General

How to enable PowerShell in Hyper-V Server 2008 R2

Liam Westley — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:00:47 GMT

After reading Tim Anderson’s blog article (here) on his installation of Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 I glibly added a comment that R2 now includes PowerShell 2.0 for local management of virtual machines using PowerShell scripts. Of course, I hadn’t actually tried this before commenting ....

Why would you want to use scripting on Hyper-V Server 2008 R2

If you have never installed Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 you may not realise the limited options provided by the local management tool. Based on Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Core there is no Windows Explorer and none of the standard user interface components for configuration. Instead the Hyper-V team provide a simple menu which supports the configuration steps required to allow remote management of the server using the Hyper-V Manager MMC snap-in (available for Vista, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008).

The real ‘local’ management tool is that old fashioned item, the command prompt,

So, if you aim to manage Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 you should get used to command line tools and commands, which means having access to a scripting system like PowerShell provides a route for local management of virtual machines without requiring the Hyper-V Manager on a separate client machine.

No PowerShell by default

As stated above, Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 is based on Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Core, and it is this update that included support for .NET framework and PowerShell scripting. Quite correctly server core locks down all functionality until it is enabled/installed. PowerShell is one of the items that are not installed by default.

First installation attempt

So I did a quick Google/Bing for Enabling PowerShell on Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 and got to this blog article (here) on the highly useful Virtual PC Guy’s blog. I followed the steps. No joy.

Hold on - doesn’t PowerShell required .NET Framework?

I did a directory search, dir c:\windows\*powershell*.exe /s, to see if the directory path had changed, but instead of finding a PowerShell installation, I found a list of files in a directory called c:\windows\winsxs. This directory appears to contain all the install packages for server core, and as well as PowerShell it included .NET framework installations.

This was the ‘lightbulb’ moment I was searching for. PowerShell probably won’t install because I the .NET Framework is not installed. A big more of Google/Bing and I found the following article on Window Server 2008 R2 Server Core, on MSDN, http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/r2core/Wiki/View.aspx?title=Home&version=8

I ran the command oclist to list all the installed options,

There, right in the middle was PowerShell being a child node of NetFx2 (.Net Framework 2.0) which suggested a dependency. So I ran the following installation commands

start /w ocsetup NetFx2-ServerCore

start /w ocsetup MicrosoftsoftWindowsPowerShell

After that, I had PowerShell installed,

To run it I just cd'd to c:\windows\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0 and typed powershell

Alternatively once you reboot the system, the PowerShell directory will be placed in the search path and you can just type powershell in any directory to access the PowerShell command prompt.

Next steps ...

In a post next week I’ll demonstrate how to use the PowerShell Management Library for Hyper-V available on codeplex (http://pshyperv.codeplex.com/) on Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 to list running virtual machines, start and stop virtual machines and do useful admin stuff like mount/dismount VHD drives.

Where has my graphic equalizer gone in Windows Media Player 12? (i.e. Windows 7)

Liam Westley — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:14:02 GMT

I have used Jabra BT320s Bluetooth headsets for some time to listen to music on my desktop PC, under Vista and Windows 7.

Although all the same model, they have dramatically different maximum volume settings (which I’m guessing are hardware related in some manner). It can be handy to use the graphic equaliser in Windows Media Player to boost the volume, especially of radio programmes I’ve recorded on my DAB radio.

When I upgraded to Windows 7 it came with Windows Media Player 12, and the graphic equaliser appeared to have gone missing from the main window. However, it is there, you just need to know where to look.

If you just ‘play’ an MP3 track you get a default album art/visualisation windows,

Well, no equaliser there. However, it used to be on the windows where you could see the playlist, you can access this by pressing the Alt key and then selecting Show Menu Bar (actually, Ctrl+1 also works but I only found that out when researching how to get the equaliser visible).

Now it used to be down near the time elapsed/remaining area, but it’s not there. Hmmmm.

So I did some Googling, and discovered it is available on the ‘mini display’ and the best way to get this is to press Ctrl+2.

Look , there is the icon for the equaliser, just there in the bottom right corner ...

