Brian Keller: Technical Evangelist for Team System

You may have noticed that there is not a native 64-bit version of Visual Studio 2010. With all of the rage around 64-bit these days, what gives?

I’ve been getting that question a lot lately, and as it turns out there are some really good reasons for this (some of which I understand, and a few of which are beyond my scope of comprehension, but I have faith in the smart people who do). Rico Mariani, who is the architect for Visual Studio, was recently answering this question on an internal discussion thread and was kind enough to post a blog entry describing the rationale. Read more…

The instructions in this blog post are meant to accompany 10-4 Episode 20: Downloading and Installing Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1. Please view that video for additional context, including a step-by-step walkthrough for installing Visual Studio 2010 beta 1.

I suggest using a download manager for these files since they are very large. My download manager of choice is Free Download Manager. You can use your own favorite download manager, but you may need to adapt the instructions below as appropriate.

1. Download and install Free Download Manager. This utility provides:
   • Auto-resume support for interrupted downloads.
   • Multiple simultaneous download streams for (usually) a much faster download experience.
   • As the name implies, it's completely free.
2. Select the following list of URL’s and copy (CTRL+C) them to your clipboard. You can select all three files at the same time.
   http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/5/c/85c7cca1-7d25-4c9b-85fc-5e837a393a0b/WS08_RTM_x86_EnterpriseVHD.exe
   http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/1/8/518B204C-1DF9-4666-B8D4-FAC0375FADB2/VS2010Beta1ENU_VSTS.iso
   http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/1/7/61788179-96DF-4E60-B65A-A060F28D1F22/VS2010Beta1ENU_TFS.iso
3. Launch the user interface for Free Download Manager (either from the Start Menu or via the system tray icon if FDM is already running).
4. Click File -> Import -> Import List of URLs from Clipboard.
5. When prompted for a download group, accept the default ("Other") and click OK.
6. You are now free to minimize Free Download Manager while the files download. By default, they will be saved to c:\downloads.
7. You will also need to download the SQL Server 2008 Trial. This file must be downloaded via an ActiveX download manager. Visit http://sqlserver.dlservice.microsoft.com/download/9/C/0/9C036510-3218-4258-8B03-67DC1D6A497C/SQLFULL_ENU.iso?lcid=1033 and follow the prompts (you will need to allow an ActiveX control to be installed).

If you want to learn more about how to effectively implement Visual Studio Team System there is a great set of online workshops happening now which are getting rave reviews. What I really like about this set of content is that it’s not just your traditional marketing “feature dump” of what’s in each Team System box. Rather it’s practical guidance that you can take back to your teams today in order to help you more efficiently implement the software development improvements enabled by Team System.

Here are the details:

Microsoft has just made available a free resource to help our customers in understanding and implementing Team Foundation Server. The ALM Catalyst Live Workshops will help make sure your development projects are advancing with the greatest possible efficiency, consistency, quality, and time to market.

ALM Catalyst Live Workshops are a series of two-hour interactive workshops; repeated over a period of sixteen weeks giving you the flexibility to fit with your schedule.

The ALM Catalyst Live Workshops are designed to enable development teams and achieve these key goals:

· Understand the potential of Team Foundation Server in the enterprise

· Identify gaps in current use of Team Foundation Server

· Create higher-quality, applause-generating software—with less time and stress

Topics covered include:

· Keeping Projects on the Rails (Reporting)

· Avoiding Unpleasant Surprises (Deployment)

· Quality Matters (Testing)

· Making Process Stick

These workshops will help you understand and implement Team Foundation Server (TFS) to help simplify and accelerate the software development process and improve quality for teams of all sizes.

LEARN MORE AND REGISTER FOR FREE LIVE WORKSHOPS AT:

http://www.microsoft.com/click/almcatalyst/LiveWorkshops.aspx

Wow, time flies. I can't believe we've already been doing this for a year!

