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Step 1 – Obtain a copy of Windows Server 2008

Windows Server 2008 beta has recently been released to the public for free download. Using Windows Server 2008 from within Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 is a great way to try out the server, without having to free up a whole PC. If something goes wrong with the installation, you can always blow it away and try again.

First you need to either download the Windows Server 2008 beta software, or order the software on DVD. The download is about 1.76 GB and comes in the form of an ISO image. If you have a decent download speed, downloading the software might be the best option.

Either way you will need to get the software first, and you can do that from here.

When downloading the software, you will be required to login to your Microsoft Technet account, which is the same account you would use if you have an MSN account, a hotmail email address, or have access to Microsoft Passport. Login and start downloading… Or if you opted to be sent the DVD, you can wait patiently for the software to arrive…

An activation key will be emailed if you downloaded the software, or if sent the DVD, will be included. You will need this to authenticate your copy.

Step 2 – Obtain a copy of Microsoft Virtual PC 2007

Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 is free to download, and allows anyone to be able to run multiple operating systems on the one PC. It is a pretty handy tool to have when testing new or running legacy operating systems.

Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 is small in size (roughly 30 – 60MB in size) and can be downloaded from here.

Step 3 – Install Microsoft Virtual PC 2007

Before you install, locate a drive on your PC that has enough space. You will need this for the Windows Server 2008. On my PC I have several drives created for different purposes. Find somewhere where you would like to store Windows Server 2008 and create a folder where you would like the server to run from.

Once installed, it will take up around 8GB, so make sure you have more than enough room to cover this.

Once you are ready, you can begin to install the Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 on to your computer. Just follow the prompts provided by the Wizard. It is pretty straigtforward, and won’t take long at all to install.

Step 4 – Run Microsoft Virtual PC Console

Once installed, you can then run the Virtual PC Console.

The following image has been taken from my Virtual PC Console. I have already got Windows Server 2008 running on my PC. Don’t worry that you will be looking at a blank canvas. That is completly normal.

Note: Click on all images to view enlarged image.

 

Click on ‘New’

  

From the Options screen, select ‘Create a virtual machine’

Click on ‘Next’

 

Enter the name and location of the folder where you would like to run Windows Server 2008 from.

Click on ‘Next’

  

Select ‘Windows Vista’ as the Operating System.

Click on ‘Next’

  

Allocate RAM. If you select ‘Adjusting the RAM’, you will be able to manually decide how much RAM you want to allocate. Selecting ‘Using the recommended RAM’ will just use the minimum RAM required.

Click on ‘Next’

  

Select ‘A new virtual hard disk’

Click on ‘Next’

  

Click on ‘Next’

 

Click on ‘Finish’

Step 5 – Install Windows Server 2008 from within Microsoft Virtual PC 2007

  

From the menu, click on ‘CD’ and then choose ‘Capture ISO image’.

Browse to where the Windows Server 2008 ISO image is stored (from when it was either downloaded, or arrived on DVD) and hit ‘enter’

From the menu, click on ‘Action’ and then choose ‘send ctrl-alt-del’. This will restart Windows, and Windows Server 2008 will begin to start installing.

Enter your Country, Currency and Keyboard details when prompted.

Enter your product key when prompted.

 

Select the operating system you want to install. I have chosen the Windows Longhorn SERVERDATACENTER.

Accept the license terms when prompted; after reading them of course

Click on ‘Next’

 

Select the ‘Custom’ install

Accept the drive where Windows Server 2008 will be installed, by clicking on ‘Next’

 

Sit back and relax, while Windows Server 2008 installs itself…

…Before you know it, Windows Server 2008 will be installed, and you will be viewing the server start up for the first time from Microsoft Virtual PC.

 

Once it has started up successfully, the Initial Configuration Screen will display.

Congratulations! Windows Server 2008 is now set up and ready to use.

I thought I would write one post that covers several items, rather that writing many. I usually do this and call the post an update of some kind. Basically, that is what this post will be. The last post (interview with Sheryle Moon) had been doing so well that I thought I would keep it as the top post for a week.