... if you click on that icon you finally get the equaliser,

Once adjusted you can hit Ctrl+1 to go back to playlist mode, or Ctrl+3 to view the album art/visualisation and the equaliser setting will remain in place.

I have no idea why they made it this hard, I really don’t.

Adobe Acrobat Reader Updates – how to save them locally for repeated use, a step by step guide

Liam Westley — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 17:57:49 GMT

As a developer I have several machines, some of which are virtual machines which may be isolated from the general internet. I used to get annoyed with Adobe not providing direct downloads for updates which means you have to download updates for each machine separately.

I realise there may be good reasons for this, differentiating between different versions of operating system. However, I do like to have the ability to rebuild a system to a known state from scratch without relying on online updates.

For this reason I quite often avoided downloading Acrobat updates, until I found out how to perform the update on one machine, capture the update files and then use these to roll out updates the various systems on which I have Acrobat Reader installed.

Step 1 – Help menu, check for Updates

Step2 – Adobe Updater progress bar should appear

Step 3 – If updates are found, you have the option to click on a Preferences link

Step 4 - In the preferences dialog you will find a setting called File Location, this is where updates will be downloaded

Step 5 – Highlight the path, right click and copy the folder location

Step 6 – Run Windows Explorer, paste in the folder location you just copied

Step 7 – Back in the Adobe Updater select the option to download and install updates, a new folder appears in Windows Explorer

Step 8 – It is quite possible that the update will download additional patches to the main installation (and these are the patches you can never normally download directly from Adobe)

Step 9 – You will need to copy the files from Windows Explorer once the download is complete, in Windows 7 the UAC confirmation (the small shield) halts the updater and gives you plenty of time to copy the files. If the Adobe Updater runs automatically you need to be very quick as all the updates files are deleted once the update is complete.

Three MiFi (Huawei E5830) 3G and WiFi access point all in one, first impressions

Liam Westley — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 03:08:17 GMT

I have been using a 3G Mobile Broadband dongle from Three [http://www.three.co.uk/Mobile_Broadband/MiFi ] for just over a year and have been very happy with the service. It helps that I am on a half price deal and only pay £7.50 per month for 5Gb of data. I normally don’t use the dongle that was provided, as I have internal 3G cards in both my HP 6910p laptop and my Acer Aspire One netbook.

I have found it a bit of a hassle to have to move the SIM card between the laptop and the netbook, and my poor Benq E72 Windows Mobile phone has been left in the slow lane. It only has GPRS/EDGE when out and about, although it does have fast WiFi when at home or in the office.

When I heard about the new ‘MiFi’ unit from Huawei that combines a 3G dongle and WiFi access point all in one package I was intrigued. Capable of connecting multiple WiFi devices to a shared 3G connection, for up to 4 hours on the internal battery, this tiny device sounded like a great solution to my problem. I can connect my laptop, netbook and Benq E72 phone all via WiFi to a fast 3G mobile broadband connection using the same 3G SIM card.

The device is really simple, five lights give just enough information and the three buttons make life very easy,

It’s hard to understand from that photograph just how small this device is, but if I put it next to a credit card you can see just how small it is. It is not much bigger or heavier than my Benq E72 candy bar phone, which is incredible for a 3G dongle and WiFi router combined,

The device comes with a charger, but also charges via mini USB, so will be a doddle to top up. Using the supplied USB to mini USB lead it can be connected to a Windows PC not only to charge, but to install the 3 WiFi manager. Similar to previous Huawei dongles, once connected a drive letter appears as if you have inserted a CD, and this contains all the drivers and software required. This installed first time on both my laptop and netbook, Windows 7 (both x64 and x86).

You can use the WiFi manager to configure the unit, and can also treat the MiFi as a standard 3G USB dongle where you manually dial the connection so you can use it without the WiFi turned on. As well as providing options to turn WiFi on and off, the utility provided all standard WiFi options such as changing the SSID (and hiding it) and setting a different password. Interestingly the utility also provides access to the range of Firewall options, including a DMZ - wow!

The final feature is a microSDHC slot, which unfortunately isn’t shared between connected devices as part of the WiFi connection, but appears as a drive letter when the dongle is connected to a system with the USB lead.