Our anniversary episode was a lot of fun and we were lucky to have Scott Hanselman drop on by to help us celebrate.

If you're not already watching This Week on Channel 9, you can start by visiting the top-level home for the show here: http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/This+Week+On+Channel+9/

And if you use an RSS aggregator (or iTunes, Zune, etc.) you can subscribe to each episode by following the appropriate link next to where it says "Subscribe:"

To another great year! If you see news happening which would be worth spreading to a developer audience, please let us know! BestShow AT microsoft DOT com.

4/30/2009 Update: Now that the Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) is available to MSDN / Technet Subscribers, and soon to the rest of the world, this post is starting to get a lot more traffic. The steps outlined in this article still apply to the RC, however you will need to substitute step #2 with the appropriate steps based on where you are downloading the RC from.

Yesterday we made the Windows 7 Beta available for public download. Hopefully you’re as excited as I am that the beta is here! The Windows 7 Beta is already getting some rave reviews for its new features, performance, and stability. But it is a beta, and with that comes the potential risk that some things may not work as well as they will in the final release.

If you have a spare test machine that supports the system requirements then I highly recommend installing the beta on your test machine. But if not, one way to mitigate the risks of using pre-release software is to use virtualization technology such as Microsoft Virtual PC 2007.

Creating a Windows 7 Beta 1 virtual image (aka virtual machine) is fairly similar to the process you would go through to install the Windows 7 Beta “on the metal” (non-virtualized). But for people who have never used Virtual PC before there are some differences.

Here is how to install the Windows 7 Beta with Virtual PC 2007.

1. Download and install Virtual PC 2007 SP1. If you already have Virtual PC 2007 installed, make sure you have SP1 by clicking on Help –> About and confirming that the version number is at least 6.0.192.0. If not, then you can follow the same link to upgrade to SP1.

2. Download the 32-bit edition of the Windows 7 Beta from here. The file is about 2.5GB, so while you are waiting for the download to finish it’s a good time to go whet your appetite by watching some Windows 7 preview videos here and here.

Note: It is important that you download the 32-bit edition of the Beta even if you’re running on 64-bit hardware since Virtual PC 2007 only supports 32-bit guest operating systems. If you want to try the 64-bit edition in a virtualized environment, then I suggest using Hyper-V to do so (if I get a chance I’ll write up a separate blog post for Hyper-V, as this article applies specifically to Virtual PC 2007).

Note 2: Be sure to record the Windows 7 Beta product key you are given since you’ll need this later.

3. Open Virtual PC (Start –> Programs –> Microsoft Virtual PC) and click New… to launch the New Virtual Machine Wizard. Click Next.

4. Ensure that “Create a virtual machine” is selected and click Next.

5. Provide a name and location for your virtual machine and click Next. I suggest saving this in the same location that you will create your VHD file (step 8).

6. The next dialog prompts you for the operating system you will be running. Since Virtual PC 2007 SP1 isn’t familiar with Windows 7, just select Windows Vista from this list. Click Next.

7. The next dialog asks you how much RAM you would like to assign to your virtual machine. This is always a balancing act to determine the right amount of RAM to allocate to your virtual machine and how much to allow your host operating system to utilize, but as a rule of thumb I suggest allocating 50% of your physical RAM to your virtual machine. For example, if you have 1GB of RAM in your computer, try assigning 512MB to the virtual machine. Click Next when you have allocated your RAM.

8. Select “A new virtual hard disk” and click Next.

9. Give your new virtual hard disk a name and location. I suggest using a location that has at least 16GB of disk space available. An external (e.g. USB2) hard drive works well for this purpose since it’s portable and it allows your computer to load balance disk IO between your system drive and the external drive. For “Virtual hard disk size” leave the default value and click Next when ready.

10. Click Finish.

11. Your Virtual PC Console should now have a new entry representing your new virtual machine. Highlight this entry and click Start.

