Unlike most other folk I know, I don’t have an XBox 360 – instead, I’m still loving my original black & chunky XBox. 

This is purely for XBox Media Centre (XBMC) – we watch all our TV shows & other media including pictures & MP3’s.

Works nicely with Windows 7 – I have a file share on my PC in the study – and the XBox (XBMC) has a config for the file share :

<bookmark>
    <name>MEDIA</name>
    <path>smb://xbmc:pwd@99.99.99.10/MEDIA/</path>
</bookmark>

This connects using SAMBA, a fairly ancient file share protocol – one of the original and best.   Was essential for UNIX file shares, back in the early 90’s – which I did a fair bit of, before the Windows revolution.

Anyway – Windows 7 just accepts these user connections via “Windows File Sharing” – and all is well.  

Until – Office 2010….  What the ?

Wanting to check out the new features, I installed Office 2010 x64, and was loving the new Outlook, Word and Excel programs.

BUT – when I went to view a TV show from XBMC – it kept prompting me for login and password.  

There had been a power outage – so I re-booted my PC, router & all – to make sure all was OK.  Still no joy.

Checked cables, login accounts, passwords, cables – and via my laptop – and all seemed well.   *ggrrr*

In a “scratch-the-head” moment, I wondered about Office 2010 – uninstalled it & re-booted – and then XBMC could connect to the PC again…!   

Go figure !

I thought I’d prove it again – and installed Office 2010 once more – this time, choosing specific options. 

And – the XBMC setup was fine this time.   *shrug* 

Phew – mission accomplished – I was running out of ideas…

Sorry – but I can’t really remember what options I removed – we only use the home PC for Word, Excel and Outlook – and OneNote.

I ditched Access, InfoPath, SharePoint Workspace – and the DEV bits & pieces.  I’ve got my work laptop for those ones…

So – if you’re like me, and in the dark ages with a trusty on XBox 1, and having troubles with XBMC – might be an Office 2010 Beta issue…(?)

Or – could simply be the Curse Of The Wookie (COTW) at play.

With the recent release of SharePoint 2010 Beta (Beta 2 if you call the initial CTP as the initial Beta), there’s a bunch of folk installing like crazy, keen to have a first look & play with the new product / features.

Being a 64-bit only release, there’s a ‘change in the wind’ as far as how you’d create a SharePoint VM.   Virtual PC has been my friend for soooo long, but no more.  (“It’s not me, it’s you”)

Running Windows 7 on my laptop means that I could either use Virtual Box (Sun) – or VMWare – or have a Boot to VHD configuration.

Having never done this before, it was a little trickier than I thought it would have been. 

Much of this was discovered after reading a great article from Scott Hanselman about the full spectrum of all matter pertaining to Boot from VHD

I’m only re-telling the tale, with a SharePoint flavour (ie. how *I* did it – thanks Scott !)

And – some dudes on Twitter helped too.  Thx @alexanderb + @kiwibommy.

The premise is that you create (or re-use) a Virtual Machine Hard Drive (VHD) – and configure the drive (mount it) to be able to dual-boot from it.  Cool, eh ?

The catch is that it must be Windows 7 RTM or Windows Server 2008 R2.  (had initially tried the following with zero success – and released I had Windows Server 2008 RTM by mistake)

Anyway, I need a new Windows Server x64 installation for SharePoint, let’s get going.

Create a VHD

Work out where you want to put the VHD file – you might need 20-30GB of room

• Open a DOS Command Window
• Type the command :  DISKPART
• Create a vdisk using the following command

create vdisk file=”<drive><directory>\<filename>.vhd” type=<fixed|expandable> maximum=<size>

As an example, I created a 30GB file (VHD) with “FIXED” size using the following :

create vdisk file=”c:\vm\sp2010\sp2010.vhd” type=fixed maximum=30000

This takes about 5-10 minutes – to allocate the disk space, and get the VHD sized up. 

You can also go for “expandable” – which will just take a second, and expand as it goes.  But, performance is not as good – better to go for “fixed”.