I could describe how the device actually switches on and how the buttons work, but there’s a much better video review of the device from one of my friends, Ewan McLeod on Mobile Developer TV, which saves me the effort.

http://www.mobiledeveloper.tv/?p=209

So, what are my first impressions? This is a fantastic device; it’s incredibly simple, easy to use and just ... well, works.

It’s available for £99 on pay as you go, and £69 for a 5Gb per month £15 rolling 1 month contract. There is no upgrade for existing customers, so I just bought the 1 month rolling contract, which I’m cancelling so the total cost for me is £85. Bargain!

Hyper-V for Developers - presentation from Edge UG 16 September 2009

Liam Westley — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:29:04 GMT

Thanks to Ray and Gavin for organising another top EdgeUG meeting in Microsoft Cardinal Place and for everyone who attended my talk on Hyper-V for Developers. The audience had to deal with a huge amount of technical information that I crammed into the hour - hopefully it didn't put them off their pizza.

Fortunately the Stack Overflow master and author of C# in Depth, Jon Skeet, was on hand after the break for a interesting glimpse into code contracts coming with VS2010 and C# 4.0.

For those who weren't there last night, the presentation provides an overview of Hyper-V Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 running Hyper-V, tools that you can install to help you out, how Snapshots work and finally automation of Hyper-V using the PowerShell library for Hyper-V as might be used in CI (continous integration) server.

I've got two version of the slidedeck, one in PowerPoint, hyperv4dev-ppt.zip, and a PDF version complete with speaker notes that contains all the interesting stuff including the PowerShell script, hyperv4dev-pdf.zip.

Thanks again to the guys from EdgeUG and all those who joined us down the pub afterwards for a beer and a chat.

Liam

P.S. Jon mentioned that Microsoft has decided that static checking of Code Contracts should be limited to the Team System versions of Visual Studio 2010. Here is a link to the Microsoft Connect request to reverse this blinkered approach and place static checking into Visual Studio Professional edition;

https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=481327

Do please vote on t his topic and let Microsoft know what you think, hopefully it 's not too late to reverse this marketing decision.

Hyper-V for Developers - presentation from DevEvening 13 August 2009

Liam Westley — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:01:13 GMT

Thanks to Alex and Matt for organising another top DevEvening user group in Woking and for everyone who attended my talk on Hyper-V for Developers. Apologies for over running and hope it didn't stop you from enjoying your meals. I think I achieved a good warm up for Sebastien Lambla's talk on best practices in MVC.

For those who weren't there last night, the presentation provides an overview of Hyper-V Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 running Hyper-V, tools that you can install to help you out, how Snapshots work and finally automation of Hyper-V using the PowerShell library for Hyper-V.

I've got two version of the slidedeck, one in PowerPoint, hyperv4dev-ppt.zip, and a PDF version complete with speaker notes that contains all the interesting stuff including the PowerShell script, hyperv4dev-pdf.zip.

Thanks again to the guys in Woking, and for Sebastien Lambla for helping me polish off a bottle of nice wine on the way back to London.

Review: DisplayLink USB to DVI adapter, adding an external display to a laptop or desktop

Liam Westley — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 22:04:38 GMT

DisplayLink USB

Last week I wrote a review of a Kensington USB docking station which included DisplayLink technology to allow an external display to be added to a laptop via a USB 2.0 port. I described how I used this docking station to enable the holy grail of three external screens on my laptop. You can read about it here,

http://geekswithblogs.net/twickers/archive/2009/06/03/132579.aspx

Declaring an interest

On publishing, I promoted the blog post via Twitter where recently someone had bemoaned the inability of a laptop to support more than two displays. I was curious to see if DisplayLink might follow me on Twitter, and checked to see if they had an active account. When I discovered they had no account, I created a DisplayLink account and sent the guys at www.displaylink.com the username and password so they could keep it safe for future use.

The next day, the marketing guys at DisplayLink sent me an e-mail thanking me for setting up the Twitter account. Also, as a gesture of appreciation they requested my address so they could send out a USB to DVI adapter based on their DL-160 chipset.

