Eric Denekamp

The word is out

Eric Denekamp — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:13:56 GMT

http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/default.aspx talks about release dates of Windows 7. For English and Dutch 22 oktober is the date…

Non-Professional again.

Eric Denekamp — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:52:16 GMT

Some time ago I blogged about the Microsoft Certified Non-Professional, server virtualization. to complete your certifications, you should become Microsoft Certified Non-Professional, desktop virtualization:

Fishing

Eric Denekamp — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 09:20:31 GMT

This morning I was going through my private mail, and I ran into the following message. it imediately triggered the alert FISHING in my head: look at the marked items. something tells me this is from somebody with a Cyrillic keyboard or setup… I so speak a little Russian.

Gestures in Windows 7

Eric Denekamp — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 13:08:26 GMT

On soapbox is a nice video displaying the new gestures feature in Windows 7.

Windows 7 Touch Gestures

Another video is about Surface Globe:

Windows 7 Touch - Globe Application

A world without clicks

Eric Denekamp — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 04:43:21 GMT

I am one of those people that wants to try (almost) everything in the digital world. so I also use twitter. In exploring this i ran in to the following site: http://dontclick.it/

I have to say: on one hand it is very nice, on the other hand, I am missing the clicking links…

Please try it for yourself and let me know how you experience it.

New server

Eric Denekamp — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 11:14:36 GMT

To the people reading my blog through the web interface: we have a New server that is running our blogs now. this migration broke the way a lot of news items in the sidebar of my blog were shown. we are working on it. in the meantime, I hope you will keep reading this blog.

For those reading this through some kind of RSS reader, there seem to be some changes in being possible to comment on posts through those readers…

enjoy..

When is it secure

Eric Denekamp — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 11:12:26 GMT

While setting up a mailbox for the whole family I encountered the following:

It looks silly, I started sniffing of course to see what went over the line. It is as safe as it can get. This is what happens:

The validation form is SSL. This is what you see in the network traffic as well: a nice SSL session setup and than only encrypted traffic.

My problem with this way of securing traffic is: how do you ENSURE (as a user) that SSL is kicking in. Security is a thing for ALL parties. I as a user MUST check my part: where do I leave my credentials, and of course the server (company I want to leave my credentials) that they will be secured and not readable in transit. KPN does his part very well here, but they disable My part, because I do not want to go to the source of the website to check whether I am leaving my credentials in the right hands.

Would it help to mail this team?

I hope they will change this, for this may confuse everybody who was made aware of SSL during the last years. Make the whole page use SSL, than it SHOWS that you could leave your credentials here…

Windows 7 Shortcuts

Eric Denekamp — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 10:12:00 GMT

Thanks to My colleague Martijn, the following Windows 7 Shortcut list started. I will try to keep it updated.

nice 2 know:

Windows 7 beta 1 includes some handy new shortcut key combinations that allow you to navigate and manage the Windows workspace more efficiently. Here are 10 new Windows 7 shortcuts that will help you speed up your workflow (“Win” means the Windows Key):

Win+Home: Clear all but the active window

Win+Space: All windows become transparent so you can see through to the desktop

Win+Up arrow: Maximize the active window

Win+Down arrow: Minimize the active window or restore the window if it's maximized

Win+Left/Right arrows: Dock the active window to each side of the monitor

Win+Shift+Left/Right arrows: If you've got dual monitors, this will move the active window to the adjacent monitor

Win+T: Shift focus to and scroll through items on the taskbar

Win+P: Adjust presentation settings for your display

Win+(+/-): Zoom in/out

Shift+Click a taskbar item: Open a new instance of that particular application

Nice Promo

Eric Denekamp — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 09:55:00 GMT

While searching for some Sizing tools, My eye was attracted to the following “Add”:

I Like this, go check it out…

Update: I forgot to update the link, now it works... (I hope)

Booting from VHD inconsistencies

Eric Denekamp — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 06:55:06 GMT

As you might have read, I am a little bit involved in trying to boot from VHD, and thus have tried a lot of things to get it working.

One thing struck me during this process: the inconsistency between the bcdedit when booting from the DVD of windows 7 and the bcdedit that is installed with the OS itself.

In this blogpost I wrote about booting from differencing VHD. and talked about how to set it up in the bootmenu:

BCDedit /set {NEWGUID} device file=d:\vhd\seq.vhd

This is the syntax that is needed to get it working from the DVD. Afterwards I tried this from a running Windows 7. I noticed that I HAD to use the following:

BCDedit /set {NEWGUID} device VHD=d:\vhd\seq.vhd

I Expect that Microsoft will see this inconsistency and fix this, I think that both BCDEdit options should be the same. I filed this as an issue so let’s see them fix this in any future version.

Bummer…

Eric Denekamp — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 07:17:00 GMT

I was investigating my plans for today and I came across an Application Virtualization document: Infrastructure Planning and Design.