Take note of the file name, drive and folder you used – write it down.

Boot from Windows Server DVD

Now you need to grab your Windows Server 2008 DVD – this needs to be the “R2” version, doesn’t work from Windows Server 2008 RTM – you need R2. 

That’s not advice – it’s a requirement.    

Shut down your PC, and re-start, and choose to boot from the DVD.  

• When you boot from the DVD, you’ll see the ‘loading files’ screen for a few minutes.

• Next, the “Install Windows” page appears

• Click Next
• Click Repair My Computer

• When you see this next screen (below), press SHIFT-F10

DISKPART (part II)

You’ll now be seeing a DOS command prompt, for some reason with the home directory of X:\sources\

• Type DISKPART
• Type the following to assign your VHD

select vdisk file="d:\vm\sp2010\sp2010.vhd"     

attach vdisk

• IMPORTANT : The directory where you have your VHD file is actually been upp’ed a drive letter – with C:\ now becoming D:\  (confused me for a bit…!)
• You can view the drives available using the command LIST DISK (within DISKPART)

OK – now that the VHD has been mounted, it’s officially a drive – and you can install Windows Server, as if it was another hard disk.

• Type EXIT to drop out of DISKPART
• And then EXIT again, to close the command prompt

Install Windows Server 2008

The tricky stuff is now out of the way.

You’re then back at the pretty graphical “Install Windows” page

So, what are you waiting for – click Install !

• Click through until you get to the ‘choose the drive’ page

• Create a partition on the new drive (the magical VHD)
• Format the drive and click Next
• … and go ahead and install Windows Server 2008 R2 like normal.

It will ask to re-boot, and after re-starting, you’ll see the ‘boot manager’ screen

Make sure to choose Windows Server 2008

That’s all there is to it !

Next up – need to do a few things on this new “VM”…

• Configure Wireless
• Not on by default in Windows Server 2008
• Need to ‘add feature’ for the Wireless LAN
• And then actually start the service.
• Install Microsoft Office 2010
• Install SQL Server 2008
• Install Visual Studio 2010
• and then – install SharePoint 2010 !   

……more adventures to follow, as I get into the install of SharePoint 2010.

Within the Central Administration site for SharePoint, you can navigate through a multitude of pages for the various web application settings – and farm security & feature settings.

One thing I never stopped to think is that it’s still a SharePoint “team site” – and you can use it as such.  

Whenever we’re installing and configuring a SharePoint implementation for a client, there are often build documents, and configuration and installation details in DOCX or PDF format. 

Also, Disaster Recovery, and other information related to SQL Server and Exchange – and Active Directory (AD) configuration for People & MySites information.

Here’s a quick tip – why not store these documents within Central Admin ?!?

• Open your SharePoint Central Admin site
• Click Site Actions > Create
• Click Document Library
• Give it a name
• …and then upload some documents !

Of course, you can go back to the Central Admin landing page, and click Site Actions > Edit Page to include new webparts.

In this screenshot, I’ve added the document library to the top-right :

… very cool, eh ?  

Here’s a few other ideas to use Central Admin as a “team site” :

• Announcements list for server outages
• Contacts list for server admin, and other technicans & vendors
• Calendar for planned maintenance and outages
• Tasks lists for ‘deployment plans’  

NB.  There already is a tasks list on the home page for Central Admin – how many people actually look at it – or use it ??   

I don’t think I have ever checked through and done ALL of the tasks listed !    *eek*

Following on from my presentation at SharePoint Saturday in Melbourne, I thought I’d relay a tip to those looking to code a webpart or such using FullTextSqlQuery.

During the development of my code, I was getting errors when running the following code :

FullTextSqlQuery fullTextSqlQuery = new FullTextSqlQuery(SPContext.Current.Site)
{
    ResultTypes = ResultType.RelevantResults, 
    QueryText = stringBuilder.ToString(),
    TrimDuplicates = true,
    EnableStemming = true,
    StartRow = 1,
    RowLimit = 200,
    TotalRowsExactMinimum = 300,
    IgnoreAllNoiseQuery = false,
};

//Return the search results to a ResultTableCollection
resultTableCollection = fullTextSqlQuery.Execute();

What was happening in the UI was a message stating :

Your search cannot be completed because this site is not assigned to an indexer. Contact your administrator for more information.