So a big thanks to DisplayLink for enabling me to review the DVI version.

Hardware

Unlike the Kensington docking station which incorporated a USB 10/100 network chip, 4 port hub and USB audio, this is a dedicated display unit. It’s wonderfully compact compared to the full docking station, approx 10cm x 5cm. Connecting to the PC via a standard mini USB lead, it is self powered via USB, with video displayed using a DVI connector.

DVI Connector

Mini USB Connector

(I placed a measuring tape next to the adapter sio you can see just how small it is, the tape measure is locked at 10cm)

Software

The software was identical to that used for the Kensington docking station (see previous blog post for details), I just left the old driver in place. When I booted up Windows 7 RC there was a ‘New Hardware Device’ pop up for a few seconds, after which the DisplayLink adapter worked immediately, appearing as my display number 3 on my desktop.

Being a DVI output, the image was crisp and rock steady first time, with no need to adjust the display. If anything it looked slightly brighter with better contrast on my test 17” display compared to the analogue version in the docking station, but that is most likely due to the monitor settings.

Conclusion

My third monitor, a 17” Sharp model, while great on the DVI connection, is slightly fuzzy when displaying analogue VGA, so having a DVI version of DisplayLink is a great solution for my setup.

The small size of the dedicated adapter really sells itself to those who spend their life fighting with projectors at client sites. Having a couple of these, for both analogue and DVI solutions means you could guarantee best connectivity.

I’m tempted to lend the unit to a friend who regularly finds Windows 7 RC on his Mac Air struggles to connect to projectors at anything above 640 x 480 to see if this could solve the problem. I suspect it might.

It’s one of those rare IT products. It does a single job, really well, with the minimum of effort to install.

Review: Three external screens from a single laptop with help from DisplayLink

Liam Westley — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 23:07:16 GMT

As a developer I’ve become used to multiple monitors to increase my productivity. Debugging applications is much easier when one monitor is running Visual Studio and a second monitor is displaying the application being debugged, or SQL Management Studio, or your Locals window.

When I plugged my latest HP 6910p laptop into the docking station I was amazed to find that it supported dual external displays; both the DVI and analogue VGA ports can be active simultaneously. It’s a real advantage to get off the laptop display which I never find ideal when working at a desk. You really need the two monitors to be arranged side by side rather than above each other. This places the laptop much further away than normal and makes the screen hard to read.

I’ve been using dual 17” monitors at 1280 x 1024 with my laptop/docking station combination for some time. A few months ago I bought a 24” HD screen, 1920 x 1080. The ‘spare’ 17” monitor was relegated to my old desktop system, used for monitoring Outlook and Messenger and for Media Player duties.

If only I could have all three screens connected to my laptop ...

Enter DisplayLink

For some time, there have been proprietary graphics solutions for laptops which use PC Cards using the CardBus and Zoomed video abilities. Effectively you are adding a new graphics card to the system. These tended to be expensive and there was always the worry about driver availability for new operating systems.

DisplayLink takes a different route to enabling an external display by using a USB 2.0 interface. A desktop graphics driver delivers compressed video to a dedicated hardware decoder which has an analogue VGA output. Not only does this make it available to any laptop with USB 2.0, it also supports desktop systems without upgrading the main graphics card.

Cheap route to DisplayLink

I’d actually been following the progression of DisplayLink for some time in various www.pcpro.co.uk reviews, from the expensive Village Tronic ViBook (http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/244438/village-tronic-vibook.html?searchString=vibook) at £130 to the more reasonable Kensington Dual Monitor Adapter (http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/246230/kensington-dual-monitor-adapter.html?searchString=kensington) at £60.

Also, companies like Samsung have been selling external monitors which include smaller secondary screens powered by DisplayLink, as well as high end digital photo frames which include DisplayLink connectivity.

However, one of the PC Pro reviews included the comment it might be a better idea to search eBay for a Kensington USB docking station which supports video as these are normally available for less than the dedicated solutions.

