Clemens Schotte's Blog

Receive Windows Web Server and SQL Server Web Edition at no cost to host new websites

cschotte — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 14:47:00 GMT

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Native VHD boot

cschotte — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 15:20:00 GMT

Native VHD boot enables a physical machine to be booted directly from a virtual hard disk (VHD) with no requirement for virtualization software (such as Microsoft Virtual PC or Hyper-V). Native VHD boot is made possible with the addition of a new mini-port driver within the Windows 7 operating system which is responsible for all IO operations to and from the disk. Earlier versions of the Windows operating system such as Windows Vista, Windows XP and Windows 2000 do not support Native VHD boot and therefore cannot be used to provide the capabilities described within this document.

With the introduction of native VHD boot, it is now possible to achieve a single image deployment strategy for physical and virtual machines alike. As long as the operating system that resides on the VHD is generalized and hosts either Windows 7 Enterprise, Windows 7 Ultimate or Windows Server 2008 R2 (all versions), it can be used in both environments.

See the blog post from my colleague, Michael Waterman for the complete Windows Native VHD Boot Deployment Scenarios Guide.

VHD mounting under Windows 7

cschotte — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 17:21:00 GMT

Windows 7 has native support for VHD mounting (and booting). In my earlier blog post about VHD mounting under Vista you needed vhdmout.exe from Virtual Server. In Windows 7 you can use Disk Management and/or diskpart to mount VHD’s native!

You can also mount a VHD file in scripts using diskpart. Create a text file with this content:

SELECT VDISK FILE=”some vhd file”
ATTACH VDISK

To attach the VHD image in a script, you have to use “diskpart -s textfile”

Shake that window in Windows 7

cschotte — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 17:12:00 GMT

Windows 7 is smart about windows. Dragging a window to the top of the computer screen maximizes it automatically. Dragging a window to the left or right side of the screen resizes it for side-by-side comparisons to other windows. And moving the mouse to the lower-right corner of the screen makes all open windows transparent. If you shake a window all other windows will minimize, shake the window again and all minimized windows will be visible again.

How to mount a VHD under Vista by double clicking

cschotte — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:51:00 GMT

[for Windows 7 read this post]

In my daily work I use a lot of Virtual PC images (VHD) so my host Vista system will stay clean of beta and test software. To get to the files I stored inside a Virtual PC images I normally start the Virtual PC and drag and drop them to my host system. This can be more efficient using the command line tool VHDMount. You mount the VHD and can read and write the files like a normal hard disk in your host system. By importing a small registry file you don’t need the command line anymore and can mount and unmount (dismount) the VHD.

This is what you need to do to mount a VHD inside Vista by double clicking.

Microsoft Virtual PC

Download "Microsoft Virtual PC 2007" from the following link:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/downloads/virtualpc/default.mspx
Install "Microsoft Virtual PC 2007" normally by double clicking.

Microsoft VHD Mount

VHD Mount is part of "Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1".
Download "Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 - Enterprise Edition" from the following link:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=bc49c7c8-4840-4e67-8dc4-1e6e218acce4&displaylang=en
Install (using the custom setup option) only the VHD Mount tool.

Double clicking VHD integration in Vista

Create a text file and rename it to vhdmount.reg.
Edit the vhdmount.reg file and add the following lines:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Virtual.Machine.HD] [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Virtual.Machine.HD\shell] @="Mount" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Virtual.Machine.HD\shell\Dismount] [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Virtual.Machine.HD\shell\Dismount\command] @="\"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Virtual Server\\Vhdmount\\vhdmount.exe\" /u /c \"%1\"" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Virtual.Machine.HD\shell\Mount] [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Virtual.Machine.HD\shell\Mount\command] @="\"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Virtual Server\\Vhdmount\\vhdmount.exe\" /p \"%1\"" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.vhd] @="Virtual.Machine.HD"
Run the vhdmount.reg file.

Windows Live Writer

cschotte — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 18:07:29 GMT

Writing a blog is now so easy! I use Windows Live Writer to post my messages. You can download it at http://www.windowslive.com/

Making an video player in Silverlight 1.0

cschotte — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 00:27:00 GMT

Silverlight is Microsoft’s next generation rich media platform for the Web. Using Silverlight you can deliver Rich Interactive Applications (RIA) to any platform like Linux, Windows, Mac and more. In this post I will explain how to make a simple video player for Silverlight 1.0 using Microsoft Expression Blend 2.

What tools do you need?