Took me a few DAYS of investigation to work a fix – as the code was compiling, and executing – just couldn’t connect to the Search Service within SharePoint.

And it turns out that my code was somehow causing a COM Exception within the WSS Search Service – and was listed in the Event Viewer also. 

I was having to go to Control Panel > Services – and re-start the “Windows SharePoint Search” service.

What’s going on !

Well – you may be aware that there’s a separate web service for both WSS and MOSS.  It follows that you can use the API to interact with either of these – and my code was incorrectly trying to use the WSS not MOSS class libraries.

The core issue was with my project references within Visual Studio

The key to my discovery was with this code :

ResultTypes = ResultType.RelevantResults, 

When I tried to add the option for “SpecialTermResults” (aka BestBets), I was getting a .NET error – saying ‘invalid member’ or something :

ResultTypes = ResultType.RelevantResults, ResultType.SpecialTermResults,  

But – this is within the SharePoint class library from MSDN.

It was then that I realised my FullTextSqlQuery class was referenced from :

• using Microsoft.SharePoint.Search.Query   // WSS

– instead of

• using Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Query   // MOSS

It follows that the project file (DLL) references were wrong also. 

And yep – swapping them out fixed the problem !    *phew*

So – if you’re having this error – then check your solution/project references :

WSS Search

DLL : C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\ISAPI\Microsoft.SharePoint.Search.dll

NameSpace : Microsoft.SharePoint.Search.Query

MOSS Search

DLL : C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\ISAPI\Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.dll

NameSpace : Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Query

Kinda obvious in the end :

• If included as “SharePoint” only – it’s WSS
• Need to have “Office Server” for MOSS

Wish I’d known all this earlier – it would have saved me a few stressful days !

Today is Melbourne’s turn to host SharePoint Saturday – with a bunch of presentations, demos and a panel session – all discussing SharePoint – and the entire event is FREE – for the people, by the people.

Lots of great topics about SharePoint 2010 – all the new features, developer need-to-know’s, Office 2010 client, and 3rd-party product demo’s such as Nintex, and K2.

I’m doing a double-up session with Tim Wragg (StarGate) – about Enterprise Search within MOSS (2007).

He’ll be showing some of the customisation and configuration that you can achieve with OOTB components for SharePoint – and I’ll then discuss the extensibility story with search – using the SharePoint SDK & API.

Here’s a few of the topics I’ll be covering :

• Create a custom coded webpart with C# – new UI for Search
• Call to the SQLFullTextQuery class to retrieve search results
• Demo of a utility to assist – called SharePoint Search Service Tool (CodePlex)
• Discussion of CustomProtocolHandler to extend even further
• Search Admin using code – for creating scopes, properties, etc

Hope to see you at the session – I’ll load up the PPTX (slide deck) after all is said and done – and you can have a look at your leisure.

UPDATE :  Here’s a link to the slide deck from today’s session (~1.8MB zip).   .

…and here is the prank BSOD I used – thought I’d get a few more “gasps” or “laughs”…

I guess if there were MORE people there – might have helped…

This post contains no SharePoint.   This isn’t the MSDN article you were looking for.  

You can go about your business.  Move along, move along….

[ Family nostalgia warning….    For my future nostalgia to be more precise…. ]

With all the recent craziness, I hadn’t taken time out to write up a HAPPY BIRTHDAY to our lovely Liam – also known as Lee’s, Flea-man or Lee-Lee.

We’d arranged to have a birthday party on the day (Oct 25th – also our wedding anniversary) – and had the family over for a BBQ & games.

Liam was excitedly opening his presents – with an “Oh Wow !” with every one, and getting MORE amazed with each opening.   Ohhh WOOOWW !!   