My hardware

I spent a few months on eBay tracking Kensington docking stations with video, for the ‘right price’, and last week I finally won one in an auction for £20. The unit came with a power adapter, USB lead and the actual docking bar itself. In addition to DisplayLink the bar provides a 4-port powered USB 2.0 hub, audio and 10/100 networking

Docking Station - Front

Docking Station - Rear

The great news is that if all you are using is the DisplayLink connecter there is no need for the power adapter as the USB 2.0 connection provides the power.

The laptop is a HP 6910p (with 128Mb ATI Mobility Radeon X2300), 2.2GHz Core Duo, 4Gb RAM, with the advanced docking station providing simultaneous DVI and VGA outputs by default when the laptop lid is closed.

Drivers for Windows 7 RC 64-bit

One of my criteria for using DisplayLink was that the software had to work under Windows 7 as, since the beta release this has become my day to day operating system on my laptop. Even worse, it is a 64-bit installation which always makes one more wary of driver compatibility.

The good news was that the software drivers are available from the guys who make the hardware chip at http://www.displaylink.com rather than from Kensington. I thought I might be able to use a Vista 64-bit driver, but on the driver download page was a warning that it was not compatible with Windows 7. But right next to that warning was a link to a specific Windows 7 Preview driver.

By the time I finally won a Kensington docking station from eBay at the ‘right price’ my laptop had been upgraded to Windows 7 RC and the DisplayLink Windows 7 driver software had also been updated to a new release on 3 April 2009.

As with most USB devices, I ran the driver setup first (no reboot required) before plugging in the docking station. Various new hardware devices were detected, including the DisplayLink adapter. Only an AX88772 device wasn’t recognised, the ASIX USB 2.0 LAN controller.

A quick right click on the desktop, Screen Resolution, and there were three monitors on one laptop.

I enabled the monitor and took my first photo of three monitors running live on one laptop.

DisplayLink utility

Although you can configure the resolution and layout of the monitors within the standard Screen Resolution dialog, there is a special DisplayLink utility. This is installed during the driver setup but on my system was not added to the Start Menu. I found the utility files in, \Program Files\DisplayLink Core Software. Running DisplayLinkUI.exe provides a new icon in the system tray/notification area where you can control the DisplayLink specific options.

Colour Depth

Resolution

Rotation Options

During writing this blog post I decided to test whether the standard Windows 7 screen rotation options could be used instead of the DisplayLink utility menu. Big mistake, my other two displays went blank and it took a few dock/undocks and a DisplayLink driver uninstall and reinstall to get everything back to normal. Admittedly both Windows 7 and the DisplayLink drivers are both beta software so I’ll forgive them as long as the final releases work as expected.

CPU utilisation

The big downside with DisplayLink is that it uses the system CPU to compress the video it is sending to the hardware decoder. Kensington recommend at least a dual core CPU running at 1.2GHz and above. You do notice a bit of screen lag compared to the ‘real’ monitors but for applications like Outlook and Messenger work fine.

I decided to do a bit of simple benchmarking using Task Manager, tracking the core Display Link process, DisplayLinkManager.exe (you need to click on Show Process From All Users to view this).

Here are the results of my simple CPU utilisation tests,

Outlook and Messenger running in background < 1%

Windows Media Player playing MP3 files 10%

bbc.co.uk iPlayer video within a web page 15%

(Turkish Grand Prix 2005)

Windows Media Player MPEG4 video 30%

(Sebastien Lambla ASP.NET MVC best practices from VistaSquad user group)

Conclusion

What I wanted was a simple and cheap solution to providing a third display for my laptop which could handle background applications such as Outlook, Messenger or Twitter without compromising general performance. I’d say DisplayLink has achieved that with an elegant solution to a simple problem, all for £20 delivered thanks to eBay.

Firefox 3.0 - Hoots mon, where’s my page title?

Liam Westley — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 21:45:53 GMT

History

I have to admit that I’m a browser laggard, I haven’t installed Google Chrome, and I was a late comer to upgrading from Firefox 2.x to Firefox 3.0. I wasn’t always like this. I actually used to pay for Opera rather than deal with Internet Explorer back in the days of Windows NT4 days. Recently I’ve been lazy. Firefox 2.x had all the stuff that I used to pay for in Opera; tabbed browsing, opening entire folders of favourites etc.

