Creating Win 7 & Server 2008 bootable USB Flash Drive Part 2

A while ago I blogged about installing windows from a USB Flash Drive. Since then I found an awesome tool called WinToFlash which is a point and shoot tool which will automatically create a Bootable USB Flash installation source. Try it out, it’s pretty simple and not only makes bootable copies of the install media, but also does some other cool stuff you can read about here.

Slipstreaming SQL 2008 Sp1

If you try installing SQL 2008 RTM on either Windows 7, Vista Sp2 or XP Sp3 you will find that install fails. There is a really easy fix for this by simply slipstreaming Sp1 with the RTM image by following these instructions here.

In terms of the actual problem I’m not sure of what the exact cause is here although I suspect it’s related to this issue with MSXML.

Creating a Windows 7 RTM bootable USB Key

*** UPDATED  17th August 2009  ***

For some reason the copy and paste of this last point of this post didn’t come through, thanks Jason for picking this, anyway it’s all updated now.

With the release over the weekend of the RTM of Windows 7 I’ve been doing a wholesale upgrade of all of our PC’s. On my laptop this was easy as I have a DVD drive, but we also have a couple of Netbook / Ultra Mobile PC’s a Fujitsu U1010 Tablet and an Asus EEEPC. What you  need to do this is a USB drive that is 4Gb or greater. Another thing to also note is that some of these USB drives come with a special partition installed by the manufacturer which will not allow the Win 7 partition to boot. In my case I used a San Disk 8Gb Cruzer which come out of the box with a U3 partition on it. I think this same process can be used for Vista installations but I haven’t tested this.

Remove U3 Partition

To remove the U3 Partition you simply have to download this utility, and run it as an Administrator. If you’d like to reinstall the U3 tools after you’ve finished you can download this utility to restore the partition to your flash drive.

Formatting the Flash Drive

1. Plug in the flash drive and let windows detect it.
2. Open a “Command Prompt” as “Administrator” Right Click on the Command prompt and select “Run As Administrator”, now type the following commands into this window.
3. Type “diskpart”
4. Next we need to find the drive number of the usb disk for the next step by entering “list disk”. Each disk will be listed with a number next to it, in my case this was disk 1.
5. The next step is to format the drive, simply substitute your disk number where I use 1. At this point it’s probably time for a coffee as this will take a few minutes.

select disk 1
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=NTFS
assign
exit

Making the drive bootable

1. Insert the Windows 7 DVD or mount the iso.
2. In the same Command Prompt that was open before change the directory to DVD’s boot directory (“\boot”) which is “bootsect.exe” is located, this is the tool that will be used for the step of this process.
3. Run following command, assuming the “F:” is the usb drive. “bootsect /nt60 f:”

Copy the Contents of DVD to the Flash Drive

1. Select all files on the Windows DVD and copy them over to the USB Key. The easiest way to do this is to use Windows Explorer.

Once you’ve done all the steps above your ready to go. Simply change the bios to boot off the usb device and the Windows 7 install should be ready to roll.

Top Link Navigation in WSS

We had an issue where we had developed a internet facing site in WSS for a client with a heavily modified navigation. As everyone probably does, we simply copy and pasted the url from the browser straight into the WSS Navigation, we found we had an strange problem, the highlighting on the top navigation of the WSS wasn’t highlighting correctly. Here are the  lessons learned from this:-

• “DO NOT” to use either full path’s ie “http://mysite/page.aspx” but to instead use a relative path ie “/page.aspx”.
• “DO NOT” ‘%20’ for spaces, just leave spaces ie “/My%20Home%20Page.aspx” should be entered as “My Home Page.aspx”.

Disabling the Office Live Persistent Pop Up

Ever since I decided to install the Office Live add on, each time I’ve opened Word, Excel etc I’m constantly prompted by this window.

Today I found a solution to this here. The solution is to add the following registry key, “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\OfficeLive” then Office Live will be able to create the necessary DWORD to make sure it isn’t displayed again.

A more detailed description of the problem can be found here.