One of the games we played was musical statues – dancing to the Wiggles, and then everyone stops when the music stops.  I asked Liam if he wanted a different song (expecting Hi-5, or similar) – and he says “Swash !   Jungle !” 

Yep – he was asking for Slash, and “Welcome To The Jungle”.  I put it on, and he squealed in delight, and began moshing around with Cameron doing air guitar !   (very proud Dad here)

He’s such an amazing little boy – he is always laughing, and has some amazing facial expressions.  So hard to remember all the stuff he’s doing every day :

* He does this funny little “ooohh !” noise, with an in-breath sound (can’t describe in typing) – even when looking at picture books, and turning a page.

* Does a little karate chop move saying “Eee, haaw” – it doubles as a Cowboy “yerr-harr” – and whatever else

* Loves his brother Charlie, always giving him kisses on the forehead

* Words are more and more forthcoming – he was saying “Thank” until recently – only just realised the word is ‘plural’. 

* HIs favourite bed time toy is Baxter – a Myer Christmas bear.  Cameron also has the one from his first Christmas (Henry) – we’ll get one for Charlie this year too.  Baxter is doing fairly well – lots of squeeze & hugs – Liam calls him “Bagger”

* He knows all of our families names, Femron for Cameron, and Charwee for Charlie – and Chrowee for Chloe.  He even lists all his Aunties & Uncles, and cousins – and has 99% nailed counting to ten !

* He just loooves Buzz Lightyear, pointing at every page in the Toy Story book – and saying “ooohhh ! Buzz !”  He carries around a little action figure toy – holding him up and saying “BUZZ !!” 

* If he’s wanting to play a game, he’s known to say “Dad, Dad !” and snap his fingers to get my attention – and then “C’m here” (beckoning me to him)

* He got a little plastic bowling pin set for his birthday – which he loves to play.  It took a while to realise that “Muup” was actually “Set ‘Em Up” – ha ha.

* He’s a ‘routine’ kid – he needs to have his placemat to be square – even putting down his fork to move the placemat to be straight

* When doing teeth, the step stools in the bathroom have to be in the right place – one for each lad, blue & white.  He’ll swap them if they’re wrong.

* Even when putting him in the bath once – he was kicking and yelling “No, Nudie”, and I realised he wanted to do the standard nudie run – before happily getting in the bath.

* Says “Do It !” when he wants to do something, like feeding or playing (meaning “I want to do it”)

* Bounces lots on the trampoline with his brother Cameron – actually, he pretty much follows him everywhere – partners in crime, that’s for sure.

* Liam has to have the worst ever bed hair – just a hilarious birds nest most mornings.

* Has a cheeky grin and laugh, and loves doing a deep sounding “hoo hoo” laugh for fun, accompanied with an “arrr” like a pirate – complete with another type of karate chop.

* He’s still wearing his boots to bed, it has never troubled him – he puts them on without a fuss every time – truly.  Of course, there is often is a giggle game where I put one foot in, and he pulls is out again and laughs.  He’ll continue to wear the boots until he’s four – currently a day sleep, and overnight.

—————-

Liam is  two already – can’t believe he’s growing up so fast.  Thankfully, we haven’t seen any sign of impending “terrible two’s” (yet ?)   

I’m sure there will be – but the fun & games – and conversations – will only get better too.

Happy Birthday little dude, thanks for a fun two years !  

Love Dad.  x

Our little boy Charlie is 4 months now, and has been having lots of bad eczema & skin rashes.  We’ve been giving him antibotics to get it under control, and some glycerine cream on his skin. 

But, wasn’t really helping – and he was looking a bit red in the eyes at dinner time on Saturday (6pm).

Then he had an episode late Saturday night with an allergic reaction of some kind.

His face had all puffed up, could barely see out of his eyes – red and closed – and was rubbing his face lots – he looked like his face was sunburnt.

He started to have trouble breathing – sounding congested, and we were terrified that his throat was constricted – and THEN he did a big vomit. 