12. Your virtual machine should now boot up and look for an operating system to boot to. Since you haven’t installed an operating system yet, it will eventually time out with the message below. It might take a minute or two to time out while it looks for a network device to boot off of, so be patient.

13. Now from the top of the Virtual PC 2007 window click on CD –> Capture ISO Image and select the Windows 7 beta ISO image you downloaded in step 2. It should be called 7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULFRE_EN_DVD.iso. This will mount the ISO image as a DVD drive available to your virtual machine.

14. Now simply select your virtual machine and press <Enter>. If you’ve done everything right so far, then your virtual machine should now launch the Windows 7 Beta setup!

15. The first few screens should be self-explanatory. When asked what type of installation you want, be sure to choose “Custom (advanced)” since you are not upgrading from a prior version of Windows.

16. The rest of the setup steps should be fairly straightforward, so I won’t document them all here. But you may notice that Virtual PC “captures” your mouse when you click inside of the window and you won’t be able to move your cursor outside of the virtual machine. We’ll address this later (see “Virtual Machine Additions” below), but for now you can press the <right-ALT> key to release your mouse pointer. That’s the ALT key to the right of your space bar.

Enabling Networking: You will need to enable networking for your virtual machine in order to activate the Windows 7 Beta with the product key you received when you downloaded it in step 2. In order to enable networking, click Edit –> Settings –> Networking. If “Number of network adapters” is set to “0” then you’ll need to increase this value to “1” the next time you shut down your virtual machine since you can’t modify this value while your virtual machine is running. Next, select your physical network adapter from the “Adapter 1” drop-down. Click OK when finished. Your virtual machine should now be capable of using your network adapter.

Note: If you are completing these steps on your work machine, be sure to first check with your IT staff to determine if you’re allowed to enable networked virtual machines. Some companies have a policy against this to help protect against the risk of viruses. If you don’t activate the Windows 7 Beta you can still try it out, but it will stop working after 30 days.

Ctrl+Alt+Del to log in: When you get Windows 7 installed and it’s time to finally sign in it will expect you to send the usual Ctrl+Alt+Del characters to log in. But since you are running within Virtual PC, you will need to click Action –> Ctrl+Alt+Del in order to send this command to your guest virtual machine instead of your host operating system.

Virtual Machine Additions: After you log in for the first time I suggest installing the Virtual Machine Additions. This will allow your mouse to move in and out of the virtual machine without the need to press <right-Alt>, in addition to some other integration enhancements between your host and guest operating systems. To install virtual machine additions simply click Action –> Install or Update Virtual Machine Additions and follow the prompts. You will need to reboot in order for these changes to take effect.

Congratulations! You now have the Windows 7 Beta installed in a virtual machine using Virtual PC 2007. Remember that this won’t run quite as fast as Windows would run if you installed it into a non-virtual environment, but virtualization is a great way to try out pre-release software in a risk-free environment. I hope you have as much fun exploring Windows 7 as I have been. Bookmark http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/ for all of the latest news, and don’t forget to send us your feedback by clicking the icon on the desktop (you will need to have networking enabled in order for this to work).

Brian Randell has posted a new batch of Visual Studio Team System 2008 VPC's. As has become my tradition, I've updated my earlier blog post with direct links to the files for using a download manager. Please see:

• A More Reliable and Faster Download Experience for VS2010/ VS08 VPC's

Since VPC's are usually multi-gigabyte downloads I highly recommend using these instructions for a better download experience.

Enjoy!

Wow - I just took inventory of the videos we have already produced on Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0 and it's a bit staggering!

If you have some downtime over the holidays and you're interested in ramping up on some of the great new capabilities coming in Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0, here are my top picks in the video category.

- Visual Studio Team System 2010 Week on Channel 9: 20 videos spanning the wide range of capabilities coming in Visual Studio Team System

- Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework Week on Channel 9: 14 more videos on everything from language improvements (C# 4.0, VB10, VC++ 10) to core IDE improvements.