Missing in Action

It’s been quite a while since I last posted an entry here. The last few months have been chaotic to say the least, most of my time has been tied up in the “doing” phase of running my own business and delivering project, so hopefully fairly soon it will be the “talking about it” phase. I’ve been involved in quite a few MOSS project of late and can see a pretty healthy pipeline of work through to Christmas, which given the worlds current financial problems, I’m pretty thankful about this. I’ve also been involved in a few Hyper-V roll-outs, which I’ve started writing posts about again once things settle down I’ll post these.

Keep watching this space new posts will be appearing soon.

Farewell Brandy

It’s been a long time since I’ve put an entry up here. I usually don’t put up personal posts but this one really needs go up here. Yesterday I had to farewell my best friend after she was put to sleep after what we thought was a short illness but was probably a lot longer than what we thought. Our beloved Shar-pei, Brandy, Peiard Queenof Hearts, passed away yesterday (22 Jan) after going into full organ shutdown on Tuesday night (21 Jan). We are not completely certain on what the cause of her organ failure was but we suspect that it was caused initially by Familial Shar-Pei Fever (FSF) , which appears to have led to full organ failure caused by Amyloidosis. This is an awful disease, that appears to only occur in Shar-Pei. Very little is known about this disease so this I’m writing this post to raise awareness of it to both current Shar-Pei and prospective Shar-Pei owners. I don’t claim to be an expert so I’ve put some links in this article to Dr Jeff Vidt’s site who has provided me invaluable advise over the last 10 years that I have been lucky enough to have the companionship of these lovely dogs.

One question that a lot of people have already asked is whether we’d get another Shar-Pei, the short answer is a very definite “NO”. Over the last 10 years we’ve had 4 Shar-Pei, and I’ve got to say that these have been the loyalist dogs we’ve ever had, but this can also be there downfall. Although the majority have had exceptional temperaments (except 1, Kilin), they all remained extremely weary of strangers which made them difficult to take and about. Having bred them, what is most worrying is that there is no real effort to breed out the genetic problems in the breed . Brandy has been our longest living Shar-pei who had made her 8th birthday a few days before she passed, but we’ve also had to make some tough decisions where we have put our previous 2 girls to sleep less 2 years old; Coco, who had a brain tumour and Kilin, who had severe skin and temperament issues. The facts are that the Shar-Pei are very problematic breed.

The most heartbreaking part of all this was that when Brandy showed the first signs of the Amyloidosis, it was all too late. She had severe oedema of the left leg, consistent with a swollen hock which is a symptom of the Amyloidosis, 3 days prior to organ failure occurring. At this point I’d like to stress that the diagnosis of Amyloidosis is only suspected. Given that all Brandy’s offspring we’re never bred we have chosen not to go ahead with a Congo Red Stain for the definitive diagnosis. In the interest being open and honest Brady’s pedigree is below. I just hope that all breeders will please take a close look at this and please use this to exclude individuals in your breeding program who have similar genetics, as you are all aware, whether you’d like to admit it or not, we all know that this is a genetic disease. This disease is very real and caused Brandy great suffering and pain in her final few days that we knew of, most probably considerably longer. Please also remember that what you are breeding will become part of someone’s family. If anyone would like any further information on any of this please leave a comment and I’ll be happy to pass on anything that I have. The comments are moderated and I’m happy to keep it confidential.

Brandy you will be missed by us all …

 

Name:	PEIARD QUEENOF HEARTS 6100021741
Breed:	Shar Pei
Sex:	Female
Date of Birth:	8 January 2001
Colour:	Chocolate
Bred by:	Mrs J Bakranich – Peiard Kennels

 

		S. Wayworns Fingertail Gigilo (USA) (Imp UK) [Chocolate]
	S. Zebedee Jazaway [Black]
		D.Rinkle Silkskin (Imp UK) [Red Fawn]
Sire: Aust CH Wrinklestar Mr Spock [Chocolate]
		S.Coopersands Chocolate Chip (CSPCA) (Imp US) [Chocolate]
	D. Zebedee Our Cutey [Black]
		D. Zebadee Cause To Paws (Imp UK) [Red Sable]
		S. Coopersands Chocolate Chip (CSPCA) (Imp US) [Chocolate]
	S. Zebedee Midniteming [Black]
		D. Zebadee Cause To Paws (Imp UK) [Red Sable]
Dam: Eriskefurst Lui Cloe [Fawn]
		S. Zebedee Celstil Sunshine [Fawn]
	D. Ikaareena Liu Kung Chu [Red]
		D. Zebedee Cherri Blossom [Apricot]