I met Sheryle Moon earlier this week while she was in Adelaide. It was really wonderful to meet her. Sheryle has been the first person that I had interviewed that I had not known prior. Sheryle was down here for the STEP Up For Success workshops that have been held all around the country. The workshops were aimed at women to help empower them in the IT workforce. Sheryle was telling me that they were an outcome of a Women in ICT Summit that was held in Sydney two years ago.

Interview Series Proving Popular

The responses I have received about the Interview with an IT Professional series has been outstanding. It is obviously something that people view the most when they come to this site.

I have been checking the stats (as I regularly do) and this month is by far the best month to date. The number of people bookmarking the site and returning on a regular basis has almost doubled the previous month.

The next interview that I have is with Yasas Vishuddhi Abeywickrama, who has travelled the world working in several locations. His role is a Business Analyst/Consultant. It will be really interesting to read about what he has discovered on his travels, and also all about the role of a Business Analyst, and how someone can become one.

I am always looking for new people to interview on this site. If you are at all interested, or you know someone who would be perfect, please let me know at: “deb@foocode.net“.

Purpose of This Site

Sometimes I get asked what it is this site is trying to promote. A lot of blogs tend to focus on one thing and nothing else. This blog seems to cover quite a few things. There is the interviews, updates of events, error fixes, and general ramblings. The life I lead in IT is varied. I don’t just focus on one thing at the exclusion of everything else. I think that is something I would like to get across to people. A career in IT is always different, always challenging, and can take you anywhere in the world.

There are so many roles in the IT industry. Nobody sits at a computer day in and day out doing the same thing. Regardless of what job you have, you will always be required to take on a whole variety of work. I want to break the perception people have of IT. I would love it if more and more people came to realise just what an exciting and challenging career people who work in the industry can have.

Earlier this week I read an article about women being positive about a career in IT. It is a great article and well worth the read.

WordPress 2.2 Upgrade

This blog is written using WordPress. The latest upgrade 2.2 has just come out. As with all upgrades, I like to run them straight away. Usually they cover security issues that really need to be patched.

Once upgraded though, I noticed that there were some strange characters appearing throughout the posts. Not one to take this lightly, I searched the net for an answer. Thankfully, I found one!

 After the upgrade…

LiewCF has come up with a very simple set of instructions that work! Thanks LiewCF. You can either check out his post or follow his instructions (which I shall repeat) here:

1) Open and edit “wp-config.php”
2) Find: define(‘DB_CHARSET’, ‘utf8′);
3) Remove “utf8″, so it becomes: define(‘DB_CHARSET’, ”);
4) Save and upload “wp-config.php”
5) Done. Your WordPress blog should display characters correctly.

CodeCampSA

The Adelaide Dot Net Users Group (ADNUG) are busily organising a CodeCampSA event for July. The event is going to be similar to the very popular CodeCamp which was held earlier this year in Wagga Wagga. For more information check out the site: http://www.adnug.com/news.htm

Don’t forget to book. I have. I am looking forward to it!

Video Card Proving its Worth

My video card is continuing to prove its worth. I have recently added an nVidia 8600GTS card to my PC. This weekend I have been playing a fair bit of Oblivion. It is a great game. It looks so lovely on my PC. I have set everything to the highest details available, and it all works like a dream. Now to finish off that quest I am on…

Way back in March I tried to install the ATI X1950 Pro video card. Unfortunately all I got was grief and a whole bunch of blue screens. Vista (combined with my motherboard) hated the card. I have waited (patiently like a grasshopper) for a decent card to come out that would run without any problem on my PC.

That day has finally come!~! Today my new card, an NVidia 8600 GTS 512MB arrived. It didn’t take long to get the card fitted and drivers installed before I was able to see the differences the new card made.

The first thing I had to check out was my Vista Rating…

When I first got Vista Ultimate my rating was a really sad 3.2 The score was due to the video card I had. It was the only card I could use on my PC that was stable enough to run Vista.

But now…

Now I have a score of… 4.4! I was hoping for at least 5, but my processor had the score of 4.4 and the Vista rating is brought down to whatever is the lowest score. On a good note though, my video card scored a very respectable 5.9!

If you are wondering what a Vista rating has anything to do with, it is (for some) a way to brag about how cool your PC is, and how well everything runs. A rating of 6 is as good as it gets (as far as I know, let me know if I am wrong). Some programs and features on Vista will only run if your rating is above a certain level. Some of the games that come with Vista fail to run if they are below 3 (for example).