Basically you only need a text editor like Notepad, but to make it more user friendly you use Microsoft Expression Blend 2. You can download Blend and test it for free the first 60 days.
The Silverlight Add-in for your web browser.
A movie to use for this demo.

Let’s make the video player

Start Microsoft Expression Blend 2 and create a new Silverlight 1.0 Application (JavaScript) and give it the name VideoPlayer.

This will create a new Silverlight project and a canvas. We use this canvas to draw or movie and controls on. We need a movie for or video player to play, so we will add one to ore project. Use the dropdown menu of the project to add an existing item and browse for your movie. The movie I used is called demo.wmv, we need this movie name later for the stop and play controls.

Now that you added the movie to the project you can drag and drop the movie form the tree onto the canvas. The canvas is the white rectangle in the middle of Blend. Probably the movie dimensions are too big or too small to fit on the canvas, we will fix this in the XAML of ore page. You can switch to the XAML code using the view tables on the right of the canvas.

In the XAML code we remove, from the MediaElement, the Canvas.Left and Canvas.Right properties so the movie will be in the left upper corner of the canvas. We also need to change is the width and height of ore movie to fit on the canvas. Change the size of the MediaElement to width 640 and height 480 or any size you like.

Lets test the new video player, hit F5 on your keyboard or use the dropdown menu; Project > Test Solution. A new Internet Explorer window will start, showing the new video player and the movie.

But this is not a video player! We need controls to play or stop the movie. Quit Internet Explorer and go back to Blend. Switch to Design mode using the tabs on the right.

Adding controls and functionality

To make it simple we only add a Start and Stop control for our video player. To do this we need two TextBlock controls. Add two TextBlock elements to the canvas and give the TextBlocks a nice place and a name, something like StartButton and StopButton. We also change the movie settings, so it will not start auto playing. Add AutoPlay=”False” to the MediaElement.

Now that we have two controls and the movie is not auto playing any more, we need to add functionality to our controls. If the user clicks on the controls noting will happen. We need to add the event MouseLeftButtonDown.

To handle the events we add to the file Page.xaml.js the following code:

Now we have a simple video player. Test your video player and add more functionality. Let me know what you have done.

VS2008 Launch Conditions and Prerequisites

cschotte — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 12:58:00 GMT

If you are creating a Setup Project in Visual Studio 2008 (or VS2005) to deploy your amazing new application, you need to set which version of the .NET Framework you are targeting. If your application is developed for .NET 2.0 you need to tell the Setup Project to check the target machine for the .NET 2.0 Framework. By default the Setup project will check for .NET 3.5 (in VS2008) even if your application is targeting .NET 2.0.

First you need to set the Prerequisites the Setup Project will install to the target machine (if it is not installed already). This can be done by the Properties windows of the Setup Project.

Now you need to tell the Setup Project which launch conditions you need for the .NET Framework.

This Setup Project will now check the target machine for the .NET 2.0 Framework instead of the .NET 3.5 Framework

You can learn more about launch condition at following link on MSDN.

Vista start menu power button

cschotte — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 10:00:00 GMT

Ever wondered how to change the behavior of the power button in your start menu in Windows Vista? Normally if you press the power button in your start menu the computer will go to sleep and not shutdown complete.

How to change:
Control Panel > System and Maintenance > Change when the computer sleeps > Change advanced power settings

Here you can change the start menu power button to really shut down your computer.

Turning the Pages

cschotte — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 16:09:00 GMT

The British Library is using WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) for presenting 15 of their most precious books virtually in your web browser. This preview version of Turning the Pages 2.0 allows you to 'virtually' turn the pages of their most precious books. You can magnify details, read or listen to expert commentary on each page, and store or share your own notes.

Amazing 3D tour of the space shuttle Endeavour using Photosynth

cschotte — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 15:44:00 GMT

Photosynth is a new technology from Microsoft labs to see and navigate in a 3D world of standard photos in your web browser. Space World is a joint project between NASA, Microsoft and MSNBC and it is using Photosynth to create amazing three-dimensional tours of the space shuttle Endeavour and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center facilities.

In March of this year Microsoft Live Labs Architect, Blaise Aguera y Arcas spoke at the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Conference in Monterey, CA. Blaise demonstrated Seadragon and Photosynth to an enthusiastic audience. More...

First post and welcome

cschotte — Mon, 14 May 2007 11:42:00 GMT

Welcome to my new blog site at MSDN, my name is Clemens Schotte and I’m consultant for Microsoft Services in the Netherlands. On this blog I will post software related articles about .NET and software development in general. Have a nice time reading my blog.