So – we called the ambulance, and explained what was happening.

Donna was freaking out; I was ‘stunned’ & frantically organised a bag to take.  

Paramedics arrived and checked him out – by then he’d started crying (good !), and was breathing better – his heart rate was OK, and temperature too. 

Even though he’d stabilised, they suggested taking him to hospital for some checks & observation (which we were only too keen to do – we wanted him to be OK !)

I stayed home, was close to 1am, and the other two boys were asleep.  Had a few SMS’es to Donna, and the news was that he was doing alright – and had even fed OK.

Was nearly 3 am by then, so I went to get some sleep, with the ‘morning shift’ only a few hours away.  

Cameron, Liam and I had brekky, and then down to the hospital, and was there with Donna when speaking to the paediatrician. 

They had the suspicion that it was the cream we’d been given that was causing the reaction – and wanted to put a small amount on his skin, and keep him there to observe.

So, the lads and I left to get lunch, and home for Liam to have a day sleep.  I needed some zzz’s too, so Cameron and I sat down to watch some old Top Gear, and I watched & snored.

Back to the hospital about 3pm, to pick up Donna and Charlie – they were discharged, and were waiting by the front entrance.

He was looking sooo much better – barely any red at all – and happy & smiling.  

*phew*

We have a referral to an allergist, which Donna was thinking about doing even before this all occurred.

Time kinda stood still overnight – one of the scariest moments of my adult life – thank goodness all is OK.

..and I hope that we actually find out what caused it – and that it doesn’t happen again.

Thanks to all the well-wishes via FaceBook & Twitter – and a few phone calls too. 

Working on a project recently, we’re provisioning about 15 list templates as part of our SharePoint publishing solution.  There had been a mix-up with the “Type” Id used for the ListTemplates within the XML definition – can you spot a mistake ?

<List xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/" BaseType="0" DefaultItemOpen="0" Direction="none" DisableAttachments="False" DraftVersionVisibility="0" EnableContentTypes="True" FolderCreation="True" Name="Comments" OrderedList="False" QuickLaunchUrl="False" Title="Comments" Type="113" VersioningEnabled="False" Url="Lists/Comments" Id="e3183ba9-0b61-42dd-8ff8-f12eb3bc2d62">

We had inadvertently ‘overwritten’ some of the OOTB SharePoint list templates.  Not actually written over the files on disk, but hi-jacking the Types – from 100, 101, 102 – up to 115 – and we had a multitude of problems.

One of the worst culprits had a symptom of the “Add Web Part page” being empty – none of our custom webparts were listed. 

And it turned out we had a List Template with the same TypeId as the “Web Part Gallery” – yikes.

This post details all the SharePoint base List Type Id’s – and made us realise what we needed to fix – the lesson is “avoid these numbers”.

We’d eradicated most of our problems by changing the TypeId’s in the feature.xml – starting at 1000, and deleting / re-activating, etc – but one problem remained.

Within the ‘Create List’ page, there is no “CUSTOM LIST” shown.   This is kinda bad don’t you think !?  

Has document libraries, etc – just not the normal “title only” custom list.   Dammit.

We found a way to ‘bring it back’ – from a look at another dev machine, which HAS the Custom List.

When hovering over the list template :

Have a look at the URL :

The FeatureId corresponds to the list template that can be found in the following directory :

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\CustomList\Feature.xml

And – if we look at the Element Manifest :

You can see – there’s the Type=100 list, and whoops – we’d overwritten it.

So – because it’s actually just a feature, we just thought “I wonder if we could just re-activate it ??!”

Here’s the command we tried :

stsadm -o activatefeature -id 00BFEA71-DE22-43B2-A848-C05709900100  -url http://servername –force

And yep – the custom list is back !    *phew*

Hopefully that’s a useful tip for some folk. 

Of course, the best option is NOT to have ListTemplate’s with overlapping Type’s (with SharePoint OOTB ones).