- PDC2008 Session Recordings: Every single one of the 207 sessions and keynotes presented at PDC.

- 10-4: This is a brand new video podcast series. Each week we'll bring you a look at a different feature or set of features coming in Visual Studio 2010 and/or the .NET Framework 4.0.

Phew - that's quite a list! Don't forget to also spend some time enjoying your friends and family over the holiday season.

I am pleased to announce a new weekly show on Channel 9 where you can learn about what's coming in Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0!

http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/10-4/

Each week, myself and fellow technical evangelists Drew Robbins, Jonathan Carter and Jason Olson will bring you a new video screencast dedicated at helping you learn more about what's coming in Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0.

If you like what you see, be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed to catch new shows each week.

Cameron just kicked off what promises to be a great blog post series on what's coming in Visual Studio Team System 2010 Architecture.

Check out the first post here, and be sure to bookmark his blog if you like what you see. I know I'll be following it closely!

Today we published a new CTP Virtual PC image of Visual Studio 2010. I hope you enjoy this pre-release as much as I have been! It's still early since it's a CTP, but I think it's our best CTP yet. I think you'll like the walkthroughs which are included in the VPC image.

I've authored two blog entries which might help you when downloading and running this VPC image.

• A More Reliable and Faster Download Experience for VS2010/ VS08 VPC's (this is an update to an older blog post I wrote which now includes links to the new VPC)
• Visual Studio 2010 CTP VPC: Dealing with Activation Messages
• New: Grant Holliday's post on getting the CTP VPC to work with Hyper-V: http://blogs.msdn.com/granth/archive/2008/11/03/converting-vs2010-ctp-to-hyper-v.aspx

Dec 12, 2008 Update: We're getting very close to the 1/1/2009 expiration date of the CTP, as outlined below in the section entitled "Visual Studio 2010 CTP Expiration." For the best experience with this release please make sure you follow the steps in that section ASAP to disable your VPC clock synchronization. - Brian

This week, in conjunction with PDC 2008, we are releasing the first Community Technology Preview of Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0.  You can download the release here (also see my download manager post here for a better download experience). This is an exciting release, and is jammed packed with a ton of great new features. One really nice thing about this release is the amount of work that the product teams put into writing walkthroughs which will guide you through most of the new features. I believe this will be our highest-quality Community Technology Preview yet, and we're excited to start getting your feedback on it.

This CTP is being delivered as a Virtual PC (VPC) image that you can download and run locally. In the future, we will provide a way for you to install the software on your own machine, but given where we're at with building the product the setup experience isn't quite ready. The VPC image gives us a great alternative for getting the software to you as early as possible.

This blog post is about the Activation messages you will encounter with this VPC image. In most cases, you can just ignore these messages and continue using the image. These messages are due to the way in which Windows Server 2008 and Office 2007 evaluation software works. For obvious reasons, our release criteria for distributing VPC images requires that we only ship trial software instead of fully licensed software. In the past, Windows evaluations could be configured to expire on a precise date. Due to changes in Windows Server 2008, we no longer have a firm expiration date, but there are Activation reminder messages which will appear while you are running the VPC. The good news is that these Activation messages will not cause Windows to stop working; however, you will have to dismiss some Activation messages from time to time. Note that Word/Excel/Project and Visual Studio may eventually stop working as explained below, but I have provided workarounds in all instances.

Activation Toast
While running this VPC image you will encounter a "toast" from time to time asking you to activate Windows.
Workaround: You can simply ignore this toast, or click the "X" to dismiss it.

"Activate Windows Now"
Starting sometime in November 2008, you will receive a modal dialog every time you boot this VPC image.
Workaround: To continue, simply click on "Activate Later." You will have to wait a few seconds before this option becomes available.

