Yazan-R's blog

Exam frenzy

Update: passed 3 more exams during week :)

I'm currently attending an internal Microsoft conference called TechReady. After registering today, I figured that I had some free time that I could use for certification exams. Prometric have set up a exam room at the conference so I went and registered for a bunch of exams I've been wanting to take but never had the time.

Results for the first day:

Passed 4 7 exams !!

70-630 TS: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Configuring

70-631 TS: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Configuring

70-235 TS: Developing Business Process and Integration Solutions Using Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006

70-301 Managing, Organizing, and Delivering IT Projects by Using Microsoft Solutions Framework 3.0

70-510 TS: Microsoft Team Foundation Server - Configuration and Development

70-541 TS: Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 - Application Development

70-542 TS: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 - Application Development

I'm really glad about these results. I still have 3 more exams scheduled for this week. Who knows, if things go well I will probably schedule some more!

How to get live mesh (build # 0.9.3103.2) working under Windows Server 2008 x64

I've been running windows server 2008 x64 on my HP NC8430 laptop for the past week now and I have to say, its been a mixed ride (I'll leave the details to a separate blog post). One of my must-have's was to get live mesh working (which is not supported yet). After checking on the web and on some internal sites, I managed to get it working. This is not a supported scenario yet so if you want to follow these instructions please note that you're doing it at your own risk.

The main thing to note is that live mesh will not install (build # 0.9.3103.2) with UAC enabled, you will have to disable it in order to get it installed (don't worry, you will be able to re-enable it once it has been installed).

Steps to get live mesh running on Windows Server 2008 x64:

1. Download (do not run) live mesh client from the mesh site, you will need the vista x64 client. save the executable (livemesh.exe) to a local folder on your machine ("c:\downloads" for example) 
2. Disable UAC
   • In order to disable UAC, type msconfig in the start menu and click on msconfig.exe once it's listed

     

   • select tools from the top tabs, and browse down to "Disable UAC" and click on launch.

      

   • Restart your machine
3. once you are logged in to your machine, run cmd.exe
4. browse to the folder where you downloaded livemesh.exe to and execute it through the command prompt with the /force switch.

   

5. You should be able to complete the installation normally after this, remember to restore UAC after completing the setup (same as the steps to disable shown above, only make sure to select enable UAC from msconfig)

   

and that's it, Happy meshing!!!

Hello Web

My name is Yazan Rantawi , and I'm a consultant with Microsoft Services. This is probably my 4th or 5th hello world blog post in the past 4 years, but I have a good feeling about this one. I actually have a lot to write about this time:)

My journey with Microsoft started around a year ago as a Application Development Consultant. My role has given me great exposure to amazing projects being built around the middle east, spanning a large set of technologies and disciplines. In the past year, I have worked (or still working) on some really exciting projects with partners, large enterprise customers and governments across the region.

This blog will follow my current areas of focus, mainly SOA/WCF/BizTalk/ESB as well as MOSS/WSS development, Agile development/MSF/Visual Studio Team System (I know that this seems like a lot of topics, but these are the areas I'm currently covering).

I will be posting to both http://blogs.msdn.com/yazanr and http://yazanr.com,  technical posts are going to go to both blogs with personal posts only going to http://yazanr.com

I'm writing this very first blog post on a plane on route to London right now to catch my connection to Seattle where I will be attending TechReady (a microsoft employee only event similar to Tech-Ed)

Here we go..