I was using a codeplex tool (SPSource) to generate the feature/s – this was acknowledged as a bug, and is to be fixed in the next release (soon)

For my home internet, I have an Optus cable modem that I’ve had since I moved into this house in July 2000 (home broadband for nearly 10 years !)

We’ve also got an Optus home phone – and I have an Optus mobile phone also – so yes, I’m an “Optus customer”.

Have been having some billing problems later – about direct-debiting vs. bill sent in the mail.  I’d asked to have this stopped via a phone call (to India !) – BUT – it was direct debited again the following month !   *aarrgghh*

In frustration and a bit cranky, I tweet’ed (aka – twitter update) saying “damn u Optus, why did you muck it up ?!?  FFS !”.  Not verbatim, but something like that.

A little later I had a Twitter response from @Optus, who asked for my mobile phone number to discuss the problem.   Wow – cool service !  

I just DM’ed my phone number – and they rang me a little later, and they were able to fix up the direct debit billing thingo – the dude actually rang me a second time a little later, after some more info to report – nice one. 

So (hopefully) it’s sorted out for next month.

In essence – a shout-out complaint resulted in Optus being able to appease a Grumpy Wookie, and sort out the problem too – without me having to ring, or email or anything. 

They rang ME !   Very cool.

Another thought recently has been to switch my mobile phone (yes – thinking about iPhone’ing – just need to pay out the contract).

I’d previously spoken to people in an Optus mobile store (a few months ago) – but haven’t had time to do so again lately – always crazy busy at lunch time (in the city) – and Saturday’s with the kids in tow is just as tricky.

Same with ringing up – there’s that damn annoying voice recognition software : 

Please say the product you’re ringing about…?    IN-TER-NET !!   

And, if there’s kids making noise & ruckus in the background, it gets heard by the software – and I ended up more and more frustrated. 

PLUS – they’re only only until 8 pm (!) and that’s usual crazy put-the-kids-to-bed time.

*aarrgghhh*

Enter Twitter.

From my work laptop, just a quick DM to @Optus asking about the payout cost for my phone, and back to work.

The phone rang about 20 mins later, and I got “Hi, it’s Rhys from the Optus Twitter Response Team – I’ve got the figures about your payout.”  Cool, eh ?

Great service from a ‘communications’ company – who are monitoring all forms of communication – push vs pull responses, etc.  

You could even say it’s an ‘asynchronous support request’…   he he…

It’s a service industry these days for commodity products like phone, internet, and even the electricity and gas companies – and insurance companies, health funds, superannuation companies – and BANKS !  

Listening to customers via social networks is the next level of “service” in my opinion. 

Maybe the ‘new wave’ – certainly the teens of today are heavy users of social media, and they’re the next folk to be getting mobile phones, renting apartments & needing gas, electricity, etc.

Being able to respond to “Gen-Z” customers in this way is a smart business strategy, a key ‘service’ differentiator – and likely to attract and retain more happy customers – like me !!

So – listen up all you service mobs – like Telstra, National Australia Bank, AGL, AAMI and all the rest – wake up – and catch up. 

Unless you’re not on the social networking band wagon already of course…

I reckon Optus have a pretty good customer service model – well, that’s just my opinion…   or maybe just a few too many Bourbon & Cokes on a Friday evening.

Either way – kudos to Optus – thanks lads !

And “Viva la Twitter” !!

Within SharePoint 2007, the output of a “standard” search results webpart – and/or people search webpart – can be controlled using XSLT.

Most folk know it’s fairly tricky to deal with XSLT – not just the format of the markup, but also determining what values are in the data source.

Found a great tip from Novotronix, with a small piece of XSLT that shows ALL data elements. 

(1) Click the “XSL Editor” button.

(2) Replace the XSLT with the chunk from here.

(3) Click Save

The output shown will now look just like a plain chunk of XML.

Here’s the XML chunk you need (as detailed in the referenced blog post)

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" >
<xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes" />
<xsl:template match="/">
<xmp><xsl:copy-of select="*"/></xmp>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>