It is a nice document, and if you are planning on implementing App-V it is a must read. for me it was a moment of deception. I was hoping that anno 2008/2009 Microsoft recognized that Clients could be 64 bits enabled. But no chance.

It says in the chapter Client and Sequencer Considerations:

Note that App-V clients, including terminal servers, are limited to 32-bit operating systems.

I do not understand the fact that there is no Support for 64 bit OS’s. I understand that if you want to deliver streamed applications you do not want to have the hassle of streaming every application in 64 bits AND 32 bits, and thus you might only offer 32 bit applications. But I ran a 32 bit Office before on my 64 bit OS’s. please make at least the client 64 bit compatible. The application lives inside his own world (his bubble) so it should not be a big bother to trick him into seeing just a 32 bit environment…

At this moment when buying new hardware i think it is a waste of resources to buy 64 bits hardware and then installing a 32 bit OS on it.

This is just my 2 cents worth.

Boot from VHD (Disclaimer)

Eric Denekamp — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 06:51:39 GMT

I get a lot of questions on Booting from VHD to older (read: other that Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2) Operating systems. for those people: mind this: be aware that this feature needs both support from your boot mechanism, AND the OS you are booting... This means, if it was not supported in the OS you are trying to boot, it will not work when using the bootmanager from Windows 7. The bootmanager only opens up the VHD file and points to the file necessary to proceed booting. If that file does not have knowledge on how to handle VHD files natively, it will fail.

My New Windows 7 Setup booting from VHD (part 3)

Eric Denekamp — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 14:14:37 GMT

Time to install the sequencer now. I need a specific disk to sequence to, So i thought I can sequence to my physical disk, but also a VHD, so I created a Q drive that simply consists of a expandable VHD file, and attached that to the sequencer installation. ( create vdisk…. and select vdisk… and attach vdisk)

A Hickup appears: the sequencer needs the visual c++ 2005 SP1 package to be installed, but the one supplied is only x86 and you might guess what version I am running… Lucky for me I have network here, I thought… but to no avail…installing the x64 version does not remove the block to install the sequencer.

It looks like I am on a dead end street (at least if you look at the desired configuration here… )

If I can install the client I am where I want to be, for in that case i’ll sequence my apps on any other machine I can install the sequencer to. but this also fails on the same redistributable… let’s see if I can trick him into accepting the redistributable….

I’ll keep you posted.

My New Windows 7 Setup booting from VHD (part 2)

Eric Denekamp — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 13:12:00 GMT

Because I am running from the one and only installation on my machine, and I want to run the sequencer installation from a differencing vhd, Reboot with the DVD to get to diskpart so I can create differencing vhd files against a VHD that is not used.

Start the diskpart application like i described in my previous post.

Create differencing disks; create vdisk file=“d:\vhd\seq.vhd” parent=d:\vhd\win7.vhd

Exit diskpart, copy the current GUID entry to a new one: bcdedit /copy {GUID} /d “description between quotes”

Edit the device and osdevice registration of that GUID entry.

BCDedit /set {NEWGUID} device file=d:\vhd\seq.vhd

BCDedit /set {NEWGUID} osdevice file=d:\vhd\seq.vhd

There are a lot of posts on the internet about this differencing disk setup, that tell you to use the option vhd= in place of file=, for me this did not work. it seems that for me the option is file=. (an example I like about it and something that helped me here is this discussion…)

Until now everything seems to work, i got to choose the newly created option in my boot menu, and it starts up and I get to log on.

The next step will be installing the sequencer for App-V.

My New Windows 7 Setup booting from VHD (part 1)

Eric Denekamp — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 08:16:00 GMT

I am building my new setup for windows 7. My idea is that I will have only a VHD with windows 7 on my laptop where I will boot from. My applications will be available through App-V, and will be on my Physical drive. Thus enabling me to swap OS-s without the hassle of reinstalling everything as soon as a new version of win 7 releases..

I started of by booting from DVD, during the first install window (just after selecting input locale and language, I did a <Shift>+<F10> this gave me the command prompt I needed. I opened Diskpart, typed: select disk=0 to select the physical drive in my Laptop, List Partition to see on which partition my current install is, select partition=2, formatted it, Format.

When the format was ready, I created and attached the VHD file to install to: create vdisk file=”d:\vhd\win7.vhd” maximum=17000 type=expandable the vhd folder I create from command prompt, for I did not want my VHD in the root of the drive. I tried calling the VHD file Windows 7.vhd, windows_7.vhd, but I got errors telling me that the vhd cannot be installed in the windows folder. Wen I renamed the file win7.vhd everything went OK. so it seems that in diskpart the term windows is a reserved and protected term.

With select vdisk file=d:\vhd\win7.vhd I selected the just created VHD file, and with attach vdisk I “mounted” the Vhd to make it available for the installation process. now I exited diskpart and the command prompt and got back to the installation process. from here is is just installation as usual, the only thing is: do a custom install and select the “disk” you just created.