom let me down (can’t remember the last time it did) and performance is excellent on the machines I run it on. That said, Windows 7 is just superb. Everything just works beautifully, I like the gestures...

There’s a great post on the Windows 7 team blog by Yochay Kiriaty entitled “ Is Your Application Ready for Windows 7 RTM? ”. It not only covers common compatibility issues but goes on to discuss optimising applications for Windows 7, taking advantage of features like the new taskbar, libraries, power...

Yesterday saw the much-debated (in the blogosphere at least) milestone of RTM (release to manufacturing) for Windows 7. I like to think of it as a big green button with the word “Go!” on it. More likely it’s a length document requiring sign-off from a dozen different stakeholders. Any-which-ways, what...

I’ve just been reading about a new feature in Windows 7 RC – Remote Media Streaming . This reminds me of Orb which I’ve previously used with some success on my Media Centre. I can still remember being at TechReady (an internal Microsoft conference) in Seattle when, during an idle moment, I decided to...

As a follow up to my previous post , I thought I’d try and give you an idea of the Virtual PC Beta experience in Windows 7 RC if you haven’t seen it yet. For one thing, there were parts of it I found less than intuitive. I started by running the appropriate installer to get Virtual PC Beta on my system...

I went along to Liam Westley’s excellent talk on virtualisation at Developer Day Scotland where he piqued my interest in the subject all over again. With Windows 7 RC I now have the option of installing Virtual PC Beta though I’m not clear if I can run my Virtual PC 2007 VMs in this environment (and...