So the following may not come as news to some people in terms of usability ... but I believe it does have implications for web site developers which should be heeded.

Improved Address Bar

When I upgraded to Firefox 3.0 I bemoaned the loss of a simple bookmarks file, bookmarks.html. The developers had moved to a more sophisticated SQLLite database model. This database is not only bookmarks but also records your browsing history.

And it’s the proper storage of browser history which is what results in a truly MASSIVE usability improvement. How many times have you wanted to go back to ‘that page’ you viewed yesterday (or even a few minutes ago) in Firefox but you can’t remember the URL. No worries, just type in some keywords from the page title and up pops the a list ofURLs which match those keywords, and you can just select the URL you want.

It took me a while to realise that this has changed my browsing habits quite radically. I now bookmark less and just use keywords in the page titles. That means I have begun to expect page titles to have relevant keywords that allow me to quickly locate them. If I close a tab on a news site such as The Register or The Guardian and I want to call it up later, I just use keywords.

The Top 6 Gotcha (it’s the Google not on the 'first page' all over again ...)

This became apparent when a submitted some sessions for the community event, Developer Day Scotland (http://www.developerdayscotland.com/). I will point out now, that this in no way a criticism of this site (my own website, www.tigernews.co.uk, has similar failings). It is just the Developer Day Scotland site demonstrated how reliant I was on this new functionality.

Basically, I didn’t bookmark the page, as I’m lazy, and I knew I could use page title keywords to find it for me. Type in Scotland and first in the list is the splash page for Developer Day Scotland. I drilled down into session details, and submitted some sessions, and then went off on my normal business. The next day I wanted to see if the sessions had appeared and so I typed in Scotland expecting to see the various pages within the site appear at the top of the list (I'm too lazy to scroll, no seriously!). Only the splash screen was in the top six. So I navigated through to see whether my sessions had appeared. I did this the next day too. Then I got annoyed, why was I not getting the quick navigation I had come to expect? It’s the Page Title stupid!

Here’s the URL versus page title mapping;

http://www.developerdayscotland.com/	Developer! Developer! Developer! Scotland
http://developerdayscotland.com/main/Default.aspx	Home
http://developerdayscotland.com/main/SessionProposals/tabid/77/Default.aspx	Session Proposals

The howler here is, Home, which is about as generic as you can get, that brings up an awfully large number of hits in my Firefox history, which just goes to show how common it is to leave it at this. For me, it was simple; if I typed in Session Proposals in the address bar in Firefox 3.0 and I get straight through to the DDD Scotland session list. After a few days, my proposed sessions appeared.

As I mentioned, my own site has similar gaffs. For instance, the main home page title is Computer Consultancy For Television Companies. How about the company name – doh! It’s on other pages, just not the home page.

Take Away ... for web developers

I like the ability to fast find previously visited pages in Firefox, and if I do, other users will as well. It’s also in Internet Explorer 8 (beta 2), so that is a lot of users coming down the line expecting this functionality.

The solution for web developers is simple, adopt the same format that Microsoft Office uses for Window titles, <document name> - <application name>.

For web sites this becomes our page title becomes, <page content title> - <site name>.

... and of course, this is exactly what The Register and The Guardian already use, which is why I can find things really quickly in my history in Firefox.

UK MSDN Roadshow dates for Feb 2009 - and after the Birmingham event join Guy Smith-Ferrier and myself for an evening on Virtualisation at NxtGenUG

Liam Westley — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 05:36:23 GMT

The latest UK MSDN Roadshow dates have been announced, Catch Up with Microsoft Rich Client Technologies for 2008, taking place in London, Birmingham and Edinburgh on February 10^th, 12^th and 24^th respectively.

You can register here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/bb905504.aspx

If you are thinking of attending the Birmingham event on February 12^th why not make a day of it After the MSDN Roadshow, just grab a beer or two and then wander up the road to the NxtGenUG meeting, http://www.nxtgenug.net/ViewEvent.aspx?EventID=178, where you can see Guy Smith-Ferrier and myself present an evening on Virtualisation. Two events in one day – it can’t be beaten for value!