Rob Keiser

After making sure my Windows 7 install was working properly I decided to install the RC of Windows Virtual PC. This will allow me to use XP mode if I need it and also let me work with some of my existing virtual machines that I had setup with Virtual PC 2007. You will have to uninstall Virtual PC 2007 to install the RC, you will also have to uninstall the Windows Virtual PC beta if you had previously installed it. As has been talked about plenty in the press you will also have to have a CPU that supports virtualization. This would be Intel-VT or AMD-V support.

Everything went well with the install. Then I installed the XP mode piece (which is primarily a virtual machine of XP). Again everything worked well.

Now it was time to try one of my existing Virtual Machines and the first problem arose. One of my VMs had a VHD that was split into multiple files with the first two being about 14Gb and the last one being very small. When I tried to use this VHD WVPC could not find the VHD file. This seemed odd since I could see it fine and I could even copy it. When I copied it WVPC could see the file, but when it tried to use it there was a disk error – somewhat to be expected since the name had been changed on the copy. So I figured I’d rename the copy back to the original name and guess what, WVPC could not see the file anymore.

At this point I tried another VHD that was much smaller. This seemed to work fine so I guessed that the split file was causing the problem. VHD’s are split very simply, so I used the tried and true Copy command to combine the files together. This solved the problem and I was able to start up the VM and work with it…problem solved.

Now that it worked, I tried to rename the file back to the original name – for some reason WVPC was still having a problem with the old name. So I renamed it back to the copied name and left it. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

On August 6th the RTM version of Windows 7 was made available to MSDN subscribers. So naturally I had to download it as soon as I could. I decided to try an upgrade on my Dell Studio 17. My Dell was running Vista Ultimate x64 and I figured it would make sense to simply upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate x64. This machine has 4Gb of memory and plenty of free disk space so I didn’t think it would take that long to upgrade.

Well, it took about 4.5 hours to finish the complete upgrade…a little longer than I expected. But I figure I’ll only have to do this once so no big deal.

I was pleased when everything that had been working still worked. I know I have expected everything to be fine, but this is an upgrade so anything was possible.

The only thing that had real problems was Trend Micro Internet Security’s firewall.

Odd things:

• The Camera software from Dell was a bit flaky (but it was always a little flaky)
• Selecting both minimize on use and Hide when minimized in Task manager caused it to always be shown in the task bar.
  

One thing that pleasantly surprised me was the AT&T wireless card. it worked without any changes. The other thing I noticed was that the fingerprint reader seems to work better (maybe my hands are cleaner…).

There are still plenty of things I need to check, but so far it is working flawlessly.

We had a good turnout for the hands on lab this month. Bill Wolff started the evening by getting everyone to sign up for a Bing API id. You can get one here http://www.bing.com/developers/createapp.aspx. He then went on to build a simple web search page using the Bing web service and lots of CSS code. He has the source on his blog.

I followed by going a little lower tech. I wanted to show some jQuery code that would allow you to connect to Bing using Ajax. I started with a simple HTML page that used the URL method to search Bing and have a callback routine run – all in JavaScript. I then modified the code substituting jQuery calls for the straight JavaScript.

The final step was to convert all the JavaScript into code that would rely on the jQuery library and show that it could be done with less code than straight JavaScript. I also added some extras to the final output just to show how it could be done.

The files can be found on my SkyDrive or by clicking here. You will need to signup for a Bing API id to make them work. You will also need the jQuery library to make the second and third files work. You can get the jQuery library from http://jquery.com 

These examples are to show jQuery and Ajax, so they aren’t pretty from an end users perspective – but you can do that on your own so play with them and see what you can come up with.

And if you have questions about what we’ve shown or have ideas of what you would like to see in the future please leave a comment.

At the latest Philly.Net Hands On Lab we tried to create an example using the ListView and an RSS feed. The ListView example was taken from the demo that Joe Stagner did here. Unfortunately his site was not working for the demo so we switched it to my blog.

If you want to see the final ASPX page you can get to it here.

Remember you can find more jQuery information at jQuery.com.

At the previous regular meeting of Philly.Net

I also gave a short intro presentation about jQuery. If you would like to have the presentation you can download it from here.

I hope these presentations helped you get started. Let me know what else you’d like to know about jQuery by leaving a comment.

Thanks.

Since the Beta of Windows 7 was released I figured I would try to upgrade my Dell from the PDC release to the Beta. Unfortunately there wasn’t enough disk space on my 16gb SSD to accommodate an update so I decided to simply blow away the existing build and start fresh.

Before I got started I checked for any BIOS updates. I had previously updated to A03 but I found that another update was available  - onward and upward to A04.  The BIOS update worked flawlessly and I was ready to begin.

I decided to boot from the external CD. Since there are no dedicated function keys on the Mini I had to hit the zero key. Of course, this is an exercise in timing since it is only available to hit for a limited time.

Once the install disk booted I blew away both the main partition and the 200mb partition that is created by windows 7.  I then created a single partition but and told the install to use it. Windows still wants that 200mb partition so it repartitioned the disk and began the install.

Expanding the files took the longest – about 20 minutes. The entire install took about 45 minutes.

I did get the wireless hotkey to work by downloading the battery Meter/Wireless Switch for the Mini 12 (for vista). This installed fine on the 9. Thanks to the myDellMini website for the information.

So far the beta is working well – it is responsive and shows no signs of being a beta.