Failed To Create Mapping

I tested Team Foundation Server 2010 a lot. Testing included creating project collections, adding solutions, removing everything, restoring from backup and doing this all over again.

Out of blue, I started getting “Failed To Create Mapping” error. Worst thing was that those messages referenced project collection that I already deleted.

I restored project from state before even adding it to source control and result was stubborn “Failed To Create Mapping”.

However, there is solution. There is configuration file at

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Team Foundation\3.0\Cache\VersionControl.config

Every Team Foundation Server connection gets stored there. Once I deleted ServerInfo for non-existing connection, everything was good again.

Hyper-V and Windows Server 2000

I haven’t had this one in a while.

Once you install all updates available on Windows Update on your Windows Server 2000 under Hyper-V, this is what happens.

What have I done:

• install Small Business Server 2000
• start SBS setup to create domain and install SQL server component
• install SQL Server 2000 Service pack 4
• install SBS 2000 Service pack 1a
• install Hyper-V Integration components
• go to Windows Update and install all recommended updates (Express)
• go to Windows Update and install all recommended updates (Express)
• …

Crash happens after batch of 88 updates.

Setting SPF Records With Google Apps

SPF records are great thing. In theory they should help fight spam and prevent forgery of your e-mail address. However, it may cause troubles if you do not configure it properly.

Did you ever saw this:

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

    example@example.com

Technical details of permanent failure:
Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 553 553 See http://spf.pobox.com/why.html?sender=jmedved%40jmedved.com&ip=209.85.218.215&receiver=he-dc2-l3.avalon.hr (#5.7.1) (state 14).

There are two reasons why this may go unnoticed.

First one is that not many domains implement these checks. If domain does not check your SPF records, it will not block your e-mails. Almost all your e-mails will pass without any trouble to most of your destinations. That “almost” part is problematic.

Further, even if domain blocks your e-mail, it may opt not to report error. This is worst of all since neither your recipient will receive message neither you will receive error. It is great when e-mail just doesn’t work.

If you use Google Apps, you need to modify your SPF records to include “aspmx.googlemail.com”. However, there are some unofficial reports that this does not work all the time. It seems that you need “_spf.google.com” in your SPF record also. Since DNS takes ages to propagate, I opted to include both of these at once. Better safe than sorry.

Additionally, every SPF record has “all” mechanism in order to decide what to do with e-mails that are not caught by any other mechanism. This is for most of hosts written as “-all” which causes fail for all hosts not in list. Google Apps requires this to be “~all”. This is so called soft-fail. Your final destination will not be affected by it - it will only happen during internal mail routing.

How final record should look like, it depends on your particular configuration. However, I will give you what I added in TXT record:

v=spf1 a mx include:aspmx.googlemail.com include:_spf.google.com ~all

Your requirements may very, but not by much.

P.S. If you do not have access to your DNS records or you just want to check whether your change has propagated through DNS system, it is helpful to use SPF Query Tool. It is online and hassle free.

Installing Windows 7 From USB Drive

Some time ago I wrote a post about installing Windows 7 from USB drive. Procedure wasn’t too complicated but it did require going into dark command line and playing with always risky DISKPART tool.

There is no need to do that any more since Microsoft released tool that will do that for you. You just need to download Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool executable and run it. After short setup you are ready to go. In case of Windows XP, you will additionally need to install Image Master API (it will download and install itself - Internet connection is required).

Procedure is easy - just pickup .iso file, select destination (DVD or flash drive) and wait a little.

I could say that it would be nice to have that inside of Windows 7 itself, but that would be just nitpicking.

[2009-10-11: Tool is not available anymore. Microsoft pulled it from it’s site to check whether some GPL code was reused. From the looks of it, Microsoft did broke GPL license in this matter. Couldn’t company with that many developers find one competent enough to make this program or decent enough to keep original license?]

[2009-12-10: It took a while, but tool is available once again.]

Small Business Server 2000 in Hyper-V

I was installing Small Business Server 2000 in Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 and I stumble upon small road-block. Once server came to “Installing Devices” part of installation, it just stayed there. No matter how long you wait, no progress will be made.

I tried with changing network adapters to legacy ones, removing network adapters, adding some memory, removing some memory… In short, I tried lot of things and it took me a while.

In order to emulate old hardware as much as possible, I decided to use “Run an older operating system, such as Windows NT”. It ends up that Small Business Server 2000 is quite allergic to that and once that was unchecked, everything went smoothly.

While I know that Windows NT isn’t same operating system as Windows Server 2000, I figured that little bit of backward compatibility didn’t hurt anybody. However, in this particular case, it seems that same setting that makes Windows NT work properly is one that does quite the opposite for Windows 2000.

Additionally, since you cannot install Hyper-V integration services on original Small Business Server 2000, I decided to go with Legacy Network adapter instead of synthetic one. This may slow down things a little, but I figured that speed of new “virtual hardware” will make up for that.

Whole problem is that you need Service pack 4 to install synthetic network adapter. In order to install service pack, you need to install Small Business part of OS (otherwise it will get amnesia and forget that it is SBS). In order to install Small Business server, you need working network adapter (for domain). In order to have network adapter, you need to install service pack 4. You notice where this loop is going.

Legacy network adapter works perfectly and there is always an option to replace it with synthetic one if performance proves to be an issue.

P.S. Do notice that this might as well apply to Windows Server 2000 since they do share same code base.