Word/Excel Activation
The trial versions of Word and Excel which are installed in this VPC image will only work 20 times. Every time you launch Word or Excel you will be reminded of this. After 20 uses, most Word and Excel functionality will stop working. You can still read Word and Excel documents, but you will be unable to use any of the Ribbon functionality. This means that some of the walkthroughs dealing with Word or Excel will not work.
Workaround: The first 20 times you launch Word or Excel, you can simply click "Cancel" to dismiss the activation dialog. After that, if you wish to continue using Word or Excel you will need to revert to a fresh copy of this VPC image. You can download the original VPC here.

After 20 uses, the Ribbon functionality in Word and Excel will become greyed out:

Project Activation
The Microsoft Project trial installed in this VPC image utilizes a similar limited-use mechanism to that of Word and Excel. Project will work 25 times. After that, you can no longer use Project in this VPC image. It is recommended that you only launch Project if you intend to use one of the walkthroughs that require it.
Workaround: If you need to use Project more than 25 times you should revert to a fresh copy of this VPC image. You can download the original VPC here.

Visual Studio 2010 CTP Expiration
Finally, the Visual Studio 2010 CTP will eventually expire. After January 1, 2009, you will no longer be able to launch the Visual Studio 2010 CTP. This is due to a hard-coded expiration date in this CTP. CTP's are pre-release software, so they aren't designed to run forever.
Workaround: If you need to continue using this VPC image after January 1, 2009, you will need to roll back the system clock in your VPC to an earlier date. In order to do so, please follow the instructions post here. Note that you should not roll back your system clock to a date prior to your last interaction with Team Foundation Server, because otherwise Team Foundation Server will get confused. If possible, I would suggest rolling back to a clean copy of the VPC (uncompress the original) and immediately disabling your clock prior to launching it for the first time.

Additional Notes
- No Internet Connection: This VPC image ships with Internet connections disabled. It may be tempting to want to enable an Internet connection on this VPC image in order to supply your own product key and activate this image. However, due to security reasons we strongly advise you not to connect this VPC image to any networks (intranet, Internet, etc.). There are also naming conflicts which can occur if you have multiple VPC images on the same network. Changing the computer name of this machine is not a suitable workaround, since it will break many of the walkthroughs and services.
- Hyper-V: This image was designed to work with Virtual PC 2007 SP1. We have had reports from people who have successfully converted this image to work with Hyper-V (see Grant Holliday's blog), but this may result in additional Activation implications which differ from the scenarios documented above.

In Summary
These Activation messages might seem a bit "broken" at first, but by following the workarounds explained above we hope you'll have a great experience with this VPC image. We are excited to show you a preview of what we're building, and we welcome your feedback! To provide us with your feedback, or get additional assistance using this VPC, please visit http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=131310.

This week is Visual Studio Team System 2010 Week on Channel 9!

Every day this week we will be posting a new batch of Channel 9 videos which highlight various scenarios being enabled by Visual Studio Team System 2010. Bookmark this post which will be updated with links to each day's videos as they come online.

“Humanized Screencasts”
The format used for the majority of these Channel 9 videos is one I’m calling “humanized screencasts” (see an example here). Beth Massi pioneered this approach on Channel 9 which blends live-action video with desktop screen captures. The result is a video which maintains the edgy, casual format of traditional Channel 9 interviews with the high-quality screen capture approach of a screencast.

Visual Studio Topic Area (http://channel9.msdn.com/VisualStudio/) NEW!
This week we also launched a new Visual Studio “topic area” on Channel 9 for keeping up with all of the latest Visual Studio and .NET Framework Channel 9 content. This topic area will be maintained by myself, Drew Robbins, Jonathan Carter, Jason Olson and Dan Fernandez to provide a “one stop shop” for Niners to catch up on Visual Studio and .NET Framework content being posted to Channel 9 and elsewhere in the community.

