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.

Windows 7 Launch Event

Those interested in how exactly Windows 7 launch looked like, can check it through on-demand video. Do notice that Silverlight is required.

Visual Studio 2010 (Beta 2)

Visual Studio 2010 beta 2 is available to all MSDN subscribers. Public release will follow on October 21st.

First thing that I noticed is bunch of editions (Ultimate, Premium, Professional and Express). This is probably how things will look once final version is out. While I am not sure what differences are among them, I am sure that Ultimate will be wet dream of all programmers. And do notice that you are allowed to go live with this beta.

Installation was quite slow, it required one restart and it did gave some bogus warnings (like trying to run PowerShell 1.0 on Windows 7), but I cannot blame it too much. This was on system where beta 1 was previously installed and I cannot say that some issues weren’t actually from uninstalling it. However, one hit on Retry button solved every problem I had. I must confess that this is quite sturdy installation.

I will stop with praises here since I am yet to test it in real-life. However, it does look nice.

P.S. Still no support for Windows Mobile. I guess they are saving that for final release…

HP ML150 G5

After quite a long time, I got my hands on one server - HP ML150 G5 to be more precise.

First thing that I must notice is that this guy is heavy. It has slightly less than 30 kilograms and while this doesn’t seem like much, it’s shape ensures that getting good grip is thing of luck more than skill. Although I would like some grabbing handles somewhere on side, once you put it down you can be sure that it will stay there. Of course, basic rack conversion kit is included.

This is entry server and I got entry configuration:

• Intel Xeon E5430 (2.66 GHz)
• 2 GB RAM
• 2x SAS 72 GB

As you can see, this is almost as low as you can get for something that ought to be Hyper-V server, but there is huge potential for upgrade. You can add one more processor, add more memory (total of six slots) and throw in few more hard drives (four SAS and six SATA).

Installation of Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 went without a hitch. All devices were recognized without problems and I haven’t bothered to update any drivers. Once SQL Server 2008 ended up on machine, everything went to hell. Each time any real disk activity occurred, machine would just freeze. Root cause was traced to BIOS that was from January of 2008! Once I upgraded to latest version (both BIOS and iLO), it started working properly. This was first time for me that BIOS bug caused that much of problems.

Intention of this server is to take role of aging SQL Server 2000 installation (1.7 GHz P4, 1 GB RAM). Total load of this is not enough to saturate even basic configuration. However, if everything goes alright, upgrades are planned and more load will be added. Than we shall see true nature of that beast. And I have a good feeling about it.