The second thing I had to do was check out how nicely Guild Wars looked…

I am so pleased with the graphics. To illustrate the differences between the quality of the images, I have included a screen shot of one of my characters Zara Summers and her minipet Asura. The images below are both thumbnails. If you want to see them bigger, just click on the images.

 Out with the old… In with the new

Finally, I hear that EB Games is having a sale on their games. I might have to check out what they have just to test this new video card some more… Any suggestions on games to try? I am thinking Oblivion looks lovely.

Today for the first time when I went to access my SharePoint 2003 site (which is now such a valuable tool to me, I couldn’t imagine what I would do without it) I was confronted with a horrible IEXPLORE.EXE application error. The error reared it’s ugly face every time I tried to open up any document. The error only ever occurred on my PC. Anyone else who accessed the site could get to the documents without any problem at all.

At first I tried restarting my PC (you never know…) but that failed to help. I sought help from a fellow worker (thank you) and that led to IE7 being installed on my PC, just in case there was some corrupt DLL file. I originally had IE6. That also failed to help. I am happy with the install. I prefer IE7 so much more than IE6, but still, my problem remained.

I had to do something, so I googled for help. I came across so many forums, some suggesting to do a system restore, and then others warning that it doesn’t help…

Thankfully it didn’t take long before I came across a site by Paul Wu that helped solve the problem. Although his post was slightly different (he was using SharePoint 2007), the cause was ultimately the same.

The day before I had installed an Office 2003 program on my PC. I am also using Office 2007. The two different Office suites resulted in a file OWSSUPP.DLL becoming confused. It had no idea what version of Office to use. I had to disable the file (by renaming it). Once I followed Paul’s instructions, (which you can get to by going to his site) I was able to once again open up the documents. Thanks Paul!

I know you can’t get enough of PowerShell and that you are all as hooked as I am. One of the best documents that you should have lying around your desk (preferably in plain sight) is the PowerShell Language Quick Reference.

I have used quick references in the past when I studied and used C and Java. They are a great little look up of all the things you will most commonly use.

The quick reference is referred to as ‘quadfold.rtf’ and comes packaged together with PowerShell when you download and install it on to your computer. PowerShell is free and can be downloaded here  or you can download just the documents here . Although, I am not quite sure why you would download just the documents and not the shell too…

In the near future I am going to release some PowerShell scripts for everyone to download. Please keep a look out for that. One of the Ambassadors of the ACS Young IT Committee (Glenn Nitschke) has suggested a script that he would like to see. Thanks Glenn for your suggestion. Your script will be the first one I release.

The Official PowerShell blog is located here . There are so many really good links and bits of information on the blog. More than enough to keep you happily scripting for many an hour…

I have had to research all about Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 this week for work (among the many things that I do during the week). For those that don’t know what SharePoint is, I have included some notes below, from what I have read. I have also come across a whole heap of blogs and a few e-books that can be downloaded for free.

If you are in Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney or Canberra, you can join the local SharePoint Users Group. Links to the various users groups can be found here. Unfortunately there is no SharePoint Users Group in Adelaide!?! If there was I would happily go to it.

What is Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007?

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 allows for people within an organization or group to be able to easily share information. Having a central place to store the information increases efficiency and communication within a team. Sites can be created that can be customized to suit the needs of the team. Each site can be modified with a different look and feel, depending on what theme is used, or what components have been created to the site to enhance its features and usability.

Forms to be used within MOSS 2007 can be created using InfoPath 2007. In the previous version of InfoPath 2003, the full version had to be installed not only on the developer’s PC, but also on any PC accessing the site that contained the form. This is no longer the case with InfoPath 2007. Office Form Server 2007 is designed to display the forms developed using InfoPath 2007 to the browser of any user regardless if they have or haven’t got InfoPath 2007 installed on their PC.

MOSS hosts the Windows Workflow Foundation, which allows for the creation of customized work flow solutions. Workflow solutions can be created using Visual Studio 2005 or Office SharePoint Designer 2007. A workflow is the movement of documents or list items through a specific sequence of actions or tasks related to a business process. Workflows can be used to manage common business processes such as document review or approval.