I am pleased to report that we have just published a whitepaper I wrote which details how the Visual Studio Team System Rangers* team worked with Infosys to integrate Team Foundation Server with their in-house project management system. By integrating the two systems they can allow their project managers using their internal project management system to work seamlessly with the development team who is using Team Foundation Server. Updates between the two systems happen automatically as a result of the integration work.

While we have talked about Infosys's adoption of Team Foundation Server in the past with a case study, this whitepaper delves into the details of that implementation and is a suggested read for anybody pursuing such integration with Team Foundation Server.

*The Visual Studio Team System Rangers are part of Jeff Beehler's team. In addition to being a team of highly-skilled consultants who specialize in Visual Studio Team System, they have the added advantage of working for the product group. This puts them on the cutting edge of solution development, and oftentimes the work they do to extend or customers Visual Studio Team System ends up laying the groundwork for features which ultimately find their way into the official product. Jeff has blogged about just a few of the many projects the Rangers have undertaken.

One of my favorite things to do with my mobile device (I use an HTC Dash Smartphone running Windows Mobile 6.1) is reading and deleting e-mail in my spare time - while on the bus, waiting for the elevator, walking between meetings, whatever. Real e-mail authoring (anything more than a sentence or two) still needs to take place on my laptop or desktop, but I've found that over 80% of the e-mail I receive simply requires me to read it, maybe send a quick reply, and delete it. I can do all of this in my spare time on my mobile device, which means that by the time I get back to my desk my Inbox only contains that 20% of mail which requires me to type a full-blown response on my keyboard. I'd estimate that this saves me a few hours a week.

So... why the blog post? What's the life hack? If you already own a mobile device with a data plan you're probably already doing the above.

One limitation of every mobile device I've seen is that it doesn't support permanent deletion. That is, "I want to delete this permanently from my mail server - don't just send it to the deleted items folder." My primary reason for wanting to permanently delete some items is the file size. Yeah, I'm sure somebody finds that 8MB spreadsheet from Bob in accounting useful, but not me, and I don't want it cluttering my Exchange Server storage quota (or Hotmail quota, or Gmail, whatever - even with gigs of storage space this fills up after enough emails from Bob in accounting). In the past, this has prevented me from being as successful as I'd like with my "read and delete" strategy since I later spend time re-visiting these emails and trying to remember that I was ready to permanently delete them.

Hence I devised the following simple but effective "life hack" to help me permanently delete items from my Inbox. Hopefully it's useful for others!

Step 1. Create a folder in your Inbox where you will store items that should be permanently deleted. I called mine __________PERMDELETE. The underscores are optional, but they are there so that this folder appears at the top of my Inbox tree and I won't have to thumb through lots of other folders to get to this one.

Step 2. Using your mobile device, move items into this folder which you want to permanently delete. On my Windows Mobile device I click "Menu -> Move -> Thumb-down once -> Select" - it's a 2-second operation per item.

Step 3. Periodically when you are at your laptop/desktop simply visit this folder, press CTRL+A (select all), then SHIFT-DEL (permanently delete). You could also configure auto-archive to periodically permanently delete these items.

That's it! I've been using this process for a few months and believe it or not it dramatically streamlines my email management. You could use a similar process to create folders such as "______READMORE", for items that require a full-screen browsing experience, or "______READATWORK" for items which require you to be on your corporate network to act on.

I'm getting ready to head off on vacation for a few weeks. I'll be backpacking through Patagonia with some friends.

But while I'll be off the grid for a few weeks, I won't be without some cool tech gadgets. I just installed the newly free TrueSpace 7.6 on my laptop to play with on the loooong plane ride and while I have some other downtime. My Zune is literally FILLED with video podcasts that I found on Zune Marketplace. And I'm stocked up on rechargeable batteries. What can I say... I'm a geek? But I'll also be hiking a few hundred miles over the next few weeks, so at least I won't be stuck at a desk!

Here's an interview I did for Channel 10 last week showing off some of the gadgets we're taking on the trip. See you in late August!