Missing Details, Thumbnails & Filmstrip views in Picture Libraries

I found a some very strange behaviour on client installation where suddenly the Details, Thumbnails & Filmstrip views had vanished from a Picture Library.

This is the way a picture library usually looks :-

This is the way my picture library is looking now:-

My initial thought was that I’d broken something through the site customisation of the minor Master Page tweaks and some style tweaks, but what when I packaged up the work and deployed to another server I saw that it all worked and appeared to be a server wide issue.

This blog post has confirmed where the issue had come from. The Infrastructure Update for WSS and MOSS  had caused the issue, Microsoft are aware of it and are currently working on a fix, I’ll let you know when I hear more. There is currently no known work around for this issue.

MOSS Daylight savings time Update for Australia 2008

Seems like the daylight savings issues are continually biting. On the bright side the fix this year for MOSS is a very simple xml change. Simply navigate to “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\CONFIG” and edit “timezone.xml”. I’d recommend making another copy of timezone.xml at this point just in case. The example here fits for East Coast Australia 2008. Simply go through file until you find your particular timezone, then modify the values or Month Day Hour, just remember that Day is actually the week that it changes ie in this example DST starts in the first week of October this year in Melbourne. It’s all pretty straight forward.

<TimeZone ID="76" Name="(GMT+10:00) Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney" Hidden="FALSE">

  <Bias>-600</Bias>

  <StandardTime>

    <Bias>0</Bias>

    <Date>

      <Month>4</Month>

      <Day>1</Day>

      <Hour>3</Hour>

    </Date>

  </StandardTime>

  <DaylightTime>

    <Bias>-60</Bias>

    <Date>

      <Month>10</Month>

      <Day>1</Day>

      <Hour>2</Hour>

    </Date>

  </DaylightTime>

</TimeZone>

Item-level permissions on document libraries.

I recently had a client requirement where the client wanted to created a “drop box” type of document library, where users were able to modify and view only there own documents. I knew this possible in custom lists through this option being displayed in List Setting / Advanced Settings link.

What I didn’t realise was that this option wasn’t displayed in document libraries. I found this post from Matt Morse that had the solution to this problem. Matt points out that when you take a look in the Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationPages.dll the following code exists in the AdvancedSettingsPage class’s OnLoadEvent.

this.ItemLevelSecurityPanel.Visible = (type != 1) && (type != 5);

Where type is the base type of the list (1 = doclib, 5 = issues)

The Fix

Matt has written a great little tool here, and the source is available here. The code is pretty straight forward as you can see from the snippet below.

    SPSite site = new SPSite(siteUrl);

    SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb(webUrl);

    SPList list = web.Lists[listName];


    PropertyInfo pInfo = list.GetType().GetProperty(propertyName);


    if (pInfo.PropertyType == typeof(int))

        pInfo.SetValue(list, Convert.ToInt32(propertyValue), null);

    else

        pInfo.SetValue(list, propertyValue, null);


    list.Update();


    web.Dispose();

    site.Dispose();

The property that we are setting in this case is ReadSecurity and WrtieSecurity the possible values are documented in these MSDN pages. In my case I was setting “Users have read access only to items that they create (2)” and “Users can modify only items that they create (2)”. Using Matt’s tool I basically just entered the following from the command line.

SPSetListProperty “http://server” "/Site" "Document Lib" "ReadSecurity" "2" SPSetListProperty “http://server” "/Site" "Document Lib" "WriteSecurity" "2"

Once this was done the document library performed exactly how we required, now the users who have contribute permissions can use this library to view and edit only their own items, and owners are able to see all items in the document library.