Some examples of workflow documents are: Annual Leave request, Travel request, IT support etc.

With Office 2007 you no longer get Microsoft FrontPage, as Office SharePoint Designer 2007 has replaced it.

Some useful sites, blogs and e-books on MOSS that I came across while researching it is:

http://spsfactory.blogspot.com/2006/09/free-e-books-about-office-2007-windows.html <– contains free e-books

http://blogs.msdn.com/dglover/default.aspx <– Dave Glover’s blog

http://vivekthangaswamy.blogspot.com/index.html <–vivekthangaswamy’s blog

http://jopx.blogspot.com/ <– Joris Poelmans blog

http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/b28ba53d-a3e8-440f-9fcb-f592d858894a1033.mspx?mfr=true <– Downloadable books for Office SharePoint Server 2007

If ever you are wondering why your dates are not formatting as you would expect in SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services, check that the Language setting on the Report’s properties is set to the correct language.

I was wondering why last week all of my reports were displaying an incorrect date format. The date stored on the SQL server was correct. When I ran the query used by the report in the Data tab it also displayed correctly. As soon as I deployed the report (or previewed it) the dates would display in mm/dd/yyyy format.

Changing the Language to be English (Australian) allowed the dates to display as I had intended.

deb.foocode.net

Vista is installed on my PC. It looks really lovely. It is really quite different to XP. I can imagine that it will take a while to become familiar with my new surroundings. I have been so caught up with my video card (which is still not responding properly) that I have not yet spent any time really delving in to Vista.

Video Card Grief…

Installing the ATI X1950 video card is the first time I have ever put in a video card and installed it all myself (I have needed help along the way…). I imagined that it would all be smooth sailing and that within a matter of an hour – two at the most, I would be staring at amazingly rendered graphics. I wish it worked out like that. Darn it, but my PC just wants to crash all the time. Even formatting my drive and installing Vista has not helped, not to mention all the drivers I have updated and installed along the way. Until the problem is resolved there will be no Guild Wars…

I am going to be so happy when it is all working…

Flinders University Career Fair

Tuesday 13 March I will be at Flinders University Career Fair promoting the ACS. The Career Fair starts at 5pm until 7pm. If you are studying at Flinders and doing IT or Engineering, make sure you make your way down to Rosetta’s. Career Fairs are an excellent way to get lots of information about possible companies to work for once you have finished your studies. A lot of companies start the graduate recruitment process early. It really pays to be prepared.

Interviews with an IT Professional

The first of the ‘Interview with an IT Professional’ questions has been sent out. I am going to send out more interview questions this week to various people. I have 5 people lined up now to be interviewed. The response from people that I have asked has been excellent! Thank you to everyone that has already offered to be part of my blog. The first interview is with Yohan Ramasundara, who is the ACS National Young IT Board Director. I will post that interview as soon as it comes out. Keep an eye out for it! I am sure Yohan will have many words of wisdom to share with us all. Yohan is a lovely person. It is an honour to have him as my first interviewed IT professional. Thank you Yohan!

deb.foocode.net

Yay!! My video card arrived. So far I have managed to put it in (several time) and take it out (several times). The card I have is an ATI X1950. For some strange reason, whenever I go to start up Guild Wars, my whole PC crashes. I have investigated it on the net and it seems that it is a bit of a problem for other people too. The one time that my PC managed to stay on long enough for me to play a game (about 30 seconds), I was really impressed. The graphics looked amazing.

If anyone can offer any suggestions I would gladly appreciate it! In the meanwhile I have gone back to my original video card. I would like to play Guild Wars sometime this weekend… Vista Ultimate has also arrived. I might try installing that tomorrow. Hopefully the video card will work.

deb.foocode.net

Finally!! I did take a day longer to get a blog software installed on my computer than I would have liked. It is amazing how fast the weekend went…

I decided to go with WordPress. I have a feeling that I can be quite creative with WordPress. It also has a few books released. I can get nerdy and read up on the different styles and ways to make my site more ‘me’.

Right now it has the default screen. Soon it will look a whole lot better and will actually have some content.

I have a comment already!! Thank you Takeshi for being the very first person to leave me a comment.

It’s late and I really should be watching Futurama…

deb.foocode.net